Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
I'm guessing Sarcasmia IV
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.