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Brain Scan Can Detect Autism In Infants
kkleiner writes "A new study shows that brain scans can detect autism in children as young as 6 months old. Researchers at University of North Carolina's Institute for Developmental Disabilities imaged the brains of 92 children who were at high risk for autism. Scans were performed when the children were 6 months, 1-year, and 2-years old. At 2 years, the age when children are typically diagnosed, 30 percent of the children were found to have autism. The researchers then compared the brain images of the autistic children with the others. They saw differences in the brain's white matter, the axon-laden pathways that transmit electrical signals to distant parts of the brain. Of the 15 pathways analyzed, 12 were significantly different between autistic and non-autistic children."
Immunisation caused autism. Science FTW!
It's like a smoke detector which is telling you your house is already on fire, but can do nothing about putting it out or preventing it from happening.
Might be useful in some way for consulting with parents, but a knife-edge decision there, to decide whether to tell people their child might develop Autism, with the possibility you culd be wrong. While it is interesting information the practice side of how to use it raises some questions.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
If the brain is showing abnormality at birth or close to it then we can at least rule out post-natal causes (e.g vaccines). Perhaps epidemiologists should start looking into diet deficiencies or exposure to toxins during pregnancy.
The study results do not detect autism (which most people will read as a diagnosis). When looking back over the scans, differences from normal development could be seen starting as early as six months, but this is retrospective after it was diagnosed at the common ages. This study may at least provide some clues on how autism develops even if it doesn't provide a means of diagnosing it earlier.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
If I can recall correctly, brain scan does introduces radiation into the brain
Depends on the type. PET scans do have some radiation. The study in question - http://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleid=668180&RelatedWidgetArticles=true used diffusion tensor imaging which is a variant of MRI, which uses strong magnetic fields and does't produce any radiation. The technique is essentially harmless.
Exactly. Next they need to scan another group of babies at 6 months, identify the autistic type scans and see if that predicts autism 2 years out.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The technique is essentially harmless.
Except that 30% of those scanned in the study now have autism... coincidence? ;)
They didn't predict anything. They retrospectively reviewed scans and determined a "signature" that correlated with the outcome studied. Without an independent validation cohort, this is interesting but far short of definitive. There are concerns about overfitting with such an analysis technique.
I used to think of eugenics as being cruel, but I've started to sympathize with first poster after having lived next door to a family with an autistic kid. The kid spent the whole day staring silently into a corner and spent all night in very audible screaming fits. Their burden became their unwilling neighbors' burden.
My friend's family was also at the mercy of their extremely well-built and violent retard son. Aside from almost drowning his brother in the backyard pool(a story I mentioned here as AC), he flashed everybody at his brother's birthday party, shot up his whole house with a BB gun, he tried to rape his own mom after getting into the liquor cabinet. They were an otherwise-perfect, well-off family.
Sanctity of life, indeed. "If the fetus is a Downs, grip it out by the crown" is my motto.
Once autism can be detected in fetuses, they will be aborted routinely.
Count on it.
The technique is essentially harmless.
Except that 30% of those scanned in the study now have autism... coincidence? ;)
I bet most of that 30% also were exposed to that super-dangerous Dihydrogen Monoxide, too. That's where I'd put my money. After all, some kids have autism without ever being scanned, and most of them were probably exposed to DHMO. Parents give that stuff to their kids like it was water, without ever realising how dangerous it is!
I'd go on, but I have to go take my kids to their swimming class.
True. But perhaps this will put some of the anti-vaccine blowhards to rest.
It needs to be detected in utero, so that the fetus can be aborted.
-Rick Santorum
(aka Rick with the silent 'P')
He will be Rick the Lionhearted if elected.
I am extremely disturbed by the lack of compassion in your sociopathic comments and the fact that others voted you up. I am not here start a flame war, but I know a child that is autistic but extremely high functioning. He(six) learned the solar system, computers, and the how the body works at intricate level. He has more knowledge then most adults.
Why don't you go and put a bullet through that kid's head right now? Since you're advocating killing him before he was born, surely him having gone through a few years of life is not worse off than not having gone through life at all?
