New Developments in Detecting Autism..,Perhaps

Autism is a puzzling condition. We're not quite sure of the cause and it is very hard to predict who is at risk. This is why there is a great deal of research design to look at these questions. A new report out of Harvard Medical School looked at the ability of an MRI scan to find differences in brain structure patterns between people with autism and those without. They stand 30 patients all of whom had autism and found this six distinct what they call signatures of autism. The scientists believe they were able to identify people with autism with 94% accuracy. Although this is promising there are several problems with the study. First there were only 30 patients in the scientists knew all of them had autism before the scans were done. That's the downside. The upside is that more work continues to be done and there is no doubt researchers will be following this lead.