Published on 12, July, 2020
This is my first post in this discussion.
It might soon be possible to discover if someone is Autistic by a brain scan.
There is information about the new brain scan on the web site and the articles were written last year in 2010. Anyone can look it up for themselves on the web.
The computer can tell small differences in the brain so tell if the person is on the Autistic Spectrum.
It would be much quicker than interviewing the person.
I do not know if a person would count as Autistic if they behaved as though they were but the brain scan did not show Autism.
People in that situation might be denied help if they did not count as Autistic.
In the 1980s I was told that the brain scans did not detect anything wrong with my brians. People who knew me were not impressed.
I have since done brain scans for research the idea being to find out by scanning many Autistic people if their brains are different from Non Autistic people.
That research might have helped them develop the new brain scan.
Do you think the new brain scan will be a good thing when it is developed?
What would you feel if the brain scan found that your were not Autistic?
David
The current situation is that there are a lot of people who don't get diagnosed with ASD because their cases are complicated by lots of consequential comorbidities that are hard to distinguish against alternatives like bipolar disorder or other severe disorders. When a doctor comes to do a differential diagnosis they don't have any reliable tests that get past our communication disorders to the true underlying causes. So, in a lot of cases people are condemned to a life on meds when, in fact, they have the much more benign condition of ASD. Wouldn't it be good if we could save a bunch of people from a lifetime on meds by using a reliable test that could bypass our communication issues?
In any case, this is long term research, I don't think that they are close to having anything that is reliable enough for the really problematic cases where it could be of great benefit.
In my oiwn case, I would have been grateful if something like this could have identified the problem in my father. He had a lifetime on meds that were not successful in treating his depression and anxieties. He ended up with Alzheimers and I wonder whether the meds had something to do with the final outcome. If this scenario could be avoided by having a proper scientific test, rather than having to jump through hoops with vague questions and uncertain diagnoses to convince some practitioner who might just be following a script without any great understanding of how to tell the difference, then I for one would welcome it.