Brain Imaging Study Network News Today

Study reports girls and boys show similar rates of concern for ASD and identifies several biases contributing to the inflated sex ratio for autism diagnosis. The findings could help with the early identification of girls on the autism spectrum.

Published in Biological Psychiatry, a multidisciplinary study led by the University of Minnesota demonstrated that an equal number of girls and boys can be identified as having concerns for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) when screened earlier, correcting large gender differences in current diagnoses

New research from the University of Minnesota demonstrated that an equal number of girls and boys can be identified as having concerns for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) when screened earlier, correcting large gender differences in current diagnoses.

The male sex bias in autism may in large part be a product of how common diagnostic tools measure traits in boys versus girls at a single point in time, according to a new study.

The research, led by Jessica Girault at the UNC School of Medicine, was conducted as part of the NIH-funded Infant Brain Imaging Study Network, which used MRI to document crucial differences in the visual processing system in the brains of infants who went on to develop autism.

Research led by Drs. Mark Shen, Heather Hazlett and Joseph Piven from UNC-Chapel Hill is the first to demonstrate overgrowth of the amygdala in the first year of life, before babies show most of the behavioral symptoms that later consolidate into a diagnosis of autism. This overgrowth may be unique to autism, as babies with fragile X syndrome show a different brain growth pattern.