< Return to Video

A new way to diagnose autism

  • 0:01 - 0:05
    I always wanted to become
    a walking laboratory of social engagement:
  • 0:06 - 0:12
    to resonate other people's feelings,
    thoughts, intentions, motivations,
  • 0:12 - 0:13
    in the act of being with them.
  • 0:15 - 0:20
    As a scientist, I always wanted
    to measure that resonance,
  • 0:21 - 0:23
    that sense of the other
    that happens so quickly,
  • 0:23 - 0:25
    in the blink of an eye.
  • 0:26 - 0:28
    We intuit other people's feelings;
  • 0:28 - 0:31
    we know the meaning of their actions
    even before they happen.
  • 0:32 - 0:34
    We're always in this stance
  • 0:34 - 0:37
    of being the object
    of somebody else's subjectivity.
  • 0:37 - 0:40
    We do that all the time.
    We just can't shake it off.
  • 0:40 - 0:44
    It's so important that the very tools
    we use to understand ourselves,
  • 0:44 - 0:46
    to understand the world around us,
  • 0:46 - 0:47
    are shaped by that stance.
  • 0:48 - 0:50
    We are social to the core.
  • 0:52 - 0:54
    So my journey in autism really started
  • 0:54 - 0:58
    when I lived in a residential unit
    for adults with autism.
  • 0:58 - 1:01
    Most of those individuals
    had spent most of their lives
  • 1:01 - 1:03
    in long-stay hospitals.
  • 1:03 - 1:04
    This is a long time ago.
  • 1:05 - 1:09
    And for them, autism was devastating.
  • 1:09 - 1:12
    They had profound
    intellectual disabilities.
  • 1:13 - 1:14
    They didn't talk.
  • 1:14 - 1:16
    But most of all,
  • 1:16 - 1:21
    they were extraordinarily isolated
    from the world around them,
  • 1:21 - 1:23
    from their environment
  • 1:23 - 1:25
    and from the people.
  • 1:25 - 1:28
    In fact, at the time,
    if you walked into a school
  • 1:28 - 1:30
    for individuals with autism,
  • 1:30 - 1:32
    you'd hear a lot of noise,
  • 1:32 - 1:36
    plenty of commotion, actions,
    people doing things.
  • 1:38 - 1:40
    But they're always doing
    things by themselves.
  • 1:41 - 1:45
    So they may be looking
    at a light in the ceiling,
  • 1:46 - 1:48
    or they may be isolated in the corner,
  • 1:49 - 1:52
    or they might be engaged
    in these repetitive movements,
  • 1:52 - 1:56
    in self-stimulatory movements
    that led them nowhere.
  • 1:57 - 1:59
    Extremely, extremely isolated.
  • 2:01 - 2:06
    Well, now we know that autism
    is this disruption,
  • 2:06 - 2:10
    the disruption of this resonance
    that I am telling you about.
  • 2:10 - 2:12
    These are survival skills.
  • 2:12 - 2:14
    These are survival skills
    that we inherited
  • 2:15 - 2:18
    over many, many hundreds
    of thousands of years of evolution.
  • 2:19 - 2:24
    You see, babies are born
    in a state of utter fragility.
  • 2:24 - 2:26
    Without the caregiver,
    they wouldn't survive,
  • 2:26 - 2:29
    so it stands to reason
    that nature would endow them
  • 2:29 - 2:30
    with these mechanisms of survival.
  • 2:32 - 2:34
    They orient to the caregiver.
  • 2:35 - 2:37
    From the first days and weeks of life,
  • 2:38 - 2:41
    babies prefer to hear human sounds,
  • 2:41 - 2:43
    rather than just sounds
    in the environment.
  • 2:43 - 2:45
    They prefer to look at people
    rather than at things,
  • 2:45 - 2:49
    and even as they're looking at people,
    they look at people's eyes,
  • 2:50 - 2:54
    because the eye is the window
    to the other person's experiences,
  • 2:54 - 2:56
    so much so that they even prefer
    to look at people
  • 2:56 - 3:00
    who are looking at them
    rather than people who are looking away.
  • 3:01 - 3:03
    Well, they orient to the caregiver.
  • 3:03 - 3:05
    The caregiver seeks the baby.
  • 3:05 - 3:09
    And it's out of this mutually
    reinforcing choreography
  • 3:09 - 3:13
    that a lot that is of importance
    to the emergence of mind --
  • 3:13 - 3:16
    the social mind, the social
    brain -- depends on.
