SAN DIEGO, Cali. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- The statistics are shocking. One out of 88 children born today will be diagnosed with autism by the time they are eight years old. A married couple, who are two of the country’s leading autism researchers, tells us what they’re doing right now to help cut that number.
Luca was just 18 months old when his mom noticed something was just not right.
He was diagnosed with autism. The husband and wife team of Dr. Eric Courchesne and Dr. Karen Pierce are working hard to help kids like Luca.
“What we discovered recently is that the child with Autism has 67 percent more brain cells,” Eric Courchesne, PhD, Professor of Neurosciences at UC San Diego, told Ivanhoe.
Those cells are in the pre-frontal cortex, the part of the brain important for social, emotional, and language functions. The doctor believes something happens in the second trimester when brain cells are being formed. Another issue, the CDC says the average age of diagnosis is four years old.
“We know that that’s really too late,” Karen Pierce, PhD, Associate Professor of Neurosciences at UC San Diego, told Ivanhoe.
That’s why Dr. Pierce is attacking the problem two ways.
“I developed this eye tracking test,” Dr. Pierce said.
Babies watch a one minute movie. On one side of the screen, kids are dancing, on the other side, moving geometric shapes.
“They will fixate on that and they won’t look at the social images and when a baby does that, um, so far, that’s been 99 percent accurate that that child is actually going to be on the spectrum,” Dr. Pierce explained.
She’s also using imaging to show abnormalities in children’s brains. The earlier the diagnosis, the earlier the treatment, and a better chance kids like Luca have a normal life.
Dr. Pierce was in the running in 2012 for Time magazine’s most influential people for her work in the field of diagnosing autism. She says the goal of the team’s research is to discover an autism test that could give a diagnosis at birth.
Click here for Ivanhoe's full-length interview with Dr. Karen Pierce
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