Duncan Graham-Rowe The first drug to show signs of not just halting multiple sclerosis (MS), but actually reversing the nerve damage caused by the condition, has taken a significant step towards clinical approval. The results of a phase III trial, presented on 22 October at the 5th Joint Triennial Congress of the European and Americas Committees for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis, in Amsterdam, found that 78% of patients treated with the monoclonal antibody alemtuzumab remained free from relapse after two years — and half the relapse rate of one of the standard therapies, interferon β-1a (marketed as Rebif, among other names). However, alemtuzumab did not perform quite as well as it had in earlier trials1. There was some evidence that it had reversed damage to nerves, but the result was not statistically significant, says Alasdair Coles, a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge, UK, and the UK chief investigator of the Comparison of Alemtuzumab and Rebif Efficacy in Multiple Sclerosis (CARE-MS) I trial. Coles told the meeting that magnetic resonance imaging showed that subjects taking alemtuzumab had also lost less brain volume than those taking Rebif, a proxy measure for overall tissue damage. "Alemtuzumab has eliminated the loss of brain tissue," he says. Just 8% of patients taking alemtuzumab experienced a worsening in disability according to standard measures, in comparison with 11% taking Rebif. There was no statistical difference between the two groups, but Coles puts this down to Rebif performing better than expected. "The patients recruited in this trial showed very little worsening of disability," he says. © 2011 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis
Link ID: 15947 - Posted: 10.25.2011

by Catherine de Lange THE intimate link between itch and pain has been teased apart for the first time - a development that could lead to powerful anaesthetics without any of that intolerable itching. Itch is one of the most common side effects of the anaesthetics used in procedures such as epidurals. One explanation is that itch and pain receptors are intrinsically connected. "Itch and pain are two sensations that antagonise each other," says Zhou-Feng Chen from Washington University in St Louis, Missouri. "By scratching you create a kind of mechanical pain and suppress the itch. Conversely, if you suppress pain you see more itching." To understand this mechanism better, Chen used mice to study the action of morphine, a painkiller that can cause itching. Morphine works through a receptor called MOR, and Chen suspected that different variants of the receptor might be responsible for the itch and pain responses. His team bred mice lacking one form of this receptor, called MOR1D. These mice did not scratch themselves when given morphine, though they still felt its painkilling effect (Cell, DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2011.08.043). "It's quite exciting that we are able to segregate the two," says Cheng, who believes that separate pathways for pain and itch exist in humans too. "Our study suggests there are different ways that you can inhibit itch without interfering with analgesia." © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 15946 - Posted: 10.25.2011

Peter Aldhous It sounds like a teenager's dream: playing shoot-'em-up video games, on doctor's orders. At the American Academy of Opthalmology's annual meeting in Orlando, Florida, a team led by Somen Ghosh of the Micro Surgical Eye Clinic in Kolkata, India, reported that video game therapy improved the visual acuity of 10- to 18-year-olds with amblyopia, or "lazy eye". This comes hot on the heels of similar findings from a study of adults with the condition, published in PLoS Biology by a team led by Roger Li and Dennis Levi of the University of California, Berkeley. Even more impressive results may be on the horizon, as video games are combined with another approach, known as "perceptual learning". Amblyopia occurs when the neural connections from one eye to the brain fail to develop normally. Over time, the brain reacts by ignoring the blurry input from this "weaker" eye. The condition can be treated in childhood by patching the good eye and using visual training exercises to build the faulty neural connections - but the dogma has until recently been that little can be done after about the age of 9. The idea of using video games stemmed from the discovery that expert gamers have unusually strong visual skills. Subsequent studies have shown that action games can improve contrast sensitivity in people with normal vision. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Vision; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 15945 - Posted: 10.25.2011