  • 3:18 - 3:21
    We always think about autism
  • 3:21 - 3:25
    as something that happens
    later on in life.
  • 3:25 - 3:29
    It doesn't; it begins
    with the beginning of life.
  • 3:31 - 3:36
    As babies engage with caregivers,
    they soon realize that, well,
  • 3:37 - 3:41
    there is something between the ears
    that is very important --
  • 3:41 - 3:44
    it's invisible, you can't see it,
    but it's really critical.
  • 3:45 - 3:47
    And that thing is called attention.
  • 3:47 - 3:48
    And they learn soon enough,
  • 3:48 - 3:51
    even before they can utter one word,
  • 3:51 - 3:54
    that they can take that attention
    and move somewhere
  • 3:54 - 3:56
    in order to get things they want.
  • 3:58 - 4:01
    They also learn to follow
    other people's gazes,
  • 4:01 - 4:05
    because whatever people are looking at
    is what they are thinking about.
  • 4:07 - 4:10
    And soon enough, they start to learn
    about the meaning of things,
  • 4:10 - 4:13
    because when somebody
    is looking at something
  • 4:13 - 4:15
    or somebody is pointing at something,
  • 4:15 - 4:17
    they're not just getting
    a directional cue.
  • 4:18 - 4:21
    They are getting the other
    person's meaning of that thing,
  • 4:21 - 4:23
    the attitude.
  • 4:23 - 4:27
    And soon enough, they start
    building this body of meanings,
  • 4:27 - 4:31
    but meanings that were acquired
    within the realm of social interaction.
  • 4:32 - 4:34
    Those are meanings that are acquired
  • 4:34 - 4:37
    as part of their shared
    experiences with others.
  • 4:38 - 4:44
    Well, this is a 15-month-old little girl,
  • 4:46 - 4:47
    and she has autism.
  • 4:49 - 4:54
    And I am coming so close to her
    that I am maybe two inches from her face,
  • 4:54 - 4:56
    and she's quite oblivious to me.
  • 4:56 - 5:00
    Imagine if I did that to you,
    came two inches from your face.
  • 5:00 - 5:02
    You'd do probably
    two things, wouldn't you?
  • 5:02 - 5:05
    You would recoil.
    You would call the police.
  • 5:05 - 5:06
    (Laughter)
  • 5:06 - 5:07
    You would do something,
  • 5:07 - 5:11
    because it's literally impossible
    to penetrate somebody's physical space
  • 5:11 - 5:12
    and not get that reaction.
  • 5:12 - 5:16
    We do so, remember,
    intuitively, effortlessly.
  • 5:16 - 5:17
    This is our body wisdom;
  • 5:17 - 5:19
    it's not something mediated
    by our language.
  • 5:19 - 5:22
    Our body just knows that.
  • 5:22 - 5:25
    And we've known that for a long time.
  • 5:25 - 5:28
    And this is not something
    that happens to humans only.
  • 5:28 - 5:31
    It happens to some
    of our phyletic cousins,
  • 5:31 - 5:35
    because if you're a monkey,
    and you look at another monkey,
  • 5:35 - 5:39
    and that monkey has a higher
    hierarchy position than you,
  • 5:39 - 5:42
    and that is considered
    to be a signal or threat,
  • 5:42 - 5:45
    well, you are not going
    to be alive for long.
  • 5:45 - 5:50
    So something that in other species
    are survival mechanisms,
  • 5:50 - 5:53
    without which they
    wouldn't basically live,
  • 5:53 - 5:56
    we bring into the context of human beings,
  • 5:56 - 6:00
    and this is what we need
    to simply act, socially.
  • 6:00 - 6:03
    Now, she is oblivious to me
    and I'm so close to her,
  • 6:03 - 6:05
    and you think, maybe she can see you,
  • 6:05 - 6:06
    maybe she can hear you.
  • 6:07 - 6:08
    Well, a few minutes later,
  • 6:08 - 6:10
    she goes to the corner of the room,
  • 6:10 - 6:14
    and she finds a tiny little piece
    of candy, an M&M.
  • 6:15 - 6:19
    So I could not attract her attention,
  • 6:19 - 6:21
    but something -- a thing -- did.
  • 6:22 - 6:24
    Now, most of us make a big dichotomy
  • 6:24 - 6:27
    between the world of things
    and the world of people.
  • 6:29 - 6:33
    Now, for this girl,
    that division line is not so clear,
  • 6:33 - 6:37
    and the world of people
    is not attracting her
  • 6:37 - 6:38
    as much as we would like.
