CAMH study reveals new insights into brain networks in people with autism

CAMH study reveals new insights into brain networks in people with autism

Autism is a somewhat complex disorder of the neurological system that lasts lifelong and affects the person's ability to interact and communicate. Autism affects more than one in a hundred people. Autism is classified as a chronic illness. There are different types of autism, which are possible due to different environmental and genetic combinations.

Studying and understanding brain networks has immense potential to shed light on how autism develops over time. This will also help find the right treatment for autism.

Dr. Dickie, the lead author of this study and a CAMH scientist, has proposed differential autism in children with different impairments. He put forward an explanation that despite a common or similar diagnosis, there are differences in the functioning of brain networks. There is growing awareness among researchers that different subtypes of autism may exist due to differences in brain biology, according to autism expert and clinician-scientist Dr. Ameis from the Institute for Mental Health and Research at CAMH cited. CAMH developed a new approach, published in Biological Psychiatry, that offers a better and more efficient way to more closely examine the fate of individuals' brain networks.

Different regions of the brain are connected by brain networks that send signals along pathways for specific functions such as attention or vision. These networks are located in roughly the same regions of everyone's brain. The brains of two people who suffer from autism are different when compared. The difference is less pronounced when comparing the brains of two people who do not have autism. The greatest variation in network location was found in the brain's attention networks. In other words, people who suffer from autism are more likely to have a more pronounced spatial arrangement of brain networks than people who do not suffer from autism.

Dr. Dickie's results

Dr. Dickie explained that they have developed new ways to visualize the organization of the brain. The team used a new approach called PINT. Using this approach, the location of 6 brain networks of an individual was mapped to accurately ensure the location of these networks rather than relying on the approximate location. PINT's new approach has also been applied to obtain a functional MRI scan to examine an individual's brain in a “resting state,” meaning not doing anything in the MRI scanner. Scientists had previously suspected that there was a disconnect or very weak, long-range connections between certain brain regions of people with autism. After applying personalized brain mapping, evidence of disruption decreased.

Rather, the study suggested that brain networks associated with attention may not only be disconnected but completely suppressed among people with autism. High-profile clinical trials for individuals with autism spectrum disorder recently conducted showed no therapeutic effect, as reported by Dr. ant stated. This new study was recently made publicly available and can now be applied to brain function studies in autism to account for the shift in the brain network.

Inspired by Shalini Madhav