FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2010
KLMNO
Measure of maturity could help identify risks such as autism
BY ROB STEIN Scientists have developed a
scan that can measure the matu- rity of the brain, an advance that somedaymight be useful for test- ing whether children are matur- ing normally and for gauging
whether teenagers are grown-up enough to be treated as adults. A federally funded study that
involved scanning more than 12,000 connections in the brains of 238 volunteers ages 7 to 30 found that the technique ap- peared to accurately differentiate between the brains of adults and children and determine roughly where individuals scored in the normal trajectory of brain devel- opment. While much more work is needed to validate and refine the
test, the technique could have a host of uses, including providing another way to make sure chil- dren’s brains are developing properly, in the sameway doctors routinelymeasure other develop- mental milestones. The scan could, for example, identify chil- dren who might be at risk for autism, schizophrenia and other problems because their brains are notmaturing normally. “If you are worried about a
kid’s development, in five min- utes you could do a scan and it
would spit out ameasurement of their brain maturity level,” said Nico Dosenbach, a pediatric neu- rology resident at St. Louis Chil- dren’s Hospital who helped de- velop the technique described in Friday’s issue of the journal Sci- ence. “That’s sort of the future.” But the test might be open to
premature use or abuse, experts warn.Will overly anxious or com- petitive parents demand that their children be tested to see how they score compared with their peers? Or to help them
EZ RE
The Nation
decide whether children are ma- ture enough, for example, to leave home for college? Will on- line dating services offer brain scans rating the maturity of po- tential mates? Will defense law- yers try touse scans toprove their young clients aren’t mature enough to be tried as adults? Or will prosecutors cite the scans to prove the opposite? Lawyers have already attempt-
ed to use other types of brain scans as high-tech lie-detector tests, even though scientists say
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A7 Brain-age scans seen as potential gauge of child development
the scans are far fromready. “I could imagine someone tak-
ing aminorwhowould have been charged under one set of law and say, ‘No, look. They have a brain that has greatermaturity and we should try them as adults,’ ” said Joseph Fins, chief of the division ofmedical ethics atWeill Cornell Medical College in New York. “I’m concerned about the poten- tial misuse of the nascent tech- nology.” Fins and other experts noted
that the public has a tendency to oversimplify and exaggerate the power of brain scans. “Ultimately, the question for
all these kinds of studies is: Does the brain imaging tell us more than we would learn by observ- ing or asking or examining the participants?” said Anjan Chat- terjee, a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania. “Maybe this represents a step towards that possibility, but we are not there yet.” Factors such as upbringing
and other environmental influ- ences remain important, several experts noted. “There is a strange hold that
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neuroscience has on people, as if it ismore real thanwhatwe know from observation,” Chatterjee saidinane-mail. “So, yes,parents might want such scans, but it is not clear that it would tell them something about their child’sma- turity that they don’t already know — or a careful observer already knows. As for boyfriends, maybe Internet dating sites could post such scans (maturity years). But the same applies.Thewoman in question could probably ask trusted friends and get a straight answer.” The technique developed by
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Dosenbach and his colleagues uses magnetic resonance imag- ing, already commonly used to measure activity in the brain by correlating increases and de- creases in blood flow to various brain regions. The scans are con- sidered safe because they do not use radiation. In this case, the technique was
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called functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging, or fcMRI, because it measured con- nections in the resting brains of the subjects. The researchers used a computer programto ana- lyze howconnections inthe brain changed as the mind matured, pinpointing 200 to produce an index of maturity. They found that close connection weakened while distant connections strengthened as the brain ma- tures, until about age 21 or 22. “This paper represents amajor
step forward,” said Jay N. Giedd, chief of the brain imaging unit at the child psychiatry branchof the National Institute of Mental Health. The research “represents the next major paradigm shift, looking at ‘connectivity,’ or the relationship amongst subcompo- nents of the brain,” he said. “High impact for sure.” Dosenbach estimated they
were able to distinguish between the brain of children ages 7 to 11 and that of adults ages 25 to 30 with 90 percent accuracy. They were able to differentiate be- tween adolescents and adults with 75 percent accuracy, Dosen- bach said in an e-mail. But Dosenbach warned that it
would be premature to start us- ing the technique to measure individualmaturity levels. “I would not endorse that,” he
said.
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