Dropbox drops it like it's hot.
They need to do another experiment. It's not right to look at the scans AFTER you know which ones have a problem. Otherwise you start to "see things" to support the conclusion. They don't really need to re-scan, they could just show all the scans to people who don't know the results and see how well they spot the ones with a problem. Then you can talk about predictive ability of the scans.
You know one child that is autistic but extremely high-functioning. First, is he really hardcore autistic, or just some book-smart kid with poor social skills who was diagnosed with an autistic-spectrum disorder to make excuses for genetic weakness and/or poor parenting? Did mommy spend all her time socializing, working, and trying to lose the baby weight; or did she actually try to bond with the baby? Did she breast-feed the baby? Did the parents care more about their careers and just delegate caretaking duties to some cold, uncaring maid?
Now, disregard the cause. Alternately, was the family affluent enough to be able to throw a gang of high-priced specialists and tools at the child? Did they have the luxury of being able to dedicate more time to the child than other working families? So the child knows about stuff - but what are his idiosyncracies? Can s/he function and relate to their peers? Do they break out in screaming fits? Does the child show signs of hebephrenia or catatonia at times? Food for thought.
-- Ethanol-fueled
Assuming autism is mostly genetic (which I don't claim), and assuming they can come up with a prenatal test for it (not this one), would it be moral to abort if a test showed positive for autism?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
He's a sociopath alright. He doesn't get what responsibility is. You get a severely retarded child, he's your life's work, that's the way it is. To think you have a choice isn't human.
so the next step is do the study on another group of babies identified with the same pre-autism brain signature, administer NO vaccines, and see if the autism still develops.
I hate you.
Lack of empathy that your displaying is also a frequent symptom of autism.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
heya,
You do realise that's the sort of rhetoric that only brainwashed religious nutjobs spout, right?
I'm definitely not 100% comfortable with advocating open season for abortions, and I think it's a tragedy whenever it happen, but to declare moral equivalence between abortions and shooting a child is a logical fallacy that only an idiot or a self-deluded fool could commit.
Look, I don't know if you're ever actually worked with autistic kids. I don't mean movie-style Rain Man style, but an actual real flesh and blood kid, complete with temper tantrums, screaming and violent outbursts. If it was your kid, I'm sure you'd still love them, but I can see why some parents would crack.
I used to help teach special needs kids, and on the bad days, even those couple hours a week could be seriously draining.
And also, many of these have a genetic factor - so it's just like hereditary diabetes - the incident rate today is going up, simply because people with the genes are living longer, and having more kids. Diabetes - sure, you can argue it's not a huge deal if you pass it onto all your kids, but other things, like say Huttingtons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huntington's_disease), if I knew I was a carrier, I'd think twice before having my own biological children (there are alternatives to abortion, believe it or not).
Cheers,
Victor
It's not even lack of empathy, it's lack of competence. As someone with Asperger's, and an IQ of 191 - I can safely say the smartest people I have met in my life have had Asperger's, a high functioning form of Autism. If you manage to weed out Autism you will also be weeding out some of the most intelligent minds that would otherwise come. Yes social skills are a bit less, from the perspective of others at least - to those of us with Asperger's (and this is a practically universal view amongst us) socialization is simply a lower form of thought that detracts from greater things. By all means though, I look forward to the day that freaks like like the OP will have produced eugenically manufactured retards being devoured by my Morlock progeny.
Horseshit detector clicking rapidly. You may gain credibility, however, by describing to us your socioeconomic background and (approximate) age.
We're not talking about Aspergers, the highest-functioning and probably most abused disability diagnosis aside of ADD (shit, I feel ADD right now. Can I get some Adderall and have an extra 4 hours to take that test? It's the new affirmative action! )
We're discussing pure autism, and for somebody who claims to have a remarkably high IQ, you're pretty ignorant and have no personality or style. You reek of a pseudo-intellectual who can use 4-syllable words. But you're not a special snowflake, and your disability and/or parents' money will get you into that school of choice.
