A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Two: brain patterns (Identity)

by David Turell , Monday, July 09, 2018, 20:43 (2328 days ago) @ David Turell

More proof you have to work with the brain you/soul are given. Autistic children of different types have two different patterns of cortical folds:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brains-of-children-with-autism-show-unusual-...

"The brains of children with autism fold differently than those of their typical peers, two new studies suggest. But whether they are unusually smooth or convoluted depends on location and age.

"Certain regions of the brain’s outer layer, the cerebral cortex, are more intricately folded in school-age children and adolescents with autism than they are in controls, according to one of the studies.

"In young people, this folding difference may be the most obvious structural feature of the autism brain,

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"By contrast, preschoolers with autism do not show exaggerated folding unless they have enlarged brains, according to a second study. And one brain region is atypically smooth in preschoolers with autism.

Together, the studies add to evidence that folding follows a different developmental path in autism brains than in controls.

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"Young people with autism show a lot of folding in patches of the left temporal and parietal lobes—regions responsible for processing sound and spatial information respectively, the study found. They also show excessive folding in temporal and frontal regions on the right side of the brain, including areas that govern decision-making and motor skills.

"They have less folding in one spot on the occipital cortex, the brain’s visual hub.

"The researchers also studied scans from 31 children with autism and 31 controls, aged 7 to 18 years, from the Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange (ABIDE), an open-access data repository. They found pronounced folding in temporal and frontal areas close to those in their original sample.

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"In the other study, researchers scanned the brains of 105 boys with autism and 49 controls at age 3. They found that the brains of children with autism are atypically smooth in a brain region responsible for recognizing faces. But otherwise, there are no unusual folding patterns in the brains of the children with autism.

"In a subgroup of 17 boys with autism who have enlarged brains, however, the researchers found increased folding in five areas of the cortex that sit along a line dividing the hemispheres.

"This finding suggests that the children with enlarged brains have a specific subtype of autism, says lead investigator Christine Nordahl, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of California, Davis. “We, more and more, are convinced that they really represent a distinct subgroup not only in terms of their brain size but their pattern of brain differences,” associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of California, Davis. “We, more and more, are convinced that they really represent a distinct subgroup not only in terms of their brain size but their pattern of brain differences.”

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"Together, the two studies suggest that the cortex both folds and unfolds differently in autism. But exactly how this story unfolds must await new data from both teams: Müller and his team plan to study toddlers and middle-aged adults with autism, and Nordahl’s group aims to follow the same children into adolescence."

Comment: More evidence, one can only produce the type of thought from the specific brain you are given, but with plasticity the brain can be altered in its capacities.