r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Jan 30 '25

Neuroscience A low-cost tool accurately distinguishes neurotypical children from children with autism just by watching them copy the dance moves of an on-screen avatar for a minute. It can even tell autism from ADHD, conditions that commonly overlap.

https://newatlas.com/adhd-autism/autism-motion-detection-diagnosis/
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u/plinocmene Jan 30 '25

Doesn't dyspraxia more specifically effect motor planning while this isn't even a symptom but rather a sign of autism? So then a study seeing if there is a difference between dyspraxia without autism and autism either with or without dyspraxia would be even more interesting.

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u/Plenkr Jan 30 '25

I'd be curious about this as well. Because problems with proprioception can be a symptom of autism because it's a sense and it can be affected by sensory issues just like with the other senses. But autistic people have sensory issues very differently from each other. There are some commonalities like being sensitive to loud noises is one that is common in autism. But where one doesn't have issue with smells but has issues with interoceptions (telling hunger cues, temperature, need to pee), the other has a big issue with taste and none with touch. So naturally.. not all of them have issues with proprioception.

What that symptoms is a requirement for though, is dyspraxia..

So either I'm not understanding the research and I'm missing something. Or they're picking up the autistic kids that struggle with proprioception and missing the ones that don't.

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u/helpful_helper Jan 30 '25

I haven't dug in deep, but this seems to be focused not so much on the movements themselves but rather seems to be akin to a loopback test of mirror neurons and all the related executive functions and motor planning/execution.

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u/Plenkr Jan 30 '25

While I don't understand entirely what you're saying it does make more sense that way.