According to a study funded by the National Institutes of Health, infants who were diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) at 24 months of age had differences in areas of visual processing of the brain that were evident at 6 months of age. age. The researchers theorized that disrupting visual processing could interfere with the way babies see the world around them, changing the way they interact and learn from caregivers and their environment. These early changes could affect brain development and play a role in the symptoms of ASD.
The study was conducted by Jessica Girault, Ph.D., of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, and colleagues. He appears in the American Journal of Psychiatry.
The study included 384 sibling pairs, the largest of whom had been diagnosed with ASD. Previous research by the team found that younger siblings were more likely to develop ASD if their older siblings had higher levels of ASD traits. The researchers performed MRI scans on the brains of younger siblings at 6, 12, and 24 months of age.
Among the 89 younger siblings who developed ASD, those older siblings with severe ASD had a larger volume and area of the brain, which controls speech, thinking, emotions, reading, and writing. and learning; larger surface area in the part of the visual cortex important for object recognition; and less mature connections to the spleen, which connects the left and right visual cortices of the brain and plays a role in visual attention.
NIH funding was provided by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the National Institute of Neurological and Stroke Disorders.
Source:
National Institutes of Health
Magazine reference:
Girault, JB, et al. (2022) Childhood visual brain development and inherited genetic responsibility in autism. The American Journal of Psychiatry. doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.21101002.