by Charles Harvey A study published last week suggests tired hospital doctors might make decisions better if they took a drug that combats fatigue. So much for the science – what is less certain is the ethics of doctors turning to drugs to get through long shifts. Doctors, like many others, already rely on stimulants like caffeine and nicotine to boost flagging performance, but Colin Sugden at Imperial College London and colleagues decided to test whether they could benefit from something stronger: modafinil, a drug originally designed to treat sleep disorders such as narcolepsy and sleep apnoea. The exact way modafinil affects the brain is not known, but it is believed that it acts on specific parts of the hypothalamus responsible for keeping people awake. After missing a night's sleep, 39 male doctors were put into one of two groups. Sugden's team gave one group a dose of modafinil while the other got a placebo. Both groups were then subjected to a number of cognitive tests, and asked to use a surgical training simulator to gauge their motor skills. Neither the participants nor the researchers they met knew which group received which treatment – a strategy to avoid inadvertent bias. The doctors who had taken modafinil scored higher on the cognitive tests: they had better working memory, could plan more effectively and made less impulsive decisions – all useful qualities for a doctor. No improvements were seen in their surgical ability, however. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Sleep
Link ID: 15944 - Posted: 10.25.2011

By RONI CARYN RABIN Ruth Grau was first told her son had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder when he was 3. The idea of medicating him was anathema to her, so she and her husband tried an alternative approach: exercise, occupational therapy and a diet free of junk food — no sweets, no dairy, no processed food. When the boy was 4, they started a behavior modification program with the help of a psychiatrist. But when their son started kindergarten, he still “wouldn’t sit down, would fidget, wouldn’t be on task, wouldn’t stop talking, wanted to go outside and play,” said Ms. Grau, 46, who with her husband owns Springboard Vacations, a travel company in Redondo Beach, Calif. “He had a wonderful teacher, but he was falling further and further behind.” When the child was 5, the psychiatrist started him on medication, and though Ms. Grau had not shared that information with his teacher, the teacher sensed a difference right away. “She rang us the same day and said, ‘I don’t know what you’ve done, but he was so much better in class today,’ ” Ms. Grau said. Of the decision to put her son on medication, she said, “I don’t regret it for a minute.” Although methylphenidate, a stimulant used to treat A.D.H.D. and sold under brand names like Concerta and Ritalin, is not approved for use in children under age 6, physicians may prescribe it to them. And they may be doing so more often. Last week, the American Academy of Pediatrics revised its A.D.H.D. treatment guidelines, giving doctors a green light to prescribe drugs even to preschoolers with A.D.H.D. if behavioral efforts fail. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: ADHD; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 15943 - Posted: 10.25.2011

More time spent outdoors could mean a reduced rate of nearsightedness for children and adolescents, according to an analysis by Cambridge University researchers. They found that instances of myopia — or nearsightedness — occurred less frequently in children who spent more time outdoors, suggesting increased exposure to natural light and more time spent looking at distant objects may be key factors. Researchers found that the chance of myopia decreased by two per cent in children for each additional hour they spent outdoors per week. "Increasing children's outdoor time could be a simple and cost-effective measure with important benefits for their vision and general health," said Dr. Anthony Khawaja of the University of Cambridge. "If we want to make clear recommendations, however, we'll need more precise data. Future, prospective studies will help us understand which factors — such as increased use of distance vision, reduced use of near vision, natural ultra violet light exposure or physical activity — are most important." Two of the studies examined whether the children who spent less time outdoors spent more time studying or playing computer games but there was no evidence of that connection. There were 10,400 participants included in the data taken from eight selected studies. © CBC 2011

Keyword: Vision; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 15942 - Posted: 10.25.2011

Rats exposed to an antidepressant just before and after birth showed substantial brain abnormalities and behaviors, in a study funded by the National Institutes of Health. After receiving citalopram, a serotonin-selective reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) , during this critical period, long-distance connections between the two hemispheres of the brain showed stunted growth and degeneration. The animals also became excessively fearful when faced with new situations and failed to play normally with peers – behaviors reminiscent of novelty avoidance and social impairments seen in autism. The abnormalities were more pronounced in male than female rats, just as autism affects 3-4 times more boys than girls. “Our findings underscore the importance of balanced serotonin levels – not too high or low -- for proper brain maturation,” explained Rick Lin, Ph.D. , of the University of Mississippi Medical Center, Jackson, a Eureka Award grantee of the NIH's National Institute of Mental Health. Lin and colleagues report on their discovery online during the week of Oct. 24, 2011, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Last July, a study reported an association between mothers taking antidepressants and increased autism risk in their children. It found that children of mothers who took SSRI's during the year prior to giving birth ran twice the normal risk of developing autism — with treatment during the first trimester of pregnancy showing the strongest effect. A study published last month linked the duration of a pregnant mother's exposure to SSRIs to modest lags in coordination of movement " but within the normal range " in their newborns.

