Brain imaging reveals distinct signatures in the language circuits of young toddlers with autism while they sleep, according to unpublished data presented yesterday at the IMFAR 2010 meeting in Philadelphia.When sleeping toddlers with autism hear language, they show more activity in the right superior temporal gyrus, a major hub for language processing, the researchers found. This is strikingly different from healthy controls, who show more activity in this region on the left side of the brain. In the healthy adult brain, grammar and vocabulary are processed mainly in the left side of the brain.Although the patterns in children change slightly over time, left-hemisphere dominance is always greater in healthy children than in children with autism between ages 1 and 4, says Lisa Eyler, assistant adjunct professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, who presented the work. "This could be used as a sensitive, brain-based biomarker to use as an early warning sign of autism," she says.Read more at...SFARI, May 2010.