WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Researchers at the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Rochester have discovered that brain neurons are structured differently in children with autism compared to those without the condition.
'People with a diagnosis of autism often have other things they have to deal with, such as anxiety, depression, and ADHD,' noted first author Dr. Zachary Christensen, of the University of Rochester's School of Medicine and Dentistry.
'But these findings mean we now have a new set of measurements that have shown unique promise in characterizing individuals with autism.'
Published in the journal Autism Research, the study used brain imaging data of more than 11,000 children aged 9 to 11 from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study database to compare neuron structures.
The researchers compared imaging of nearly 150 children with autism, to that of about 9,000 children without any neurodevelopmental diagnoses, and over 1,400 children diagnosed with common psychiatric disorders, such as anxiety or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder but not autism.
The neuroscientists found that, the brains of children with autism showed lower neuron density in the cerebral cortex, which is responsible for memory, learning, reasoning and problem solving.
Meanwhile, the brains of children with autism showed increased neuron density in other areas of the brain, such as the amygdala, which is linked to processing emotions and emotional reactions.
'If characterizing unique deviations in neuron structure in those with autism can be done reliably and with relative ease, that opens a lot of opportunities to characterize how autism develops, and these measures may be used to identify individuals with autism that could benefit from more specific therapeutic interventions,' said Christensen.
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