  • 6:38 - 6:42
    Now, remember that we learn a great deal
    by sharing experiences.
  • 6:42 - 6:48
    What she is doing right now
    is that her path of learning is diverging,
  • 6:48 - 6:50
    moment by moment,
  • 6:50 - 6:53
    as she is isolating herself
    further and further.
  • 6:54 - 6:57
    So we feel sometimes
    that the brain is deterministic,
  • 6:57 - 6:59
    the brain determines
    who we're going to be.
  • 6:59 - 7:02
    But, in fact, the brain
    also becomes who we are,
  • 7:02 - 7:06
    and at the same time
    that her behaviors are taking away
  • 7:06 - 7:08
    from the realm of social interaction,
  • 7:08 - 7:10
    this is what's happening with her mind,
  • 7:10 - 7:13
    and this is what's happening
    with her brain.
  • 7:15 - 7:20
    Well, autism is the most strongly
    genetic condition
  • 7:20 - 7:22
    of all developmental disorders.
  • 7:24 - 7:26
    And it's a brain disorder.
  • 7:27 - 7:30
    It's a disorder that begins
    much prior to the time
  • 7:30 - 7:31
    that the child is born.
  • 7:32 - 7:36
    We now know that there is a very
    broad spectrum of autism.
  • 7:36 - 7:40
    There are those individuals
    who are profoundly intellectually disabled
  • 7:40 - 7:42
    but there are those that are gifted.
  • 7:42 - 7:44
    There are those individuals
    who don't talk at all;
  • 7:44 - 7:47
    there are those individuals
    who talk too much.
  • 7:47 - 7:50
    There are those individuals
    that if you observe them in their school,
  • 7:50 - 7:54
    you see them running the periphery fence
    all the school day if you let them,
  • 7:54 - 7:56
    to those individuals
    who cannot stop coming to you
  • 7:56 - 7:59
    and trying to engage you
    repeatedly, relentlessly,
  • 7:59 - 8:01
    but often in an awkward fashion,
  • 8:02 - 8:05
    without that immediate resonance.
  • 8:06 - 8:10
    Well, this is much more prevalent
    than we thought at the time.
  • 8:10 - 8:11
    When I started in this field,
  • 8:11 - 8:14
    we thought there were four individuals
    with autism per 10,000 --
  • 8:14 - 8:15
    a very rare condition.
  • 8:16 - 8:20
    Well, now we know it's more
    like one in 100.
  • 8:20 - 8:23
    There are millions of individuals
    with autism all around us.
  • 8:25 - 8:28
    The societal cost
    of this condition is huge,
  • 8:29 - 8:32
    in the US alone,
    maybe 35 to 80 billion dollars.
  • 8:32 - 8:33
    And you know what?
  • 8:33 - 8:37
    Most of those funds are associated
    with adolescents and particularly adults
  • 8:37 - 8:39
    who are severely disabled,
  • 8:39 - 8:41
    individuals who need
    wraparound services --
  • 8:41 - 8:44
    services that are very, very intensive.
  • 8:44 - 8:48
    And those services can cost in excess
    of 60,000 to 80,000 dollars a year.
  • 8:49 - 8:52
    Those are individuals who did not
    benefit from early treatment,
  • 8:52 - 8:57
    because now we know
    that autism creates itself
  • 8:57 - 9:01
    as individuals diverge in that pathway
    of learning that I mentioned to you.
  • 9:01 - 9:04
    Were we to be able
    to identify this condition
  • 9:04 - 9:07
    at an earlier point,
    and intervene and treat --
  • 9:08 - 9:12
    I can tell you, this has been probably
    something that has changed my life
  • 9:12 - 9:13
    in the past 10 years,
  • 9:13 - 9:17
    this notion that we can absolutely
    attenuate this condition.
  • 9:19 - 9:21
    Also, we have a window of opportunity,
  • 9:21 - 9:24
    because the brain
    is malleable for just so long,
  • 9:24 - 9:28
    and that window of opportunity
    happens in the first three years of life.
  • 9:28 - 9:31
    It's not that that window
    closes; it doesn't.
  • 9:32 - 9:34
    But it diminishes considerably.