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Depression
Link ID: 15941 - Posted: 10.25.2011

By Carolyn Butler, Whenever I took a tumble or scraped my knee as a child, my mother typically assessed the situation and then promptly tickled me, counseling, “Laughter is the best medicine.” This trick remains remarkably effective with my own boys and, to this day, YouTube videos of laughing babies or cats playing with printers still have the power to make me feel a bit better when I’m under the weather. But while giggling is certainly a great distraction when you’re hurt or feeling low, I can’t help but wonder whether the old adage is true: Can laughter really have a positive impact on health? There is a growing body of research indicating that a good guffaw may improve immune function, help lower blood pressure, boost mood and reduce stress and depression. And despite a dearth of more rigorous, long-term studies, the sum of these findings is compelling, says cardiologist Michael Miller, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine who has researched the topic. “We don’t have any clinical outcome evidence to show that laughter will reduce heart attacks or improve overall survival. However, we do have a number of studies that have shown that there is a potential upside, in terms of vascular benefits and also overall health,” he explains. “These findings certainly support laughter as a reasonable prescription for heart health and health in general, especially since there’s really no downside.” A new study from Oxford University supports a long-held theory that laughter triggers an increase in endorphins, the brain chemicals that can help you feel good, distract you from pain and maybe deliver other health benefits. © 1996-2011 The Washington Post

Keyword: Emotions; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 15940 - Posted: 10.25.2011

By Jesse Bering There are signs, some would say omens, glimmering in certain children’s demeanors that, probably ever since there were children, have caused parents’ brows to crinkle with worry, precipitated forced conversations with nosy mothers-in-law, strained marriages and ushered untold numbers into the deep covenant of sexual denial. We all know the stereotypes: an unusually light, delicate, effeminate air in a little boy’s step, often coupled with solitary bookishness, or a limp wrist, an interest in dolls, makeup, princesses, dresses and a staunch distaste for rough play with other boys; in little girls, there is the outwardly boyish stance, perhaps a penchant for tools, a lumbering gait, a square-jawed readiness for physical tussles with boys, an aversion to all the perfumed, delicate, laced trappings of femininity. So let’s get down to brass tacks. It’s what these behaviors signal to parents about their child’s incipient sexuality that makes them so undesirable—these behavioral patterns are feared, loathed and often spoken of directly as harbingers of adult homosexuality. However, it is only relatively recently that developmental scientists have conducted controlled studies with one clear aim in mind, which is to go beyond mere stereotypes and accurately identity the most reliable signs of later homosexuality. In looking carefully at the childhoods of now-gay adults, researchers are finding an intriguing set of early behavioral indicators that homosexuals seem to have in common. And, curiously enough, the age-old homophobic fears of parents seem to have some genuine predictive currency. © 2011 Scientific American,

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 15939 - Posted: 10.24.2011

By BENEDICT CAREY Researchers have long wondered how some people with schizophrenia can manage their symptoms well enough to build full, successful lives. But such people do not exactly line up to enroll in studies. For one thing, they are almost always secretive about their diagnosis. For another, volunteering for a study would add yet another burden to their stressful lives. But that is beginning to change, partly because of the unlikely celebrity of a fellow sufferer. In 2007, after years of weighing the possible risks, Elyn R. Saks, a professor of law at the University of Southern California, published a memoir of her struggle with schizophrenia, “The Center Cannot Hold.” It became an overnight sensation in mental health circles and a best seller, and it won Dr. Saks a $500,000 MacArthur Foundation “genius” award. For psychiatric science, the real payoff was her speaking tour. At mental health conferences here and abroad, Dr. Saks, 56, attracted not only doctors and therapists, but also high-functioning people with the same diagnosis as herself — a fellowship of fans, some of whom have volunteered to participate in studies. “People in the audience would stand up and self-disclose, or sometimes I would be on a panel with someone” who had a similar experience, Dr. Saks said. She also received scores of e-mails from people who had read the book and wanted to meet for lunch. She told many of them about the possibility of participating in a research project. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 15938 - Posted: 10.24.2011

