A discovery by a team of scientists has uncovered an area of the brain that is linked to autism and this could eventually lead to new types of therapies for the condition.
The area of the brain is the gyrus of the anterior cingulate cortex. This specific part of the brain signals when something surprising happens to other people.
While individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are less accurate at identifying other people’s expectations, but they also lack the typical response in this brain region when surprising things happen to other people.
Discovering that the choice of this part of the brain was very targeted could therefore lead to new research that develops new therapies and pharmaceutical treatments as previous studies only suggested that the gyrus of the anterior cingulate cortex has a part to play in ASD.
We look forward to the potential benefits that could result from this new discovery, which could also have a potentially profound impact in reshaping and evolving the techniques and practise applied behaviour analysis (ABA) therapy in helping individuals with ASD in the future.
In the meantime, ABA therapy remains the most effective and only scientifically proven treatment for individuals with ASD, and is also the only therapy for autism endorsed by the US Surgeon General.
In particular, for children before the age of 2, ABA therapy holds the potential for vast benefits as there is the possibility of altering the brain through early intensive intervention programs so as to build new circuits and connections in the brain to overcome the neurological deficits that these children are likely to have.
To find out more about ABA therapy, please refer here:
https://autismrecovery.hk/aba-vb-therapy/what-is-aba-vb-therapy/
Link to article: http://www.irishtimes.com/news/science/dublin-based-scientists-find-an-area-of-the-brain-linked-to-autism-1.2925359