  • 9:35 - 9:38
    And yet, the median age
    of diagnosis in this country
  • 9:38 - 9:40
    is still about five years,
  • 9:40 - 9:42
    and in disadvantaged populations,
  • 9:42 - 9:45
    the populations that don't have
    access to clinical services,
  • 9:45 - 9:48
    rural populations, minorities,
  • 9:48 - 9:51
    the age of diagnosis is later still,
  • 9:51 - 9:53
    which is almost as if I were to tell you
  • 9:53 - 9:57
    that we are condemning those communities
    to have individuals with autism
  • 9:57 - 9:59
    whose condition is going
    to be more severe.
  • 10:00 - 10:03
    So I feel that we have
    a bioethical imperative.
  • 10:03 - 10:05
    The science is there.
  • 10:06 - 10:08
    But no science is of relevance
  • 10:08 - 10:11
    if it doesn't have an impact
    on the community.
  • 10:12 - 10:15
    And we just can't afford
    that missed opportunity,
  • 10:15 - 10:18
    because children with autism
    become adults with autism.
  • 10:18 - 10:22
    And we feel that those things we can do
  • 10:22 - 10:25
    for these children,
    for those families, early on,
  • 10:25 - 10:27
    will have lifetime consequences --
  • 10:27 - 10:31
    for the child, for the family,
    and for the community at large.
  • 10:31 - 10:34
    So this is our view of autism.
  • 10:34 - 10:37
    There are over a hundred genes
    that are associated with autism.
  • 10:37 - 10:39
    In fact, we believe there are going to be
  • 10:39 - 10:43
    something between 300 and 600
    genes associated with autism,
  • 10:43 - 10:47
    and genetic anomalies,
    much more than just genes.
  • 10:47 - 10:51
    And we actually have
    a bit of a question here,
  • 10:52 - 10:55
    because if there are so many
    different causes of autism,
  • 10:55 - 10:59
    how do you go from those liabilities
    to the actual syndrome?
  • 10:59 - 11:01
    Because people like myself,
  • 11:02 - 11:04
    when we walk into a playroom,
  • 11:04 - 11:06
    we recognize a child as having autism.
  • 11:07 - 11:09
    So how do you go from multiple causes
  • 11:09 - 11:11
    to a syndrome that has some homogeneity?
  • 11:12 - 11:15
    And the answer is what lies in between,
  • 11:16 - 11:17
    which is development.
  • 11:18 - 11:22
    And in fact, we are very interested
    in those first two years of life,
  • 11:22 - 11:26
    because those liabilities
    don't necessarily convert into autism.
  • 11:26 - 11:28
    Autism creates itself.
  • 11:29 - 11:33
    Were we to be able to intervene
    during those years of life,
  • 11:34 - 11:39
    we might attenuate for some, and God
    knows, maybe even prevent for others.
  • 11:40 - 11:41
    So how do we do that?
  • 11:42 - 11:45
    How do we enter that feeling of resonance,
  • 11:45 - 11:48
    how do we enter another person's being?
  • 11:49 - 11:52
    I remember when I interacted
    with that 15-month-old,
  • 11:52 - 11:54
    the thing that came to my mind was,
  • 11:54 - 11:57
    "How do you come into her world?
  • 11:57 - 12:01
    Is she thinking about me?
    Is she thinking about others?"
  • 12:02 - 12:05
    Well, it's hard to do that,
  • 12:05 - 12:07
    so we had to create the technologies.
  • 12:07 - 12:09
    We had to basically step inside a body.
  • 12:09 - 12:12
    We had to see the world through her eyes.
  • 12:13 - 12:16
    And so in the past many years,
  • 12:16 - 12:18
    we've been building these new technologies
  • 12:18 - 12:20
    that are based on eye tracking.
  • 12:20 - 12:24
    We can see, moment by moment,
    what children are engaging with.
  • 12:26 - 12:28
    This is my colleague, Warren Jones,
  • 12:28 - 12:31
    with whom we've been building
    these methods, these studies,
  • 12:31 - 12:32
    for the past 12 years.
  • 12:33 - 12:36
    And you see there a happy five-month-old,
  • 12:37 - 12:42
    a five-month little boy
    who is going to watch things
  • 12:42 - 12:44
    that are brought from his world:
  • 12:45 - 12:47
    his mom, the caregiver,
  • 12:47 - 12:51
    but also experiences that he would have
    were he to be in his daycare.
  • 12:52 - 12:56
    What we want is to embrace that world
    and bring it into our laboratory,
  • 12:56 - 12:58
    but in order for us to do that,
  • 12:58 - 13:02
    we had to create
    these very sophisticated measures,
  • 13:02 - 13:06
    measures of how people, how little babies,
  • 13:06 - 13:10
    how newborns, engage
    with the world, moment by moment.