By BENEDICT CAREY PASADENA, Calif. — The feeling of danger was so close and overwhelming that there was no time to find its source, no choice but to get out of the apartment, fast. Keris Myrick headed for her car, checked the time — just past midnight, last March — and texted her therapist. “You’re going to the Langham? The hotel?” the doctor responded. “No — you need to be in the hospital. I need you consulting with a doctor.” “What do you think I’m doing right now?” “Oh. Right,” he said. “Well, O.K., then we need to check in regularly.” “And that’s what we did,” said Ms. Myrick, 50, the chief executive of a nonprofit organization, who has a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder, a close cousin of schizophrenia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. “I needed to hide out, to be away for a while. I wanted to pamper myself — room service, great food, fluffy pillows, all that — and I was lucky to have a therapist who understood what was going on and went with it.” Researchers have conducted more than 100,000 studies on schizophrenia since its symptoms were first characterized. They have tested patients’ blood. They have analyzed their genes. They have measured perceptual skills, I.Q. and memory, and have tried perhaps thousands of drug treatments. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 15937 - Posted: 10.24.2011

By JOHN TIERNEY After he lost much of his hearing last year at age 57, the composer Richard Einhorn despaired of ever really enjoying a concert or musical again. Even using special headsets supplied by the Metropolitan Opera and Broadway theaters, he found himself frustrated by the sound quality, static and interference. Then, in June, he went to the Kennedy Center in Washington, where his “Voice of Light” oratorio had once been performed with the National Symphony Orchestra, for a performance of the musical “Wicked.” There were no special headphones. This time, the words and music were transmitted to a wireless receiver in Mr. Einhorn’s hearing aid using a technology that is just starting to make its way into public places in America: a hearing loop. “There I was at ‘Wicked’ weeping uncontrollably — and I don’t even like musicals,” he said. “For the first time since I lost most of my hearing, live music was perfectly clear, perfectly clean and incredibly rich.” His reaction is a common one. The technology, which has been widely adopted in Northern Europe, has the potential to transform the lives of tens of millions of Americans, according to national advocacy groups. As loops are installed in stores, banks, museums, subway stations and other public spaces, people who have felt excluded are suddenly back in the conversation. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 15936 - Posted: 10.24.2011

By ALINA TUGEND MY older son asked for an iPhone for his bar mitzvah. My younger son, Gabriel, will be celebrating his in about a month and wants a Tempur-Pedic mattress. This may not be as odd as it sounds. Gabriel has been interested in mattresses for a long time, and we bought him a new one a few years ago when he complained his old one was lumpy and he couldn’t sleep. But somehow, it wasn’t enough. Although to me he seems to sleep just fine, he is convinced that the perfect mattress will make his nights blissful. In this, he is not alone. Judging just by the many commercials and advertisements, there are a lot of Americans out there looking to buy a great night’s sleep. Companies offer a heady array of mattresses, sleeping pills and even soothing noise machines to usher us into the land of nod. But is this a case, like losing weight, where the quick and easy (if not necessarily cheap) option is not a solution? According to James Wyatt, director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Rush University Medical Center, people who have sleep problems actually need to be divided into two broad categories — those who have sleep disorders and those who don’t sleep enough. “There are over 70 different types of sleep disorders,” Mr. Wyatt said, including problems with breathing, like sleep apnea, insomnia, sleep terrors and nightmares and sleepwalking. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 15935 - Posted: 10.24.2011