-- Ethanol-fueled
That lies my original statement --- the radiation from brain scans - except perhaps for MRI --- is that they introduce enough radiation into the brain in order to be able to "read" the result
The amount of radiation introduced in any brain scan is definitely not "negligible"
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
But even weak magnets have a biological effect. They must do - magnet therapy is a billion dollar industry.
If a $2 ferro-magnet can cure cancer, the massive field of an MRI must be able to cause disease. This relationship is proven by the homeopathic principle.
>> Yes social skills are a bit less, from the perspective of others at least - to those of us with Asperger's
>> (and this is a practically universal view amongst us) socialization is simply a lower form of thought that detracts from greater things.
I imagine other examples of lower thought that detracts from greater things:
Eye contact
Bathing
Navigation
Hand eye coordination
Moderation
Empathy
And as for "and this is a practically universal view amongst us"
NEWS FLASH: Group of people decide that what makes them different is actually an advantage. Comments from muscle men and goatze at 11.
Humor from a Genetically Molested Mind
Are you kidding? That's nothing. Technically-minded people on Slashdot have no sense of how much ionizing radiation they're exposed to from perfectly ordinary and unavoidable sources in the course of a day. Forget regular people understanding anything about non-ionizing radiation.
because there are study that marrying and being pregnant late can increase the chance of autism in the child.
There are also there are study that people early marry have higher chance of divorce, bankruptcies, home foreclosure, and delinquent children due to not having the proper financial foundation to begin with.
I don't know much how autism is being treated here in America, but being acquainted with the eastern culture, tiger-mom tactics and oppressive military-style training are quite popular in combating autism in East and South-East Asian countries.
New Economic Perspectives
Sure as hell I'd abort the fetus if they knew it was autistic.
Not only are they not productive members of society, they cost the taxpayers millions in entitlements.
There are already too many humans we don't need more broken ones.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_figures_sometimes_considered_autistic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_autism_spectrum_disorders
When my 2 year old was showing signs of ASD, we mentioned it to our pediatrician. She pointed out her window to the Johnson Space Center (Houston) and said "don't be too concerned, half the guys over there are autistic, too."
I've had 8 years to philosophize about it, and I still stand by my initial position that, if there were a magic cure that would make my son "normal," meaning just like the middle of the pack people I knew in High School, I wouldn't want it for him. There are already enough "normal" people in the world.
No, diffusion tensor imaging is done with magnetism. No radiation is required and there is no risk of cancer or other fatal illness.
Yes, but I bet yout kid would give anything to be 'normal'. My son is high-functioning autistic and he knows he is different and it broke my heart when he was ten and just wished to have real friends.
The label "Autism" is about as descriptive of an individual as the label "Caucasian."
My sons (2, both diagnosed with Autism) are both well aware that they are different - neither of them has yet showed any desire to be normal, or to get normal people to like them.
The future is impossible to predict, we're just trying to equip them the best we can for the 40-ish years of life they're likely to have after we're gone.
HFA or Aspergers is really very different than the severe autism you are describing - the autistic spectrum is vast. And there are all kinds of problems people have - if you draw the line at autism (including HFA, which can be mild enough to go undetected), what else will be enough? Blindness? Risk of anger issues? A high likelihood of anxiety disorder?
And if six months is fine, how old is too old? Or does age not matter?
A society can be judged by how it takes care of its weak and vulnerable.
Sheldon Cooper posts on slashdot?
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
How can you know that a child is at high risk for autism ?
Autism, asperger and high IQ are not known to be related. There are at least as people with IQs just as high that do not show any autistic characteristics as there are with them. At least, there is no scientific study that proves absolute correlation. The only reason people seem to think they are, is because Savants are so fascinating to observe.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Dear AC: The refrigerator mother theory as a cause for autism, was put to the grave decades ago. Google for twin experiments and autism if you need to. Most of all, it's just a convenient explanation for uninformed people to explain this retraction they see in the children.
Genetic weaknesses, however, is a much more likely cause.
Pray tell, how do we reconcile your alleged intelligence with your inability to write a post that's not marred by multiple grammatical errors?
