Thursday, May 5, 2011

Autism visible as different brain growth at 2 years old

Interesting article - http://news.discovery.com/human/autism-puts-brain-growth-in-overdrive-110505.html#mkcpgn=rssnws1

Not really surprising from a parenting perspective. Two years of age is the time when the child discovers a sense of self, and starts to challenge and explore its options in the social network surrounding them ("the terrible two").
Autistic kids have a different sense of self, and low ability to interact socially, so while the "normal" kids get busy figuring out how the people around them respond to a "no" presented in varying levels of intensity, autistic brains just punch out of this social learning process.

Consequently, their brain is growing faster in the cognitive area during this time.

Wondering if MRI can also detect where non-autistic kids grow during this time... where does social learning take place? Does that show up on these scans?