Autism research breakthrough: high degree of heterogeneity

Autism is a multifaceted disorder that cannot be identified by a single symptom, nor can it be explained by a single biological cause

In order to improve long-term screening and treatment, researchers are seeking to better understand this highly heterogeneous neurobiological mechanism, more specifically, during brain development and the formation of large neural networks

A customized survey tool

The research team turned to electroencephalography (EEG) to try to understand neurobiological damage and figure out how to detect it at an early stage, using brain analysis tools suitable for children with autism

Dynamic impairment of brain state

The brain displays the smallest neuronal activity at rest, which reflects its most basic functions, such as vision or thinking

In the Geneva study, this method was used to record the dynamics of the brain states of 113 preschool children, of which more than half of the children were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder

Finally, the research team successfully proved that even in the group of children diagnosed with asd, there are differences in the dynamics of the brain state, and they are related to different clinically observed symptoms

A promising spectrum segmentation

UNIGE's research marks an important step forward in our understanding of ASD, because it finally provides neuroscientists with a method to break the huge heterogeneity of autism symptoms with reliable indicators

The special scale of this research makes it unique

Professor Schaer is enthusiastic about the future of research and treatment: “This segmentation will improve the diagnosis and characteristics of children with different characteristics

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