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
For all your alleged intelligence, you seem to be unable to vary your style significantly enough to prevent those of us with mere average intelligence to be able to determine that you're samefagging and have replied multiple times to the OP while trying to imply that most of these replies are from different individuals. Even your grammatical errors are consistent across your posts. I see nothing "high functioning" here, just a sad troll.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
You do realise that's the sort of rhetoric that only brainwashed religious nutjobs spout, right?
I do realise that's the sort of argument that an anti-abortion advocate would make that would incite pro-abortionists to resort to calling names because they can't find a good counter-argument to it.
Dropbox drops it like it's hot.
The tendency to obcess does have it's advantages in some fields, explaining why those with aspergers or aspergers-like symptoms tend to be overrepresented at the very top. They don't make great mathematitions because they are smarter - it's because they can display such intense focus. While the other students are partying, the aspergers studies. While the others are drinking, he studies. While they are watching movies with friends, visiting families, taking vacations... he studies. When they are dating, married, raising children, he studies. Work, sleep, work, sleep, work, sleep... the type of personality that will focus tightly on one narrow field at the expense of everything else.
Are you originally from Texas and do you have a roommate named Leonard?
It is you Sheldon!
Yes I have. My wife's much younger cousin will never speak. She has the ability to imitate sounds, but she has no concept of language. We're probably going to be responsible for her when her parents can't look after her any more. It's going to be a big responsibility, but I'm not bitter. It's my lot in life - I just have to deal with it.
So what you're saying is that you're a nutjob?
NEVER go full retard.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
I'm guessing Sarcasmia IV
Aspberger's does not create consistent brilliance in all fields of endeavor, nor does it prevent RSI from interfering with casual typing. And an Aspberger's patient who is not well educated due to having their autism misdiagnosed may not have had the excellent education in English grammar available to some of us. In fact, early diagnosis of both learning problems and of genius can help children be exposed to, and supported in the material they can handle.
And there _is_ treatment for autism in children, especially compared to misdiagnosing their distraction and difficulty with emotional interactions as ADD and giving them excess Ritalin, like one child I know. The switch after his re-diagnosis was profound. He's happier, his parents can handle his issues better, and he's progressing much faster at school. It can be difficult with a child to say how much is the treatment, and how much is just a separate stage of development, but his parents and school are convinced it's the treatment and different school programs for him.
Actually, the killing of deformed infants has numerous historical precedents. So does the killing of the children of slaves, and of the children of native populations by invaders. Even the killing of children too small to work in families facing starvation is not unheard of, historically: look up some of the tragic stories of the Irish potato famine in the 1740's.
So there are certainly logical _comparisons_, if not equivalence, between reasons given to justify abortion and the killing of children. It's not an absolute moral position to hold infant's lives to be sacred: it's never been universally applied, even by Christian nations.
I'm definitely not 100% comfortable with advocating open season for abortions, and I think it's a tragedy whenever it happen, but to declare moral equivalence between abortions and shooting a child is a logical fallacy that only an idiot or a self-deluded fool could commit.
Or Peter Singer, highly regarded ethics professor at Princeton, who favors both abortion on demand and the right of parents to kill their children up to some unspecified age.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
If you do understand differential equations at a glance, please have a look at the Navier-Stokes equations. The Millennium Prize might compensate you for your not even "perceptively long" time.
Dear Plammox, the point of AC's post is that the child might not have autism, but is just socially stunted with a parent fishing for an excuse. Why would the kid be socially stunted? Hey, maybe his mother sucks at being a mother.
The Greeks were one group that explicitly was recorded practicing infanticide, especially regarding deformities, but also for reasons as simple as whoops, there's already 6 kids, can't feed another one.
Jewish tradition is not to name a child nor give gifts related to the child until after a successful birth."Successful birth" meaning the child was born alive and stayed alive at least through the first three days. Chinese do not name a child until after the first month, during a naming celebration. Infanticide appears to be an accepted practice, even recently, where especially girl children were left to die after the "One Child" policy.
Essentially, the policies against infanticide didn't really come into being until relatively recently, as in decades, and certainly is still far from universally accepted. Considering these attitudes on infanticide, talking about abortion seems irrelevant.
