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(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- A new study that investigates regions in the brains that are specifically used for social cognition could benefit children with autism.
Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Yale University scanned the brains of 13 children ages 6 to 11 as they listened to stories. At the moment the plot of the stories, revealing what the character wanted, believed or knew, the researchers observed increased activity in these specific brain regions. When the story turned to other topicssuch as descriptions of the physical world or the visual appearance of the charactersactivity in these brain regions went back down.
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On the whole, activity in the "social brain" of the childrenthe parts of their brains that are used for social cognitionlooked very similar to patterns previously observed in adults -- with one intriguing difference. The right tempero-parietal junction appeared to change its function between the ages of 6 and 11. At age 6, the brain region played a general role in thinking about people, but by age 11, this same brain region appeared to take on a more specialized role in thinking just about others' thoughts.
"What we founda pattern of typical developmentmay offer clues as we study atypical social development, as happens in autism," Rebecca Saxe, the Fred and Carole Middleton Career Development Professor of cognitive neuroscience at MIT, who led the study, was quoted as saying.
"Children with autism appear to have specific difficulties thinking about other people's thoughts. Understanding how human brains typically learn to think about thoughts may let us detect what is going wrong in an autistic brain, and maybe even target interventions toward those neural systems, to improve chances for recovery."
SOURCE: Child Development, July/August 2009
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