'Brain activity predicts autism'

In what could turn out to be a potential tool in the diagnosis of autism, scientists claim to have discovered that a person's performance on autism test can be predicted from an EEG.
An international team has demonstrated that markers for autistic tendency could be seen in an electroencephalogram (EEG) and this tendency can be predicted through physiological recording of visual activation of the brain.
"Everyone has some degree of autistic tendency, expressed in terms of socialisation preference, scope of imagination, level of rigidity in opinion and whether or not we are fascinated by patterns, numbers and so on.
"This can be measured by the Autism Spectrum Quotient. However, few would expect that scores based on behavioural questions such as whether you are good at social chit chat could be predicted by physiological recording from the brain.
"The aim of this study was to test whether low- and high-scoring individuals on the AQ scale differed on measures of local and global processing and visual pathway integrity," lead scientist Dr David Crewther of Swinburne University said.
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