Kids with autism often think and act differently than their peers. Now researchers say they may know why.
Using brain scans, researchers from University of California, Los Angeles say they found that important connections between areas of the brain that control language and social skills grow more slowly in children with autism. The delayed development extends into adolescence, according to the study published online this month in the journal Human Brain Mapping.
“Because the brain of a child with autism develops more slowly during this critical period of life, these children may have an especially difficult time struggling to establish personal identity, develop social interactions and refine emotional skills,” said Xue Hua, a postdoctoral researcher at UCLA and first author of the study. “This new knowledge may help to explain some of the symptoms of autism and could improve future treatment options.”
In order to assess brain development, Hua and her colleagues used a special type of MRI that allowed them to chart structural changes in brain development. They conducted two brain scans over a three-year period of 13 boys with autism and seven without.
Ultimately, the researchers found that boys with autism were developing more slowly and their brains were not discarding unused cells.
“Together, this creates unusual brain circuits, with cells that are overly connected to their close neighbors and under-connected to important cells further away, making it difficult for the brain to process information in a normal way,” Hua said.
By offering a better understanding of how the brain functions in people who have autism, researchers say the findings could help assess the efficacy of treatments and the best techniques for educating those with the developmental disability.
Very interesting…maybe I am off base but as a person on the spectrum, I cannot help but wonder why so much emphasis is always placed on the social skills aspect. (Probably because most of these studies are set up by neurotypicals…) I believe it’s the sensory processing issues that underlie our discomfort with the world in general and make it much harder to create, sustain and enjoy relationships with others. I would like to see more attention paid to the amygdala and how dysfunction in this part of the brain affects autistics’ ability to tolerate incoming stimuli of all kinds.
Makes sense to me, due to that I have lived it with my nephew. He is now 11 years old, we play a game, in which a would explain something to him a way that would be expected for a child of 11 yrs of age to understand, and most of the time he won’t understand, then I’ll explain it to him as if he was 7 or 8 yrs old and he would understand. But I notice that time can pass by, and he would tell me, remember when you explained this to me, now I understand it this way. His autism is not to severe, but I realize his struggle to understand.