(HealthDay News) -- Seeing someone else being caressed causes your brain to react as strongly as if you were being caressed, researchers have found. In the study, MRI scans were used to measure the brain activity of volunteers while they were stroked either slowly or quickly with a soft brush. Not surprisingly, the strongest brain reaction occurred when the participants were being stroked slowly, said the research team at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. However, the investigators were surprised at the results when the participants watched videos of another person being caressed. "The aim was to understand how the brain processes information from sensual contact, and it turned out that the brain was activated just as quickly when the volunteers got to watch someone else being caressed as when they were being caressed themselves," researcher India Morrison said in a university news release. "Even when we are only watching sensual skin contact, we can experience its emotional meaning without actually feeling the touch directly." When the participants watched a video that featured a hand caressing an inanimate object, the brain activation was not nearly as strong as when they saw another person being caressed, the researchers pointed out. The findings "indicate that our brain is wired in such a way that we can feel and process other people's sensations, which could open up new ways of studying how we create empathy," Morrison said. © 2011 U.S.News & World Report LP

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 15934 - Posted: 10.22.2011

Paul Vallely A sad-eyed, mournful-mouthed beagle stares out from a poster on a bus shelter by the front door of the Ear Institute of University College London. Below the melancholy dog blares the legend 'Boycott Vivisection'. It is clearly intended to be a reprimand to the scientists passing through the door into one of the world's leading research centres on hearing and deafness. Not that there are any experiments on dogs going on in the Institute, but then facts are not always the first currency when it comes to the emotive subject of experiments on animals. The number of research procedures on animals carried out in the UK rose by 3 per cent last year. The figure has risen steadily over the past decade to just over 3.7 million in 2010. 'Procedures' is the term used by the Home Office, which is looking at ways to meet a commitment in the Government's coalition agreement to reduce the use of animals in scientific research. And it is a significant word, for behind it lies a major shift in animal experimentation. The headline figure disguises considerable changes. Experiments on many of the kind of animals which most inspire protest among animal rights activists were down: dogs by 2 per cent, rabbits by 10 per cent and cats by 32 per cent. Even the eponymous guinea pigs were down 29 per cent. There was also a fall of 11 per cent in the number of animals used in toxicity trials, as thanks to rule changes one test can now be used to satisfy several requirements. Where there was an increase was in mice and fish – the latter up a whopping 23 per cent. What that reveals is a switch to animals whose genes can be easily modified. An extraordinary 44 per cent of those 'procedures' turn out not to be what most members of the public imagine as an 'animal experiment' but merely the act of breeding transgenic creatures, mostly done by allowing mice to do what male and female mice do naturally anyway. But the nature of the experiments has undergone a notable change. ©independent.co.uk

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 15933 - Posted: 10.22.2011

by David Robson TAKE a minute out of the hustle and bustle of your busy life and sit very still. Now, place your hands on the arms of the chair or the desk in front of you, and try to focus your attention on counting your heartbeats. Can you feel a throbbing drum roll, a slight murmur or nothing at all? How does your bladder feel – is it empty or will you need to dash for the bathroom within the next half hour? You may be surprised to learn that these bodily sensations are helping you think. We tend to view the mind as an aloof, disembodied entity but it is becoming increasingly clear that the whole body is involved in the thinking process. Without input from your body, your mind would be unable to generate a sense of self or process emotions properly. Your body even plays a role in thinking about language and mathematics. And physiological sensations, such as those from your heart and bladder, influence such diverse personal attributes as the strength of your tendency to conform, your willpower and whether you are swayed by your intuitions or governed by rational thought. In the past few years, discoveries about mind-body connections have overturned the long-held view of the body as a passive vehicle driven by the brain. Instead there is more of a partnership, with bodily experiences playing an active role in your mental life. "The brain cannot act independently of the body," says Arthur Glenberg at Arizona State University in Tempe. Tune in to the body's signals, and you can exploit this to improve your creativity, memory and self-control. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Movement Disorders
Link ID: 15932 - Posted: 10.22.2011

