Autism

“Autism- you'll never see it the same way again”

Autism is an actual brain cell function disorder, not a psychiatric disorder. As such it is a medical condition which has areas of the brain under function or over function. You can see this for yourself on a brain SPECT scan. This way we look inside of the “world of autism.”

As a metaphorical example, if you were standing outside of a house from which a lot of noise is coming, would you stay outside the house and guess what the noise is about or would you walk inside to directly observe what the cause of the noise is?

Our medical imaging tools look inside at how the parts of the brain are working in autistic individuals. Rather than “guesstimating” only from behavioral observation, we look directly inside the brain and combine the information from both internal and external methods. This evaluation helps you to decide the appropriate therapy path.

Brain SPECT scanning done before and after therapies shows you the effectiveness of medication, hyperbaric oxygen, speech, physical, occupational and behavioral therapies.

Brain SPECT imaging is the appropriate, effective imaging to use rather than MRI or CT (CAT) scanning because these methods do not evaluate the functional abnormalities of Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Brain function imaging technology is known as SPECT and PET. Both have the advantage of showing the functional state of different brain regions throughout the entire brain. SPECT imaging is more widely available, and thus there is much more experience in using it to evaluate the brain function of autistic individuals.

Scanning of your the entire brain is important because:

• By external observation in any one individual we still don’t know the interrelated function of the entire brain and which areas are working too fast or too slow,
• Functional abnormalities, such as lack of speaking or of social interaction, are not confined to only one discrete area of the brain,
• There is usually more than one brain area that is not working right in an ASD individual.

For example, autism and seizures, hyperactive behavior, anxiety or mood disorders, obsessive and compulsive-like tendencies and cognitive inflexibility, and behavioral dysfunction, movement, visual perception and memory dysfunction may be seen.

A brain Spect will show you the combinations as part of the overall brain function in you or your child.

Examples of this are:

1. Lack of speaking can result from abnormal function of the brain area responsible for speaking or the area of understanding speech, or of both.
2. Autism Spectrum Disorders usually show different combinations of temporal lobe and cerebellum under function, along with over function of other brain areas which likely accounts for seizures, mood disorders and/or anxiety,
3. Children and adults frequently show combinations of anxiety and/or depression or PTSD, along with attention deficit hyperactive disorder or the effects of toxic substances or head trauma.

For instance: how much brain injury occurs as a result of head-banging behavior? Wouldn't you want to know that? It could have a big effect on the choice of therapy!

Brain SPECT function imaging can give an indication of that, whereas anatomic imaging does not. Usually the concussive head trauma causes brain cell dysfunction without resulting in anatomic disruption to the degree that it could be seen using CT or MRI.

Brain SPECT scan findings can give evidence of thought and feeling disorders in Autistic individuals, who usually cannot understand or express these thoughts and feelings.

Anxiety, mood disorders and obsessive/compulsive-like tendencies are often present in autistic individuals. Brain SPECT scanning can show you patterns of their occurance so that you can improve them by using appropriate medications.

As a result, you can lessen the stress of the entire family by better understanding the feelings of the autistic individual.