Category: Autism
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Glass apps help autistic kids communicate
Brain Power‘s Google Glass apps and hardware help autistic kids develop social and communication skills, and provide feedback to parents. The device’s accelerometer tracks children’s head gestures when they look or don’t look at parents, as well as repetitive movements. “Social engagement module monitors” assess the child’s engagement, specifically if they are looking at a parent’s…
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EEG could lead to earlier autism diagnosis
Albert Einstein College of Medicine professor Sophie Molholm has published a paper describing the way that autistic children process sensory information, as determined by EEG. She believes that this could lead to earlier diagnosis (before symptoms of social and developmental delays emerge), hence earlier treatment, which might reduce the condition’s symptoms. EEG readings were taken from 40…
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Brain blueprint links autism to early brain development
As part of their BrainSpan project, the Allen Institute for Brain Science has published a paper in Nature detailing a high-resolution blueprint for how to build a human brain, with a map of where different genes are turned on and off during mid-pregnancy at unprecedented anatomical resolution. The data provides insight into diseases like autism that are…
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Micromovement study for diagnosing autism severity
http://news.medicine.iu.edu/releases/2013/12/jose-neuroscience.shtml Indiana University professor Jorge V. José and Rutgers professor Elizabeth Torres are building on findings involving the random nature of movements of people with autism. Earlier research looked at the speed maximum and randomness of movement during a computer exercise that involved tracking the motions of youths with autism when touching an image on…
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Eye tracking data helps diagnose autism, ADHD, Parkinson’s
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=eye-tracking-software-may-reveal-autism-and-other-brain-disorders USC’s Laurent Itti and researchers from Queen’s University in Ontario have created a data heavy, low cost method of identifying brain disorders through eye tracking. Subjects watch a video for 15 minutes while their eye movements are recorded. An enormous amount of data is generated as the average person makes three to five saccadic…
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Research links autism to environmental factors
https://imfar.confex.com/imfar/2013/webprogram/Paper14885.html New studies lend strength to the notion that environmental influences before birth play a role in the risk for the autism. At the recent International Society for Autism Research annual conference, Marc Weisskopf of the Harvard School of Public Health presented results from a large national study, known as the Nurses’ Health Study II.…