Brain-Imaging Project To Study Children with Autism and Dyslexia

A new brain-imaging project has been planned to study the origins of autism and dyslexia in children.

Two researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) McGovern Institute for Brain Research (Cambridge, MA, USA) will head a new project to study the origins of autism and dyslexia, supported by a US$8.5 million grant from the Ellison Medical Foundation (Bethesda, MD, USA). The project leaders, Drs. Nancy Kanwisher and John Gabrieli, are experts in neuroimaging and human brain development.

Autism and dyslexia are complex brain disorders that first appear in early childhood. Autism impairs social interactions and communication, and affected individuals may engage in bizarre and repetitive behaviors. Dyslexia is a learning disorder that manifests itself as reading difficulty despite adequate education and otherwise normal perceptual and intellectual abilities.

Little is known about the causes of either disorder, although both are highly heritable. In both cases, it is thought that the earlier treatments begin, the more effectively they help the child compensate. Therefore, it is important to develop methods for early diagnosis, and scientists believe that non-invasive brain functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) may help researchers learn more about these disorders.

Human neuroimaging methods have advanced greatly over the last five years, and a key emphasis of the new project will be to translate these developments to pediatric functional neuroimaging. Brain imaging with young children presents many challenges, not least of which is their inability to lie still for long periods in the MRI scanner. The McGovern investigators will collaborate with neuroimaging specialists Drs. Larry Wald, Bruce, and Ellen Grant at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH; Boston, MA, USA), who will develop scanning coils designed specifically for children's heads, along with new procedures to shorten scan times and methods to analyze data from brains that are not yet fully developed.

"We expect these technological advances to radically improve pediatric neuroimaging and help us make major strides in understanding typical and atypical human brain development,” commented Dr. Kanwisher, an MIT professor of cognitive neuroscience, who will lead the work on autism. Dr. Gabrieli, who is an MIT professor in health sciences and technology and cognitive neuroscience, will lead the dyslexia component.

The researchers plan to evaluate a cohort of children scanning them at regular intervals to examine the development of brain systems that have been implicated in social cognition (for autism) or reading (for dyslexia). They hope to include children who, because of their family history, are at increased risk for autism or dyslexia and to compare them to controls with no special risk factors. The researchers will also look at children who have already been diagnosed, looking for characteristic markers that could be useful for diagnosing and monitoring the progression of the disorders. They also plan to examine the effects of therapeutic interventions, in the hope of identifying markers that will guide the development of more effective therapies. In the longer term, they hope to link their findings to future advances in understanding the genetics of these disorders. By combining both approaches, according to Dr. Gabrieli, it may ultimately be possible to develop genetic tests that will be easier and less expensive than brain scans.

Drs. Kanwisher and Gabrieli will also collaborate with Dr. Rebecca Saxe, assistant professor of neurobiology in the MIT department of brain and cognitive sciences, who will focus on the development of neural mechanisms for social cognition to identify the earliest stages at which infants” brains become specialized to perceive other people and understand language.

The Ellison Medical Foundation was established in 1998 by Lawrence J. Ellison, the founder and chief executive officer of Oracle. The Foundation supports basic biomedical research on aging relevant to understanding lifespan development processes and age-related diseases and disabilities, as well as scientific advancement in other research areas that are not sufficiently funded by traditional sources in the United States.


Related Links:
MIT McGovern Institute for Brain Research
Ellison Medical Foundation
Massachusetts General Hospital