Scans comparing activity in different sections of the brain were performed on 59 infants, all of whom had autistic siblings.  Children with autistic siblings are considered 20 times more likely to develop autism than the general population.  Of those 59 infants, 11 later developed autism, 9 of which had been correctly predicted by the brain scans.  Such technology is currently too new to tell if it’s always reliable, and too expensive for most parents to afford.  But being able to predict autism at a younger age would give parents an opportunity to address it at a much younger age, when the child’s brain is far more receptive to new things.

development of autism in the future.