Improving Autism Using Neurotechnology
Deep transcranial magnetic stimulation is a method of altering the functioning of the brain in a non-invasive manner. It can selectively stimulate nearly any brain region with a relatively high precision. It has very recently been approved to help treat the symptoms of major depression, but now scientists are going to test it to improve social functioning among people who have autistic disorders.
Those who have autistic disorders usually have a lot of difficulty in reading other people. They are not able to decipher non-verbal clues, like facial expressions especially well. People’s faces are more like everyday objects to them and they are unable to understand more nuanced types of expressions.
The doctors are going to use transcranial magnetic stimulation to activate a specific region of the brain. This brain area is named the medial prefrontal cortex and it is important for social functioning. The medial prefrontal cortex is located right behind your face and has been implicated in theory of the mind deficits.
The medial prefrontal cortex may also be involved with the ability to experience empathy for other people. Those who have William’s syndrome, for instance, often have increased activity in this brain area. They also have a tendency of being more empathetic and social towards other people.
Many people who have asperger’s or other autistic symptoms may often have a lot of trouble describing their own emotional states. Alexithymia is a term that describes a person’s inability to understand or recognize their own emotions or feelings. So deep transcranial magnetic brain stimulation to activate this region has the potential to reduce some of those symptoms and increase the number of emotions that a person is able to feel.
The medial prefrontal brain area could also be targeted to improve specific schizophrenic symptoms. Those people with schizophrenic symptoms often have both positive symptoms such as hearing unreal voices and negative symptoms such as apathy and emotional blunting. The negative symptoms overlap with many autistic symptoms and so they may also be improved by stimulating this brain region.
Changing activity in the medial prefrontal cortex may be able to improve anhedonia, the inability to experience any pleasure whatsoever. The medial prefrontal cortex can be rewarding if activity there is adjusted. Certain drugs and electricity have the capacity to induce pleasure in this area.
In the future, disorders on the autistic spectrum may be treated with this kind of brain manipulation technique. It is far too soon to tell for sure whether this brain manipulation mechanism will have the desired effect. However, the final outcome of the clinical trial should certainly be interesting.
Tags: brain, health, medicine, Mental Health, mental illness, neuroscience, neurotechnology, psychology, science, technology
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