The research group led by Yoshio Mitsube, director of the Center for Child and Mental Development, Kanazawa University, will utilize the world's only "cerebral porcelain meter capable of simultaneous parent-child measurement" in collaboration with the research group of the Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University. By doing so, we clarified three phenomena that occur in the brain when an infant with autism spectrum disorder and his mother stare at each other.
This research is the world's first medical research report using the world's only "magnetoencephalogram capable of simultaneous parent-child measurement" in Kanazawa.A magnetoencephalograph is a device that measures and analyzes the weak magnetic field of the brain from above the scalp in a way that is completely harmless to the body. It was developed for infants in addition to adults.By arranging the superconducting sensor according to the size of the infant's head so as to cover the entire head, it became possible to record nerve activity with high sensitivity.It is said that this is the only magnetoencephalograph for infants in Japan.
Furthermore, in order to simultaneously measure the activity of the entire brain when parents and children are staring at each other, the world's only system that can simultaneously measure the magnetoencephalogram for adults and the magnetoencephalogram for infants was established with Osaka University in 2014. Developed in joint research.
The three points clarified by this research using this magnetoencephalograph are as follows.
・ In autism spectrum disorders with severe symptoms, the brain response caused by "staring at each other" decreases.
・ If the brain response of an infant with autism spectrum disorder is reduced, the response of the mother's brain is also reduced.
・ When the mother staring at each other makes a nod to the child, the reaction of the mother's brain is strong.
Since there have been no similar research reports so far, nothing has been elucidated about the brain activity between mother and child that fosters sociality.This time, the simultaneous measurement of brain function while parents and children are staring at each other is expected to be one step to "visualize" the development of the sociality (social brain) of the child's brain.It is currently under study whether similar phenomena can be observed in the mother-child relationship in the case of healthy children.The study does not show that parental involvement is the cause of autism spectrum disorders.The research results were published in the online version of the American scientific journal "Scientific Reports" on October 10, Japan time.
