A new study finds that children who have autism have significantly more brain cells than do children of typical development. This suggests that autism is caused by something that happens before a baby is born. This means that autism is not triggered by an event or substance after a child is born.
What causes autism? There have been plenty of theories that attempt to answer this question. There have been people blaming the cause of autism on the MMR vaccine, (which simply isn’t true). Some studies have tried to link autism with everything from the occupation of the parents to the diet that a child is eating.
A new study lead by Eric Courchesne, Ph.D., found that children who have autism have more brain cells than do children who are developing typically. This finding could give insight into the true causes of autism. It also points out that autism is something that happens in the womb.
In order to make this discovery, scientists looked at the brains of 13 boys. The boys ranged in age between the ages of 2 and 16. It is a small study because the scientists needed to look at the brains of the children, and the only way to do this is to take samples from children who are deceased. The children in the study died from drowning, or other accidents.
The scientists found that the brains of the boys who had autism had 67% more brain cells than typically developing boys. These extra brain cells were in the prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain that is responsible for social skills, communication, and language development. The scientists think that the extra neurons or nerve cells in the brain could be the cause of the struggles that many children with autism face.
Another finding was that the brains of the children who had autism were heavier than the brains of the children who did not have autism. The brains of the autistic children were 17.6% heavier than the brains of the control group. More research needs to be done in order to answer the questions that this finding raises.
The study points out that the true cause of autism is absolutely not due to exposure to heavy metals, (from a vaccine, for example). Instead, it is something that is happening in the womb, as the child is developing. Whatever the cause turns out to be, it is something that is happening prenatally.
Image by Isaac Mao on Flickr