Brain Scans Can Help Detect Autism Early

Oct 18, 2013 07:00 AM EDT

Brain scans revealing neural connectivity can help detect autism at an early stage, claims a recent study. Autism patients have weaker neural connectivity than the rest.

University of Alabama at Birmingham Department of Psychology and Auburn University researchers undertook the study. The research is based on a test conducted on 30 volunteers. Out of the 30 people 15 were affected by Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and the rest were controls aged between 16 and 34.

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The volunteers were made to watch a comic strip series while their brain activity was recorded on the functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner. At the end of the show, the participants were asked to choose one among the three logical endings and the autism patients struggled to arrive at a final conclusion, especially where subtle social cues were involved. The scanner also reflected similar results; information was not properly conveyed from one part of the brain to the other resulting in the patients reacting slowly or improperly. Poor neural connectivity is one of the symptoms of autism as indicated on the brain scan test.

"This research suggests brain connectivity as a neural signature of autism and may eventually support clinical testing for autism," said Rajesh Kana, the senior lead of the research team, reports CNet. "We found the information transfer between brain areas, causal influence of one brain area on another, to be weaker in autism. There's a very clear difference."

 The study was conducted on a relatively smaller group of people but can be really helpful in detecting autism at an early stage.  

Autism is difficult to diagnose and early intervention is the key. Parents usually have a longer road before getting a firm diagnosis for their child now," Kana said. "You lose a lot of intervention time, which is so critical. Brain imaging may not be able to replace the current diagnostic measures, but if it can supplement them at an earlier age, that's going to be really helpful."

The study was published on journal Frontiers on Human Neuroscience

Earlier studies on autism have been done involving brain scans where a link between the severity of the disorder and the presence of excessive cerebrospinal fluid in the extra-axial space above and surrounding the brains of infants was found. The study pointed out the brains of the infants suffering from ASD was 7 percent larger in size at 12 months compared to normal children, reports medicaldaily.  The latest CDC report shows that one in every 88 children suffers from autism in the U.S.