Brain scans can help people with autism

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I believe in the future there will will brain scanners that will give right dx for autism because
Dx is difficult with the current methods. This also will help better treatments for the disorders.

There already are brainscanners that will reveil autism when working together with a computer program to discover they minimal differences from an NT brain.

They cannot even pin point a single cause for depression and you think they are going to narrow autsim down to some specific thing that can be physically seen in a brain scan. At best they could find some similarities in people with autism's brains, but they would also find variations since everyone brain is different. Its even conceivable that different combinations of factors cause can cause the same disorder, so it might be there are different causes for autism.

And better treatments like what? Brain surgery to cut out whatever it is in the brain that supposedly makes people autistic?

Only problem with that is no two neurotypical brains are identical, no two autistic brains are identical...so how would they determine what specifically differs from an autistic brain and a neurotypical brain.

From what I remember of the articles I've read they have been able to pinpoint autistic brains with a 80% certainty. The technology is still in it's infancy, so I have no doubt they will up it to 99.9% soon. Sorry, I can't explain to you how the magic works, only that it does.

I know it not easy to dx brain disorders. But worth it a try maybe 20-10 years because neuroscience is not advance enough today.

I suppose it's worth looking into. However I would like to see how many autistic brains they did pin-point in reference to what...I mean the autistic brains would be the variable and so I imagine neurotypical brains would be the control. Also I would be interested to know if they also looked at brains of people with other mental disorders to make sure that wasn't playing a role in the difference in brains.

I know how to use the internet though so I am sure I can find that information. Honestly though I don't know if I would trust something backed by 'magic' I mean if there is no explanation for how it works that makes me wonder about the validity or maybe you just meant you can't explain it.

Also one concern with this I have would be what happens to people with symptoms of disorders like autism if their brain does not match up to some specific template of what an autistic brain looks like they come up with? They just get diagnosed as 'you're fine.' and that's it?...I mean I just hope such tests would not replace things like being observed by mental health professionals, personal accounts of symptoms or from family members or friends who have seen the symptoms. I certainly have no issue with getting brain scans, but I don't think they should base a diagnoses or lack of one purely on a brain scan especially not yet.

Check out these sites and others. There are changes to the brain stem and amygdala in autistic people and a different rate of brain growth in autistic children. Very interesting.

http://autism.about.com/b/2009/05/06/en ... autism.htm

http://inresco.org/as/autbrain.html

pattymemorial.org/fromJaredPattyhome/Autism/sciamtwo.html







Brain enlargement in autism due to brain changes occurring …

news.unchealthcare.org/news/2011/may/overgrowth

I think this was the article I read. Change 80% to 90%, and I was accurate.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/ ... brain-scan

I was thinking this too. How would this work for those of us with other neurological stuff?

From what I understood, they use the same imaging technique as with face recognition software, the program finds similarities in 20 autistic brains, and use the summary of those scans as a "face" to look for in other scans.

No two brains are identical, I guess you could say that, but the complexity of traits and personality a human sees does not cloud up a brainscan image to the same degree, so the difference between brainscans would not be as severe as when we typically says "if you have meet one autistic person, you've met one autistic person". If a computer "brain recognition"-program has seen 500 autistic brains, it learns to see the similarities. A similar program named WATSON made by IBM did well against Jeopardy champions by using some of the same "learning techniques".