Diagnosing AS with MRI

[whale_bone]

woahhh interesting news! A study published today found that they could accurately predict 90% of male adults with HFA or AS using only MRI. Very cool.

 

[PanPaniscus]

I saw this on the news earlier today. If this method of detection becomes common place then I would want to have this brain scan, just so I can double check the diagnosis was correct, I think it was, but I would want to be certain.

 

[whale_bone]

Yeah me too
Bah. but of course they don't bother studying females with AS.
I think I might start volunteering in the Autism research lab at my school. Maybe I can convince them to do a more balanced follow-up study.

 

[juffur]

This is awesome. I hope it becomes more mainstream. I would love to have this scan done.

 

[Droopy]

My dad was telling me about this just a few minutes ago. I wouldn't mind giving it a try.

 

[petrossa]

This falls in the 'give money for research' department. It is test with 20 only persons, using fMRI which is not that reliable. I'd shelve it under: Way out there .

I'v posted this on it: http://www.psychforums.com/asperger-syndrome/topic52535-10.html#p381887

 

[Kempy]

Woh woh... Okay, this is all very exciting but I think were all overlooking one very important detail. Autism is a SPECTRUM. If you look at these brain scans you can clearly see that the diagnosis is a simple, categoric yes/no. If this brain scan was used for every diagnosis then either:
A. A lengthy interview would STILL need to be completed. or
B. We would loose not only the Aspergers diagnosis, but also every other category on the spectrum. Everyone would be diagnosed as either having autism, or not having autism.

Also, I tend to believe that two people can have the same severity of autism, but their abilities to cope with the condition can be completely different. Because of this, I am certain that a brain scan alone will give absolutely no indication of the sort of help that individual needs.


On the other hand, I think seeing these differences between scans of autistic and non autistic people may aid research. My only problem is using it to replace the interviews that most of us had. The scan may only take 15 minutes, but if you've had autism all your life, I'm sure you wouldn't mind waiting to find out.

 

[whale_bone]

It doesn't apply to all of the spectrum. They only studied adult males with HFA or AS. The patterns that they were looking for are specific to this group (NOT children, or LFA, or MFA, etc). But because of their much improved research design & validity, I'm sure researchers will do copy-cat experiments with other demographics, as well as look for sub groups of etiology in the HFA/AS population. They also need to do life-span studies, which can draw co-relations between socialization effects and neuro-anatomical differences.

I haven't had a chance to do a close reading of the paper yet but so far my biggest peeve is their lack of discussion about the social biases in their population. They were diagnosed as children & do not have other syndromes (eg fragile X), or LDs, or comorbid psychiatric conditions. Most clinical samples tend to be biased towards white males, in their mid twenties, with upper-middle class urban backgrounds. (Which is actually a major criticism of the DSM in general). So yeah anyone who falls outside of this population only get researched as an afterthought (if at all) and have a much greater chance of getting misdiagnosed.

Neuro-plasticity has been found to continue throughout the life-span so your social environment, health, and personal choices continue to affect your brain structure after childhood. It is possible for identical twins diagnosed with ASDs to be on opposite ends of the spectrum by adulthood. [i.e. same genes + different experiences = variable expression of autism]

A lot of questions need to be asked. How do people who were traumatized with ABA as kids compare to those whose differences were celebrated and respected? Or girls who first presented with anorexia? Or the diverse manifestations of talents? Primary means of interacting with the world (tactile, verbal, visual etc.)? What about common co-morbidities like epilepsy, social anxiety and depression?

They recognized someof these but not the social variables:
"Future work is thus needed to develop specific classifiers for different developmental stages, autistic subgroups and females with ASD." (p.54)

So yeah, I agree with you guys: there is no way they should use this as a primary diagnostic tool any time soon. It's the typically sensationalistic media that have pushed that idea. The researchers themselves are certainly not advocating this.

*sorry for the ridiculously long post
**If anyone is interested but can't access the actual journal article I can send it over.

 

[IContainMultitudes]

I actually had an MRI about 9-10 years ago (mainly to rule out the possibility that there was some kind of structural problem with my brain), and it didn't turn up anything very significant (I'm amazed that someone as claustrophobic as I am was able to tolerate being inside of the coffin-like MRI machine for that long). I wasn't until this year that I finally got in touch with some mental health professionals who detected my aspie traits.