A recent preliminary study in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that autism originates prenatally. In the study, doctors examined the brain composition of seven boys with autism and six typically developing males ages 2 to 16 who had died
Researchers found that the autistic children’s brains outweighed the typical children’s brains by 17.6% and that this excess weight was attributable to to the autistic boys brains containing 67% more brain cells in the prefrontal cortex. How do these excess brain cells show that autism is prenatal though? According to the researcher, Eric Courchesne, the lead author of the study and the director of the Autism Center of Excellence at the University of California, San Diego, the neurons in this area of the brain are produced before birth and do not continue to grow afterward.
These findings are very important information if substantiated by further research for a number of reasons.
- If the researchers can pinpoint why the extra brain cells develop, it could lead to treatment advances in autism.
- If the brain development is significantly impacted in utero, then environmental factors and vaccination trauma can be eliminated as causes of autism.
- It narrows the period of time during child development when brain abnormalities related to autism begin to occur.
The study’s author notes limitations in his study though. Because neurons can only be counted after death, it is difficult to attain adolescent brain donors. Thus, the study’s results are based on only the thirteen brains mentioned above.