Interesting new study on autism

[velcrobott]

\link{http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4751075.stm\here}

wow thats really interesting, gives a whole new perspetive on autism doesn't it?

Would be interesting to see some more research but this particular study sounds quite flawed to me. first of all, i don't think you can draw any meaningful conclusions about anything on a sample as small as 2 groups of 15 people!

I mean, the researchers saw that the people with autism werent daydreaming when looking at the cross and jumped to the conclusion that it is because they can't daydream? you can't make that assumption. I am sitting here not standing on my head - I am not does not mean i could not!

Perhaps they were asked to 'concentrate on the cross' or similar, and so were thinking about the cross as opposed to letting their minds drift.

I would be more inclined to take it seriously if they had wired people up for, say 24 or even 48 hours and monitored brain activity over that time.

I tell you what though - i really object to the article saying "brain activity in 15 people with autistic spectrum disorders and 15 healthy people" Don't know about yours, but my boys are perfectly bloody healthy thank you sooooo much! AND they daydream. So there

I suppose it shows you get different results in NT and ASD subjects. You're right though it doesn't show they can't daydream. The thing that annoys me about these things is that they always apply it to the whole spectrum of autism, one end my be completely different from the other, but you can't do this sort of research on the ds1's of this world.