We're not talking about Aspergers, the highest-functioning and probably most abused disability diagnosis aside of ADD (shit, I feel ADD right now. Can I get some Adderall and have an extra 4 hours to take that test? It's the new affirmative action! )
-- Ethanol-fueled
From the actual paper "At 24 months, 28 infants met criteria for ASDs and 64 infants did not.", so yes we are talking about Asperger's, PDD-NOS and HFA because thats what ASD means, Autistic Spectrum Disorders, the whole ball of wax .
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Autism, asperger and high IQ are not known to be related. There are at least as people with IQs just as high that do not show any autistic characteristics as there are with them. At least, there is no scientific study that proves absolute correlation. The only reason people seem to think they are, is because Savants are so fascinating to observe.
The term is idiots savants for a reason. The ones with the amazing maths/drawing/memory skills are largely one dimensional human beings, and close to moronic in most aspects of their personality.
Whereas the largely well off middle class social inadequates who pay to get themselves labelled as having Aspergers are simply not the bright, fascinating snowflakes their parents hoped for.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Shhh, you'll give Jenny McCarthy ideas that don't involve taking off her clothes.
Sorry, knee-jerk reaction from my side. We're a bit sensitive on this topic.
My IQ is in the normal to upper normal range (119) and I am diagnosed Aspergers. Quite convinced that had more been known about this neurological disorder in the 70s & 80s, I would have been DX'ed at a much earlier (and more helpful) age.
So no, there isn't a correlation between high IQ and Aspergers. We (aspies) are no more gifted than neurotypicals, though you may hear more about brilliant people on the autistic spectrum due to the phenomenon being seen as interesting or cool by society in general.
Downs is not autistic . I am not completely opposed to this point of view but an insightful person would recognize the slippery slope here. In some cultures being female is a 'defect' and children are aborted. I think we shouldn't walk that easily into arbitrary determinations of worth ...
Well in all fairness there is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_magnetic_stimulation
Single or paired pulse TMS causes neurons in the neocortex under the site of stimulation to depolarize and discharge an action potential. If used in the primary motor cortex, it produces muscle activity referred to as a motor evoked potential (MEP) which can be recorded on electromyography. If used on the occipital cortex, 'phosphenes' (flashes of light) might be perceived by the subject. In most other areas of the cortex, the participant does not consciously experience any effect, but his or her behaviour may be slightly altered (e.g. slower reaction time on a cognitive task), or changes in brain activity may be detected using sensing equipment.
As someone with Asperger's who does not give a f*** what my supposed 'intelligence quotient' is (as if some scalar could explain a HUMAN BEING!), I feel the need to say here that I think 'social intelligence' is every bit as broad and deep a use of mental faculties, if not more, than solving physics problems or writing code or what have you. I have learned this in a slow and arduous way, and although I am sure of it, I would say that it can't be proven. But for my revelatory journey, "How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart" by David Foster Wallace, and Blink and Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell come to mind.
That being said, I do agree that autistic people can be extremely gifted. Autism in its milder forms seems to me to be the extreme of an adaptive specialization for interpreting the world symbolically, and some of the most famed scientists and mathematicians may have used such differences in their basic mental faculties.
Trying to rank humans seems pretty trivializing to me.
i rarely dare speak on this subject but i have had the opinion for a very long time that in a lot of cases , whatever the 'condition' it's classified as a condition because it is out of the boundaries of the normal. With it comes a stigma : the 'mental' condition. Isn't it normal that highly intelligent people (normal, there it is again), like yourself in this case are bound to perceive the world differently than the middle of the bell curve would? Cant it be deducted that this would lead to a behaviour pattern and definitely thought patterns that don't match those of the middle of the bell curve. I've read about so many different states of mind and they are all just 'autism' ? Has anyone actually defined autism to be something solid yet? Or is it like borderline (something completely different i know, i dont mean any offense whatsoever if you might think so) where people get diagnosed with the 'condition' because they don't fit into any other single category? Brainscience and pyschology are really in need of lots of funding because so far i think it's only starting to scratch the surface
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
It's probably why so few people understand Lisp, it just isn't for that average sheeple who like to be constrained and tortured by things like Java.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.