  • 13:10 - 13:12
    What is important and what is not.
  • 13:13 - 13:16
    Well, we created those measures,
  • 13:16 - 13:19
    and here, what you see
    is what we call a funnel of attention.
  • 13:20 - 13:21
    You're watching a video --
  • 13:22 - 13:24
    those frames are separated
    by about a second --
  • 13:24 - 13:28
    through the eyes of 35 typically
    developing two-year-olds.
  • 13:29 - 13:31
    And we freeze one frame,
  • 13:32 - 13:35
    and this is what the typical
    children are doing.
  • 13:35 - 13:39
    In this scan pass, in green here,
    are two-year-olds with autism.
  • 13:39 - 13:45
    So on that frame, the children
    who are typical are watching this,
  • 13:46 - 13:49
    the emotion of expression
    of that little boy
  • 13:49 - 13:51
    as he's fighting a little bit
    with the little girl.
  • 13:51 - 13:53
    What are the children with autism doing?
  • 13:53 - 13:56
    They are focusing on the revolving door,
  • 13:57 - 13:59
    opening and shutting.
  • 14:00 - 14:03
    Well, I can tell you that this divergence
    that you're seeing here
  • 14:03 - 14:06
    doesn't happen only
    in our five-minute experiment.
  • 14:06 - 14:09
    It happens moment by moment
    in their real lives,
  • 14:10 - 14:14
    and their minds are being formed
    and their brains are being specialized
  • 14:14 - 14:18
    in something other than what is happening
    with their typical peers.
  • 14:19 - 14:25
    Well, we took a construct
    from our pediatrician friends,
  • 14:25 - 14:27
    the concept of growth charts --
  • 14:27 - 14:29
    you know, when you take
    a child to the pediatrician,
  • 14:29 - 14:32
    and you have physical height and weight.
  • 14:33 - 14:36
    Well, we decided we were going
    to create growth charts
  • 14:36 - 14:37
    of social engagement.
  • 14:38 - 14:41
    We sought children
    from the time they're born.
  • 14:42 - 14:45
    What you see here on the x-axis
  • 14:45 - 14:49
    is two, three, four, five,
    six months and nine,
  • 14:49 - 14:51
    until about the age of 24 months.
  • 14:51 - 14:54
    This is the percent of their viewing time
  • 14:54 - 14:56
    that they're focusing on people's eyes,
  • 14:56 - 14:58
    and this is their growth chart.
  • 14:58 - 15:01
    They start over here --
    they love people's eyes --
  • 15:01 - 15:03
    and it remains quite stable.
  • 15:03 - 15:07
    It sort of goes up a little bit
    in those initial months.
  • 15:07 - 15:11
    Now, let's see what's happening
    with babies who became autistic.
  • 15:12 - 15:13
    It's something very different.
  • 15:14 - 15:17
    It starts way up here,
    but then it's a free fall.
  • 15:18 - 15:22
    It's very much like they brought
    into this world the reflex
  • 15:22 - 15:25
    that orients them to people,
    but it has no traction.
  • 15:26 - 15:28
    It's almost as if that stimulus -- you --
  • 15:29 - 15:32
    you're not exerting
    influence on what happens
  • 15:32 - 15:34
    as they navigate their daily lives.
  • 15:35 - 15:42
    Now, we thought those data
    were so powerful, in a way,
  • 15:43 - 15:46
    that we wanted to see what happened
    in the first six months of life,
  • 15:46 - 15:49
    because if you interact
    with a two- and a three-month-old,
  • 15:49 - 15:52
    you'd be surprised
    by how social those babies are.
  • 15:54 - 15:56
    And what we see
    in the first six months of life
  • 15:56 - 16:01
    is that those two groups
    can be segregated very easily.
  • 16:02 - 16:05
    And using these kinds
    of measures and many others,
  • 16:05 - 16:09
    what we found out
    is that our science could, in fact,
  • 16:09 - 16:11
    identify this condition early on.
  • 16:12 - 16:15
    We didn't have to wait
    for the behaviors of autism
  • 16:15 - 16:17
    to emerge in the second year of life.
  • 16:18 - 16:23
    If we measured things that are,
    evolutionarily, highly conserved,
  • 16:23 - 16:25
    and developmentally very early-emerging --
  • 16:25 - 16:28
    things that are online
    from the first weeks of life --
  • 16:28 - 16:30
    we could push the detection of autism
  • 16:30 - 16:32
    all the way to those first months,
  • 16:32 - 16:34
    and that's what we are doing now.
