A article posted in Medical News Today talked about a research study led by CHOP which used a magnetoencephalography to look at the magnetic fields in 115 children. They believe that many children who have the deletion or duplication of the 16p11.2 chromosome who also usually happen to have autism are having more trouble with their language skills. They took 115 children, 43 with 16p11.2 deletion, 23 with 1611p.2 duplication and 49 healthy controls and found that children with the deletion have 23 millisecond, in a study done in 2010 Roberts found a 11 millisecond a brief interval of time, but it also meant that a child who heard the word elephant was still processing the 'el' sound as other students were moving on. With these finds Robert and his team are trying to figure out if this is a issue with the brain not sending information quick enough of information not getting to the brain quick enough. Many studies have been done on kids in terms of brain and behavior, but none so far on genetics and behavior. Robert's end goal is to try to make drug that can treat this 23 millisecond gap between processing and responding through further research and trials.
I personally think this research is ground breaking, children with autism have so much knowledge and understanding, but it is often hard for them to convey their intelligence. If Roberts can produce a drug that makes it easier for people to process and relay information quicker it would be ground breaking for many children. I also think that this kind of work will lay the ground work for other types of disorders like down syndrome in trying to alleviate symptoms due to chromosomal abnormalities.
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While this is very interesting, what exactly is the significance of 23milliseconds? Is this study being done to fund research for a drug simply to fix the time gap or will this lead to other research? If its simply for the gap then I cant really see the point or a few milliseconds.
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