Toddler Brain Difference Linked to Autism

Story Highlights

• Study: The amygdala in toddlers with autism is 13 percent larger than unaffected kids
  
• Size of brain area linked to ability to process faces as friend or foe
  
• Autism is believed to affect as many as 1 in 150 children
  
• University of North Carolina researchers hope findings result in earlier intervention
  

(CNN) -- The size of a specific part of the brain may help experts pinpoint when autism could first develop, University of North Carolina researchers report.

Using MRI brain scans, researchers found that the area of the brain called the amygdala was, on average, 13 percent larger in young children with autism, compared with control group of children without autism. In the study, published in the latest Archives of General Psychiatry, researchers scanned 50 toddlers with autism and 33 children without autism at age 2 and again at age 4. The study adjusted for age, sex and IQ.

"We believe that children with autism have normal-sized brains at birth but at some point, in the latter part of the first year of life, it [the amygdala] begins to grow in kids with autism. And this study gives us insight inside the underlying brain mechanism so we can design more rational interventions," said lead study author Dr. Joseph Piven. cont...




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