Brain Scans Help Explain Autistic Traits

Poor communication between brain areas in people with autism may explain why they have difficulty relating to other people, says a U.K. study in the journal Neuroimage.

The weak connections between their brain areas mean that people benefit less from social situations, resulting in poor interaction with others, the University of London researchers concluded.

They compared the brain scans of 16 people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and a control group of 16 people without autism. Both groups were shown images of two faces and two houses on a screen and asked to determine if they were identical, BBC News reported.

The brains scans revealed that both groups had the same reaction to the images of the houses. However, the faces prompted much greater brain activity among the people in the control group than in the people with ASD, which explains their lack of interest in faces.

"It seems that, for people with ASD, paying attention to a face is much harder to do and doesn't have the same effect," said research head Dr. Geoff Bird of the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience.
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