A lot of kids with autism also have anxiety so we prescribe the more typical antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs as well. ![]() Both of these drugs are good for treating psychotic behaviors including aggression and irritability. These belong to a class of drugs called antipsychotics, and they are also used for schizophrenia and depression. Only two drugs, risperidone and aripiprazole, are approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat irritability in children with autism. Physicians use both behavioral and pharmacological (drug) therapies to treat autism. ![]() What are some of the current therapies for autism and what symptoms do they address? One idea is that girls may have some kind of protective factor, and girls would need a greater number of genetic insults in order to get a degree of autism equivalent to what you see in boys. We don’t know why this is, but now geneticists are making some headway. Male brains seem to be more vulnerable in general and are more likely than girls to develop neurological disorders. We don’t know why, but it is an area of active research. Why does autism affect more boys than girls?Īutism is four to five times more common in boys than in girls. Because of that they may not be able to do common tasks or they may do them more slowly or less efficiently. As such, their brains likely function differently. On average, individuals with autism have problems with this kind of communication between brain regions. Many cognitive tasks require communication between multiple parts of the brain. That’s not to say an individual with autism can’t have a perfectly normal looking brain from a structural point of view. There is also evidence that people with autism have less white matter, which are the physical connections between brain areas. People who have a cerebellar injury, either at birth or later, can have cognitive and social problems that have nothing to do with motor systems. While the cerebellum is involved in coordinating motor movement, we now know that it also communicates with networks involved in learning, memory, and language. That’s in contrast to something like Parkinson’s disease, where the loss of dopamine-producing cells in a particular area of the brain really is the hallmark of the disorder.Īt the same time, some research suggests individuals with autism have too few neurons in an area of the back of the brain called the cerebellum. However, we can’t diagnose autism by looking at a brain and finding too many synapses. Autism could be related to problems with the pruning process. As we grow, the weaker synapses are eliminated, and the strong ones are retained in a process called synaptic pruning. During development, our brains make a profusion of synapses. ![]() Some evidence shows individuals with autism have too many synapses. One of the more interesting areas of research is exploring the number of connections, called synapses, between brain cells. The irregularities we see are consistent with problems of brain development, and I think it’s fair to say that autism is a disorder of brain development. When we study the brains of people with autism, we frequently find differences, but no one specific change. What’s different in the brains of people with autism?
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