Problems with eye movements in people with autism are part of their motor difficulties and may contribute to the social deficits characteristic of the disorder, according to unpublished research presented last week at the Salk Institute, Fondation IPSEN and Nature Symposium on Biological Complexity in La Jolla, California.
In a virtual reality game intended to improve social skills in teenagers with autism, the players must ask computer avatars the right questions while seeming engaged in the conversation. The game was described 27 September in IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering.
Because infants born into families with autism are more likely to develop the condition, studying them might lead to ways to diagnose people in the general population earlier.
Family members of individuals with autism process faces and scenes differently than do controls, according to two new studies, one of them published in October. This suggests that visual processing may be an autism endophenotype — a measurable symptom that represents part of the genetic risk of a disorder.
People with autism don’t look at others’ eyes or mimic their actions in everyday life, but they can do these things when asked to, according a review published 7 September in Brain and Development.
Children with autism have trouble imitating others’ actions, a trait that may be linked to their poor motor skills, according to a study published 10 September in PLoS One.
The amygdala, an almond-shaped nub of brain tissue that processes emotions, has specialized neurons that respond to facial expressions and eye contact, according to unpublished work presented Monday at the 2012 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in New Orleans.
Emerging technologies and software may help assess the subtle behaviors, such as gaze or social gestures, that go awry in children with autism, researchers said at the Engineering and Autism conference earlier this month.
Sophisticated eye-tracking tools and other technologies are making it easier to record and analyze social interactions, and may help researchers study social deficits in children with autism. Researchers debuted some of these tools 28 September at the Engineering and Autism conference in Los Angeles.
Two new studies of the brain’s electrical activity bring the autism field one step closer to a physiological measure that can detect the disorder and predict who will go on to develop it.