Autism Test Could Use Images of Brain
07 December 2010
Ashton Faller doing homework with his mother last year. Ashton has received treatment for autism since he was two-years-old
This is the VOA Special English Health Report.
Doctors currently identify autism disorders by observing behavior. Autism affects social and communication skills. It usually first appears in young children.
Now, researchers in the United States think they have found a biological test for autism. A team from Harvard University in Massachusetts and the University of Utah developed it.
The test uses an MRI or magnetic resonance imaging machine to look for abnormalities in the brain. Other studies have not shown major structural differences between the brains of autistic people and those without autism.
But the latest study did not look at the large structures of the brain. Instead, Harvard's Nicholas Lange says the team looked at the circuitry -- the chemical and electrical pathways that link the different parts of the brain.
NICOLAS LANGE: "The brain may be OK, the parts that do the work may be OK. But the wiring, the cables between the points in the brain, one to another, may be disrupted in some way."
The scientists did MRI scans on sixty males between the ages of eight and twenty-six. Thirty of them had been identified as having mild autism, a form also known as high-functioning autism.
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