03-01-2008, 10:03 PM
In this week's New Scientist magazine (1 Mar 08) there's an article about a possible reason for autism.
Apparently scientists thought our brains didn't have an immune system, but now they've found "immune molecules" whose job seems to be to destroy unwanted connections in the brain and fine-tune other connections. If these start to work wrongly, they now think it might cause autism when a baby is still in the womb - by rewiring the developing brain in the wrong way. If I read this right, they're looking at how the chemicals relating to these immune molecules (the MHC1 system) are linked to us experiencing "sensory overload" - an inability to 'tune out' things we often find overwhelming, like more than one different noise at a time.
If this is a chemical 'marker' for autism then they may be close to finding a simple clinical test for spotting autism, rather than some psychologist/doctor spending hours fretting over questions and observations.
Apparently scientists thought our brains didn't have an immune system, but now they've found "immune molecules" whose job seems to be to destroy unwanted connections in the brain and fine-tune other connections. If these start to work wrongly, they now think it might cause autism when a baby is still in the womb - by rewiring the developing brain in the wrong way. If I read this right, they're looking at how the chemicals relating to these immune molecules (the MHC1 system) are linked to us experiencing "sensory overload" - an inability to 'tune out' things we often find overwhelming, like more than one different noise at a time.
If this is a chemical 'marker' for autism then they may be close to finding a simple clinical test for spotting autism, rather than some psychologist/doctor spending hours fretting over questions and observations.