Autistic children lack active mirror neurons

Autistic children lack active mirror neurons

Absence of or severely limited activity in the brain's mirror neuron system could be a possible cause of some of the defects that are found in autistic children, according to researchers at the UCLA.

The mirror neuron system is that area of the brain that is concerned with copying the actions of other individuals as well as understanding the emotions of other people. Researchers say that this discovery could explain the social "deficits" found in autistic children. The UCLA team arrived at this conclusion by measuring the brain activity in 10 autistic children aged between 10 to 14 with ten children having normal brain development.

Magnetic resonance Imaging was used to measure the brain's activity while the kids were asked to observe 80 photographs depicting various emotions and mimic them. It was found that autistic children had no activity in the mirror neuron system, while the normal children did show considerable activity in the area.

Dr Mirella Dapretto, lead researcher of the study said that autistic children also showed limited activity in the emotion center of the brain.

"Our findings suggest that a dysfunctional mirror neuron system may underlie the social deficits observed in autism," she said. "Together with other recent data, our results provide strong support for a mirror neuron theory of autism. This is exciting because we finally have an account that can explain all core symptoms of this disorder." Educators feel that this study provides valuable clues to what actually went wrong in autism.

The researchers caution that much more needed to be done to understand the emotional impact of autism and it was premature to blame underdevelopment of the brain since a host of physical factors also played a role in the disease. The details of the current study appear in the December 4 issue of Nature Neuroscience.