Thanks to a new technique developed by a team from the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital, McGill University and the Université de Montréal, it is now possible to obtain a clearer picture of an autistic person’s brain.
According to Human Brain Mapping, researchers combined two imaging techniques to achieve these results. For the first time, it is possible to better understand the brains of people with autism. There are structural differences in some areas which cause the developmental disorder.
Dr. Krista Hyde is a research fellow with Dr. Alan Evans at the Neuro. She is also lead investigator of the study. She says, "The findings are significant from a functional perspective because the anatomical differences are found in brain regions known to play a functional role in the core features of autism such as social communication and repetitive behaviours. This is the first step to looking for clues or markers that would help us correlate structural differences with functional and behavioural characteristics."
This new method can reliably and directly measure the differences in gray matter in brain regions. Researchers have seen an increase in gray matter in the visual cortex, but they learned that the phenomenon also occurs in the auditory cortex.
She then adds, "The converging result… allows us to make more confident interpretations about the structural brain differences found in autism."
Autism affects approximately one in 166 people in Canada and this number is on the rise. An autistic person has difficulty communicating and in social interactions.