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Getting answers from babies about autism

Mayada Elsabbagh1, Mark H Johnson

  • 1Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck, University of London, Henry Wellcome Building, London, WC1E 7HX, UK. m.elsabbagh@bbk.ac.uk

Trends in Cognitive Sciences
|January 16, 2010
PubMed

Insights

Autism

Area of Science:

  • Neurodevelopmental disorders
  • Pediatric neurology
  • Genetics and autism

Background:

  • Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is rarely diagnosed before age two.
  • Early symptoms and causes of autism remain largely unknown.
  • Focus is shifting to infants with a genetic predisposition for autism.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To identify the earliest signs of autism.
  • To investigate early brain function differences in at-risk infants.
  • To understand gene-environment interactions in autism development.

Main Methods:

  • Studying infants at genetic risk for autism.
  • Utilizing laboratory measures of brain function.
  • Comparing at-risk infants with low-risk control groups.

Main Results:

  • Overt behavioral symptoms of autism typically appear around the end of the first year of life.
  • Brain function differences are detectable in at-risk infants within their first year.
  • Some infants with early brain function differences do not develop autism.

Conclusions:

  • Infants at genetic risk provide a valuable model for studying early autism development.
  • Early brain function markers may not always predict an autism diagnosis.
  • Gene-environment interactions likely contribute to diverse developmental trajectories in autism.

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