Predicting autism: Study links infant brain connections to diagnoses at age two
Published in Science Translational Medicine , this paper describes a second type of brain biomarker that researchers and potentially clinicians could use as part of a diagnostic toolkit to help identify children as early as possible, before autism symptoms even appear. "The Nature paper focused on measuring anatomy at two time points (six and 12 months), but this new paper focused on how brain regions are synchronized with each other at one time point (six months) to predict at an even younger age which babies would develop autism as toddlers." said senior author Joseph Piven, MD, the Thomas E. Castelloe Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at the UNC School of Medicine, and director of the Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities. "The more we understand about the brain before symptoms appear, the better prepared we will be to help children and their families." Co-senior author John R. Pruett Jr., MD, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry at Was...