Autism testing while asleep? Maybe....

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Medical News: Brain Out of Sync in Tots With Autism - in Pediatrics, Autism from MedPage Today

This new and interesting study finds that toddlers with autism displayed weaker interhemispheric synchronization as shown by functional magnetic resonance imaging testing conducted during sleep compared with those with language delay or typical development. The investigators suggested that this might provide an early diagnostic tool which could then prompt earlier intervention. While none of these tools will be terribly useful as stand alone instruments, they will help us differentiate on disorder from another, saving time, getting appropriate treatment to the correct children and in the long run, saving money.

The study demonstrates that toddlers with autism have poorer synchronization between the hemispheres of the brain during sleep, potentially providing a biomarker that can aid in early diagnosis of the disorder, researchers found. Among children ages 1 to 3½, those with autism had significantly worse synchronization in two areas of the brain associated with language production and comprehension than other kids, according to Ilan Dinstein, PhD, of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, and colleagues. How does this related to autism? Well the inferior frontal gyrus is positively associated with verbal ability and negatively associated with the severity of autism-related communication problems.

"These results suggest that poor neural synchronization is a notable neurophysiological characteristic that is evident at the earliest stages of autism development and is related to the severity of behavioral symptoms....The ability to measure this characteristic during sleep, when task compliance and subject cooperation are not required, suggests its utility as a possible diagnostic measure to aid growing efforts of identifying autism during infancy," they concluded, adding that early identification would lead to earlier intervention. Yes, this is a test we might be able to use with children who are uncooperative, sometimes seemingly untestable...while they sleep.

The researchers say that "the fact that poor synchronization was found in the language system of toddlers with autism, and not in toddlers with language delay (both groups exhibited similarly low expressive language scores), suggests that reduced synchronization may reflect the existence of a specific pathophysiological mechanism that is unique to autism."

This is where our limited autism funding should be going, rather than more testing of alternative medicines that have no logical hope of cure, or searching for causes that have been ruled out multiple times. We need to focus on where the science drives us, not politics.