The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded a five-year $9.5 million grant to evaluate MRI's role in brain imaging to detect the risk of autism spectrum disorder in early infancy.
The money comes through the NIH's National Institute of Mental Health and goes to researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to continue their work on the Infant Brain Imaging Study (IBIS) Network. The study aims to use MRI to identify early evidence of autism to begin behavioral interventions for young children with the condition and to identify differences in the brains of children who are at risk for autism.
"Our goal is to identify differences in the brain in infancy that accurately predict which children are most likely to later develop autism so that we can begin to eventually explore the effects of presymptomatic treatment in those infants at highest risk," co-principal investigator Dr. Joseph Piven said in a statement. "Intervention in the first year of life, prior to consolidation of symptoms leading to diagnosis and at a time when the brain is maximally malleable, holds great promise over the current practice of treating after diagnosis is established at older ages."
