Researchers at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill have identified an abnormal growth pattern in the brain that may be a precursor to identify children who will develop autism, reports the non-profit scientific news site EurekAlert.
In a peer reviewed study, scientists found that the amygdala, the remote area of the brain responsible for interpreting social and emotional inputs to the brain, showed an unusual fast growth rate in children who later developed autism.
The overgrowth is apparent in children six to twelve months old, indicating that it was there before the children received the MMR vaccine, which anti-vax and anti-science conspiracy theorists believe causes autism.
“We also found that the rate of amygdala overgrowth in the first year is linked to the child’s social deficits at age two,” said first author Mark Shen, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at UNC Chapel Hill and faculty of the Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities (CIDD). “The faster the amygdala grew in infancy, the more social difficulties the child showed when diagnosed with autism a year later.”
While the growth abnormality may be a sign that the child develops autism, scientists did not find all children with the overgrowth developed autism.