Autism Spectrum
Disorder is still a disorder being heavily researched and to this day, we still
do not know much about the cause of the disorder or how it is developed.
However, in terms of diagnosis, there are several markers: one of them being impaired
facial processing. In an article written by Pam Belluck for The New York Times,
Pam describes a study linking genes to facial processing and how this may lead
to children developing autism.
The study conducted by Dr. Warren Jones,
an assistant pediatrics professor at Emory School of Medicine, and colleagues is
significant as it points towards a neurological differences from birth that
affect social development in people who are diagnosed with autism. Furthermore,
there may also be a genetic link in regards to the development of autism. In
fact, genes may actually be responsible for certain social behaviors exhibited
in autism such as eye contact or perceiving facial expressions. Dr. Nelson who
is a professor of neuroscience at Harvard Medical School, as well as an expert on
autism, believes this study may create a breakthrough in terms of how genes can
impact the development of autism.
338 toddlers’ eye movements were
tracked as they were watching videos of other children and mothers in a
daycare. These toddlers were all between the ages of 18 months to 24 months
old. Of these toddlers, 88 had autism. There were also 42 pairs of nonidentical
twins, 41 pairs identical twins, and 84 unrelated children that were all
developing normally. Studying identical twins helped to determine a genetic
basis for facial processing. Identical twins matched about 91% of the time with
how they looked at people’s eyes on screen. This was also the case when looking
at mouths, but only with the identical twins demonstrating that the way
children are processing faces is influenced by genetic factors.
The children with autism tended to
look more at objects rather than on faces. On average, they looked at objects
twice as much as typical children and about half as much at faces. Dr. Jones
and colleagues found that babies around the age of two months to six months were
very likely to be diagnosed with autism by the age of three if they showed that
they looked at people’s eyes less than normal. Hence, eye-tracking can serve as
an early marker of autism.
Dr. Maggie Guy and colleagues also
conducted research to determine neural correlates in facial processing of
infants at high-risk for autism, as well as infants who had fragile X syndrome
and low-risk infants. However, a difference in this study compared to the one
conducted by Dr. Jones is that all the infants showed more event-related
potentials to faces rather than toys. In the study conducted by Dr. Jones and
colleagues, these results were slightly different with the children diagnosed
with autism where they tended to focus on objects rather than faces. However,
the group of children at high-risk for autism exhibited the lowest N290
amplitude to faces out of the three groups studied.
Both studies demonstrate a neural
basis for autism spectrum disorder and how certain social behaviors,
specifically dealing with facial processing, can serve as markers for
diagnosis.
Belluck, P.
(2017, July 12). Study of How We Look at Faces May Offer Insight Into Autism.
Retrieved October 18, 2017, from
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/12/health/autism-faces-genes-brain-development.html
Guy, M.W., et
al., Neural correlates of face processing in etiologically-distinct
12-month-old infants at high-risk of autism spectrum disorder. Dev. Cogn.
Neurosci. (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2017.03.002
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