  • 16:37 - 16:40
    Now, we can create
    the very best technologies
  • 16:40 - 16:43
    and the very best methods
    to identify the children,
  • 16:44 - 16:47
    but this would be for naught
    if we didn't have an impact
  • 16:47 - 16:49
    on what happens in their reality
    in the community.
  • 16:50 - 16:52
    Now we want those devices, of course,
  • 16:52 - 16:55
    to be deployed by those
    who are in the trenches --
  • 16:55 - 16:59
    our colleagues, the primary care
    physicians, who see every child --
  • 17:00 - 17:02
    and we need to transform
    those technologies
  • 17:02 - 17:05
    into something that is going
    to add value to their practice,
  • 17:05 - 17:08
    because they have to see so many children.
  • 17:08 - 17:12
    And we want to do that universally
    so that we don't miss any child.
  • 17:12 - 17:13
    But this would be immoral
  • 17:15 - 17:20
    if we also did not have an infrastructure
    for intervention, for treatment.
  • 17:20 - 17:24
    We need to be able to work
    with the families, support the families,
  • 17:24 - 17:27
    to manage those first years with them.
  • 17:28 - 17:31
    We need to be able to really go
  • 17:31 - 17:35
    from universal screening
    to universal access to treatment,
  • 17:35 - 17:38
    because those treatments
    are going to change
  • 17:38 - 17:41
    these children's
    and those families' lives.
  • 17:42 - 17:49
    Now, when we think about what we [can]
    do in those first years,
  • 17:49 - 17:53
    I can tell you, having been
    in this field for so long,
  • 17:54 - 17:56
    one feels really rejuvenated.
  • 17:57 - 18:02
    There is a sense that the science
    that one worked on
  • 18:02 - 18:04
    can actually have an impact on realities,
  • 18:04 - 18:07
    preventing, in fact, those experiences
  • 18:08 - 18:11
    that I really started
    in my journey in this field.
  • 18:11 - 18:15
    I thought at the time
    that this was an intractable condition.
  • 18:15 - 18:18
    No longer. We can do
    a great deal of things.
  • 18:19 - 18:21
    And the idea is not to cure autism.
  • 18:21 - 18:23
    That's not the idea.
  • 18:24 - 18:26
    What we want is to make sure
  • 18:26 - 18:28
    that those individuals
    with autism can be free
  • 18:28 - 18:32
    from the devastating consequences
    that come with it at times,
  • 18:33 - 18:36
    the profound intellectual disabilities,
    the lack of language,
  • 18:36 - 18:38
    the profound, profound isolation.
  • 18:40 - 18:42
    We feel that individuals
    with autism, in fact,
  • 18:42 - 18:44
    have a very special
    perspective on the world,
  • 18:44 - 18:46
    and we need diversity.
  • 18:46 - 18:50
    And they can work extremely well
    in some areas of strength:
  • 18:50 - 18:53
    predictable situations,
    situations that can be defined.
  • 18:53 - 18:56
    Because after all,
    they learn about the world
  • 18:56 - 18:58
    almost, like, about it,
  • 18:58 - 19:01
    rather than learning
    how to function in it.
  • 19:01 - 19:05
    But this is a strength if you're working,
    for example, in technology.
  • 19:06 - 19:10
    And there are those individuals
    who have incredible artistic abilities.
  • 19:10 - 19:12
    We want them to be free to do that.
  • 19:12 - 19:15
    We want that the next generations
    of individuals with autism
  • 19:15 - 19:19
    will be able not only
    to express their strengths,
  • 19:19 - 19:20
    but to fulfill their promise.
  • 19:21 - 19:23
    Well, thank you for listening to me.
  • 19:23 - 19:25
    (Applause)
Title:
A new way to diagnose autism
Speaker:
Ami Klin
Description:

Early diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder can improve the lives of everyone affected, but the complex network of causes make it incredibly difficult to predict. At TEDxPeachtree, Ami Klin describes a new early detection method that uses eye-tracking technologies to gauge babies' social engagement skills and reliably measure their risk of developing autism. (Filmed at TEDxPeachTree.)

more » « less
Video Language:
English
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TEDTalks
Duration:
19:44
  • The English transcript was updated on 11/21/2016. At 05:27, "phylatic" was changed to "phyletic." At 13:46, "emotion of expression" was changed to "emotional expression."

English subtitles

Revisions Compare revisions