Neurology Diagnostics

Archive for the ‘Autism’ Category

A small boy with autism and the exact line of toys, which he filed together. The symptoms and the individual forms of autism are varied, they misjudged by mild behavioral problems at the border of the low profile (such as “timidity”) to severe mental retardation range.

Allen autistic disabilities are impairments in social behavior in common: difficulty in speaking with others (for example due to monotonous prosody), been said to be interpreted correctly, use facial expressions and body language and understand.

Core symptoms associated with autistic disabilities is primarily the difficulty of communicating with other people (first and second diagnostic criterion). Alternatively, stereotyped or ritualization practices (third diagnostic criterion) explores all the core symptoms of autistic disabilities. Autistic people show fundamental differences from non-autistic people in the processing of sensory impressions and the way the discernment and intelligence. The differences in perception is explored as a core symptoms of autism.

Autism (from Gr αὐτός “itself) is classified by the World Health Organization as a pervasive developmental disorder, is by doctors, researchers, families and autistic self-described as a congenital, incurable perception and information processing disorder of the brain that are already in early childhood noticeable. Other researchers  and autistic people describe autism as a different mode of information congenital, which is indicated by weakness in social interaction and communication, and by stereotyped behavior patterns and strengths in perception, attention, memory and intelligence.

In the current diagnostic criteria, it is a distinction between infantile autism (Kanner syndrome) and Asperger’s syndrome, which often becomes apparent only after the third year of life. Many doctors believe, however, has become an autism spectrum (autism spectrum disorder), the different severity knows.

When someone waves to them, our brain is capable of processing the gesture as something friendly and allows us to imitate. This is possible thanks to the mirror neuron system, a set of nerve cells, to date, it was thought that could go wrong in autistic spectrum disorders. However, a study published in ‘Neuron’ indicates that their normal activity in these patients.

The theory made sense. One of the most striking features of people with autism is their inability to imitation, empathy and understanding of the intent of the gestures of others. If mirror neurons are crucial for social interaction, it was logical to think that something is wrong with this brain system. In fact, some studies appeared to confirm the hypothesis.

But these works were overlooked something important. “No evaluated the selectivity of cortical activity in areas of particular movements mirror system,” says principal investigator, Ilan Dinstein, Department of Psychiatry at the University of New York (USA). This selectivity of movement is not simply the distinction that our brain makes every gesture, by storing a single neuronal response. Read the rest of this entry »