In earlier work, Dawson had established that children with autism had problems with face recognition, when compared with normally developing children and children with developmental delay. She and Aylward note that the ability to recognize faces may be similar to the ability to comprehend language.
"In the beginning babies can distinguish between all types of language sounds," said Aylward. "But language processing later becomes fine tuned to the sounds of the child's own language. Similarly, in normal children, the area of the brain involved in face processing may require fine tuning in order for it to respond specifically to human faces."
Aylward and Dawson wondered whether this particular area of the brain was developmentally "broken," or did it fail to activate in response to faces because it has not had sufficient experience? And would more exposure (or more directed exposure) to faces lead to normal patterns of brain activation? If the latter were the case, the researchers hypothesized that a face with which the child has had the most experience, usually that of a parent, would be the face most likely to result in normal activation of the fusiform.
Dawson is working with another University of Washington researcher, Gerard D. Schellenberg, Research Professor of Medicine and Neurology Adjunct Research Professor of Pharmacology, on an ongoing study of families with siblings diagnosed with autism. With 300 families signed up, the UW multiplex family study, which Schellenberg will describe at the AAAS meeting, is one the largest worldwide efforts aimed at identifying the l
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Contact: Monica Amarelo
mamarelo@aaas.org
206-774-6330
American Association for the Advancement of Science
12-Feb-2004