Sight and Sound Out of Sync for Some Children with Autism, Study Finds

Imagine you’re trying to learn a foreign language by watching a badly dubbed foreign film. The actor points to a tree, then to a flower, then a cloud, but his words are out of sync with his actions.

That’s what it may be like for children with autism, researchers at the Vanderbilt Brain Institute discovered in a study whose results were published Tueday.

For such children, sight and sound are separated because their brains do a poor job of linking what they see with what they hear. This, in turn, throws off their perception of what’s going on around them.

Movement Linked to Learning Ability

MINNEAPOLIS -- At a Northeast day camp, 10-year-old kids with autism navigate an unusual obstacle course.
They walk a balance beam, hang on monkey bars and alligator-crawl across mats. These exercises aren’t just for fun — all of them are designed to stimulate the type of brain activity needed in academics.

Study: Imaging Detects Signs of Autism

Early intervention is an important factor in treating autism. And while biological causes of autism continue to be a mystery, researchers have found for the first time a method using imaging that can accurately identify a neurological sign of autism in very young toddlers.
By scanning the brain activity of sleeping children, the scientists discovered that the autistic brains exhibited significantly weaker synchronization between brain areas tied to language and communication, compared to that of non-autistic children.