Its machine-learning model accurately distinguished ADHD patients from those with fetal alcohol syndrome 77 percent of the time, according to a paper published online Aug. Going into the project, the team said, it had no preconceived ideas about how each disorder would affect gaze.
The researchers then used machine learning, or an algorithm that learns without being given explicit instructions, to pick out the differences in gaze between the two groups. Itti and his colleagues recorded eye movements as patients with one or the other disease watched 20 minutes of television.
Both diseases have similar symptoms, such as short attention span and hyperactivity, but the treatments are very different, said researcher Laurent Itti of the University of Southern California. Some preliminary results suggest that at 9 months, high-risk babies' pupils dilate more when they look at emotional faces, suggesting they are more stimulated by the emotional content, she said.Įye movement also could help doctors differentiate between fetal alcohol syndrome and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder ( ADHD). If a screening tool catches kids younger, when their neural connections are still changing rapidly, "maybe you can start retraining the brain before it gets solidified in a way that's maladaptive," Wagner said. Wagner's team studies babies between 6 months and 12 months old to try to detect autism sooner than the typical diagnoses, which are made around age 2. Meanwhile, Jennifer Wagner, a researcher at Children’s Hospital in Boston, is comparing the gaze patterns of low-risk children and siblings of those with autism, who have a 20 percent chance of developing the disorder. Right now the test identifies 40 percent of those with autism, but it doesn't wrongly flag toddlers who don't have the disorder, Pierce told LiveScience. Typically developing children focus on people, while kids with autism, who suffer from social and language deficits tend to look more at the shapes, the researchers say. Toddlers watch two videos play simultaneously - one of people doing yoga, and another of moving geometric shapes. Pierce's team recently created a one-minute screening test to identify autism in high-risk kids.