Scientists have discovered a particular area of the brain which is affected when someone suffers from Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and this could lead to new therapies to treat the condition.
By running MRI brain scans on people with ASD, as we well as healthy volunteers, the team were able to find differences between the two groups.
Team leader, Dr Joshua Henk Balster, said:
‘A big part of social interaction is to try and understand another person’s point of view. You need to understand another person’s perspective and that is very difficult if you have ASD.’
The researchers identified changes in a region known as the gyrus of the anterior cingulate cortex, an area of the brain that responds when someone else experiences something surprising.
‘We found that individuals with ASD are less accurate at identifying other people’s expectations, but they also lack the typical response in the [brain region] when surprising things happen to other people.’
Previous brain studies have suggested the gyrus of the anterior cingulate cortex had a part to play in ASD but this was the first clinical study to show that this is true.
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