by Ferris Jabr What got you interested in the history of violence? I was struck by a graph I saw of homicide rates in British towns and cities going back to the 14th century. The rates had plummeted by between 30 and 100-fold. That stuck with me, because you tend to have an image of medieval times with happy peasants coexisting in close-knit communities, whereas we think of the present as filled with school shootings and mugging and terrorist attacks. Then in Lawrence Keeley's 1996 book War Before Civilization I read that modern states at their worst, such as Germany in the 20th century or France in the 19th century, had rates of death in warfare that were dwarfed by those of hunter-gatherer and hunter-horticultural societies. That too, is of profound significance in terms of our understanding of the costs and benefits of civilisation. Isn't this topic a departure for you? Your earlier books focus on how the mind and brain work... Two of my earlier books, How The Mind Works and The Blank Slate, were not about language or even cognition, narrowly, but about human nature. In them I talked about violence, for example, the abolition of barbaric customs such as torturing people to death for religious heresy, to reinforce the point that human nature comprises many components, some of which incline us toward violence, some of which pull us away from it. The fact that violence has declined and what this implied for human nature were spelled out in both books, but I decided that those paragraphs deserved to be expanded into a book of their own. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Aggression
Link ID: 15931 - Posted: 10.22.2011

by Chelsea Whyte Ever wondered how you can make your way down a dark hallway in the night without stubbing your toe? New research in mice has shown for the first time that the cerebellum – an area of the brain that is known to control motor learning – plays a crucial role in this type of navigation. Another area of the brain, the hippocampus, is known to house a kind of mental map, created by three types of cell: "place" neurons that fire when an animal is in a specific location and only that location; "head direction" cells that fire when the animal is facing a certain direction; and "grid" cells that fire at regular intervals as the animal moves, leaving a virtual "breadcrumb trail" that helps to create a sense of location relative to other places visited. But until now there has been no evidence that the cerebellum is a partner in creating the representation of the body in space. "We never knew that the cerebellum and hippocampus communicated," says Christelle Rochefort at Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, France, who worked on the study. This new finding reveals that there are networks in the brainMovie Camera that haven't yet been explored, she says. "It seems that there is some crosstalk between the two structures," says research team leader Laure Rondi-Reig, also at Pierre and Marie Curie University. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 15930 - Posted: 10.22.2011

by Michael Marshall Supposedly, if women live together their hormonal cycles start to synchronise, thanks to a pheromone. If that were true it would mean that they all have their period simultaneously. Just think about it. This "menstrual synchrony" argument was first reported in 1971 by psychologist Martha McClintock, who noticed signs of it in her own college dorm. But it may not really exist. Studies have had mixed results, often reporting no synchrony at all. Assamese macaques, however, have evolved an unmistakable kind of synchrony: they all have sex at the same time. Assamese macaques live in troupes of a few dozen, including about a dozen adults of each sex, plus offspring. Although there are strong social bonds within the troupes, they are dominated by the males, who compete vigorously to mate with the females. The mating season runs from October to January, and the males become increasingly aggressive as it goes on. The males do show some solidarity. If a female attacks a male, other males will rally to his defence. But it is the females who form close friendships with each other, while males are only loosely allied with their fellows. The females also have ways of resisting the males' control of the troupes, says Ines Fürtbauer of the University of Göttingen in Germany. For one thing, like human females, they do not show external signs of fertility, so males have no way of knowing whether the female they are mating with is actually able to conceive. The females mate throughout their cycles, further confusing the issue. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 15929 - Posted: 10.22.2011

By Kimberly Hayes Taylor We may be a step closer in understanding what causes autism, say University of Missouri researchers after finding differences between the facial characteristics of children who have autism and those who don’t. Kristina Aldridge, lead author and assistant professor of anatomy at the University of Missouri, began looking at facial characteristics of autistic children after another researcher, Judith Miles, professor emerita in the School of Medicine and the Thompson Center for Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders, mentioned, “There is just something about their faces. They are beautiful, but there is just something about them.” “Children with other disorders such as Down syndrome and fetal alcohol syndrome have very distinct facial features. Autism is much less striking,” she says. “You can’t pick them out in a crowd of kids, but you can pick them out mathematically.” When researchers took three-dimensional images of the children, they discovered autistic children have a broader upper face with wider eyes, a shorter middle region of the face including the cheeks and nose and a broader or wider mouth and philtrum -- the area below the nose and above the top lip. Aldridge analyzed 64 boys with autism and 41 typically developing boys ages 8 to 12 using the 3-D images of each boys’ head. She also mapped out 17 points on the face, such as the corner of the eye and the divot in the upper lip. When the overall geometry of the face was calculated and the two groups were compared, she noticed statistical differences in autistic children’s faces.

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 15928 - Posted: 10.22.2011