Representations of social thoughts through brain will accurately predict autism diagnosis

Researchers have created brain-reading techniques to use neural representations of social thoughts to predict autism diagnoses with 97 percent accuracy. This establishes the first biologically based diagnostic tool that measures a person’s thoughts to detect the disorder that affects many children and adults worldwide. Psychiatric disorders like autism are characterized and diagnosed based on a clinical assessment of verbal and physical behaviour. However, brain imaging and cognitive neuroscience are poised to provide a powerful advanced new tool. This is a potentially extremely valuable method that could not only complement current psychiatric assessment. It could identify psychiatric disorders not just by their symptoms but by the brain systems that are not functioning properly. It may eventually be possible to screen for psychiatric disorders using quantitative biological measures of thought that would test for a range of illnesses or disorders