Autism Soccer: Groundbreaking Discovery? Eye Movement Could Be Used To Diagnose Autism

This new technique could help diagnose autism.

Does it really work?

A new study published in the European Journal of Neuroscience could change the way we think about autism diagnosis. Neuroscientists, Edward Freedman and John Foxe, from the University of Rochester, explored the possibility of a new tool to diagnose this disorder via rapid eye movement, as a part of their study called Eye movements, sensorimotor adaptation and cerebellar-dependent learning in autism: toward potential biomarkers and subphenotypes.

One of the trickiest aspects that come with understanding mental disorders is learning how to make a proper diagnosis. This is especially true with autism, because of its variety of symptoms and the grade of severity with which they can manifest. For many years, scientists have been trying to find new and more precise ways to define it. Nowadays, it’s grouped in one single set of disorders called autism spectrum disorder (ASD), which covers conditions such as Asperger’s syndrome, pervasive developmental disorder, and autism disorder.

Neurostructural differences and behavioral dysfunctions must all be taken into account to provide a good method for diagnosis. That means that autism is not only about distinguishable differences in behavior, but also about the way brains are wired and how that changes the way autistic individuals perceive and interact with the world. On this regard, this new test uses rapid eye movements to identify deficits in an area of the brain called cerebellar vermis (found in the cerebellum), which plays a key role in emotional and social development.

This study discusses findings that appear to link the cerebellar vermis' structure and the saccadic eye-movement system's plasticity in people with ASD. Saccades refer to those very fast and jerky movements our eyes make to jump from one position to another simultaneously. We use them to build mental, three-dimensional maps of our surroundings. That’s why differences in this structure could critically impact visuo-sensorimotor development in early infancy. This could explain visual orienting, communication, and social interaction differences often seen in autistic individuals.

Because there is growing evidence that the cerebellum’s structure is altered in a subgroup of people with ASD, the study's authors built a series of experiments to prove it. According to Science Daily, the participants were “asked to track a visual target that appeared in different locations on the screen. The experiment was designed in a manner that often caused the participant's focus to "overshoot" the intended target. In healthy individuals, the brain would correctly adjust eye movements as the task is repeated. However, the eye movements of individuals with ASD continued to miss the target suggesting that the sensory-motor controls in the cerebellum responsible for eye movement were impaired.”

Even though the cerebellum was originally thought only to perform coordination's and muscle movement's tasks, scientists now know it to have key roles in psychological, emotional, and cognitive functions. If the cerebellum is indeed affected by this disorder, this could tell us much more about autism disorder than just eye movement deficiencies.

"If these deficits do turn out to be a consistent finding in a subgroup of children with ASD, this raises the possibility that saccade adaptation measures may have utility as a method that will allow early detection of this disorder." -John Foxe to Science Daily.

There is still so much to explore about autism spectrum disorder. In order to find effective treatments and solutions for individuals under the spectrum, we need to understand how neurologically different they truly are. Good news is that we’re making more and more progress each day so it might come the day when autism doesn’t represent a mystery for both scientists and the rest of society.