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EEG as a Diagnostic Tool for Neuropsychological Disorders

Neurodevelopmental Disorders

The term Neurodevelopmental disorders has been referred to some sort of disruption or impairment in the essential development of the brain. The neurodevelopmental disorders start in someone’s early life and can continue throughout the lifespan of that specific person. Someone, suffering with the neurodevelopmental disabilities have difficulties to acquire new skills, find difficult to continue a specific behavior. Some may have the attention deficit problem, due to which it is hard to pay attention on a particular task.

The causes for neurodevelopmental disorders are sometimes the genes complexity. Whereas the environmental factors also play vital role in the developing of neurodevelopmental disorders in some cases.

Learning Disabilities

Children with learning disabilities find hard to accumulate the new information and had difficulty to acquire new skills. They show problematic behavior while coping with an unusual situation on their own. People with learning disability take a little longer time to learn new things than the usual. In the severe case, they need special assistance to perform their normal routine duties.

The possible causes for the learning abilities are related with illness of mother during the pregnancy. The problematic birth can be a cause for the impairment of brain development. Sometimes, the children inherit this disability from family known as “Inherited Learning Disabilities”.

Dyslexia

Dyslexia is also a neurodevelopmental disorder and. Children with dyslexia have problems with academic skills. They can understand the verbally spoken word but find hard to understand the same word in written form .

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is observed in the children. The children identified with ADHD have difficulty to focus on a particular task and are unable to control their impulsive behavior. The common signs of the ADHA in children are that they used to do daydreaming a lot. They forget things most often. They are more talkative. They might have the sleep problems and can suffer from anxiety disorders as well. The known causes for ADHD are the use of alcohol and smoking during pregnancy.

A child born with low weight can possibly have the ADHD.

Autism Spectrum disorder (ASD)

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder. A child suffering from the autism spectrum disorder will find hard to have social interactions. The disturbed behavior starts from the early childhood and continue to affect the daily functioning throughout his/her life. Some children and adults with ASD can perform their daily activities while some may need special support to perform their activities. The diagnosis of the autism spectrum disorder includes the assessment of the intellectual abilities and the language proficiency.The autism spectrum disorder is related with neural connectivity. Whereas the neural connectivity is a construct which cannot be measured easily.

Children suffering from the ASD have difficulties in the social communication and are resistant to get involved in social interactions with a repetitive sequence of this behavior. Even, the autistic children have the difficulty to understand the feelings of other people and do not express their own feelings. In the case of child population, the estimated population of children under the influence of the ASD is about to be 1%.

Different Techniques for the Diagnosis of Neurodevelopmental Disorder

An experiment was administered on 59 infants of with an age of 6 years for the diagnosis of ASD using neuroimaging. The study implied the cross-validated machine algorithm at the age of 6 months for 59 infants with 100% of predictive findings (9 out of 11 infants at the risk of ASD). These chosen infants were from the high-risk families for ASD at the age of 24 months. The experiment results were highly in line with scores of social behaviors, language, motor development and the repetitive behavior when assessed clinically. These findings have high significance for the early detections of the complex neurodevelopmental disorder and can lead to the development of proper inventions for ASD.

The early diagnosis for the autism spectrum disorder is crucial for the development of inventions. A 6-year old child underwent the positron emission tomography (PET) scan and was detected with the malfunction of both sides of temporal hypometabolism. The experiment used the normal magnetic resonance imaging which involved 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose brain positron emission tomography (PET) as an additional investigation. According to the  experiment conclusion, although PET can provide the brain images and can lead to further investigations of the specific part of the brain for diagnosis, but only the brain images are not enough effective for the diagnosis of the ASD.

EEG as a Diagnostic Tool

EEG- As a Diagnostic tool for Autism

The autism spectrum disorder is diagnosed by the observation of behavioral symptoms during the second year of life.  The early detection of the disorder is problematic due to the lack of the technology and the presentation of the disorder. The EEG is low cost diagnostic tool for the autism spectrum disorder and can provide the measurements for the brain signals at the age of 3 months. In 2018, an experiment was carried out while using the EEG for the diagnosis of ASD. The researchers collected the EEG measurements from the 99 infants whose older siblings were diagnosed with ASD, including 89 low risk control group infants. The projections of clinical diagnostic results of ASD or not ASD were highly parallel while using the EEG measurements from an early age of 3 months. The experiment suggest that the beneficial biomarker can be extracted from the EEG measurements.

Investigations carried out from the Boston University and University of San Francisco involved 99 infants with high risk for ASD and 89 with low risk for the ASD to find the way for early diagnosis for the ASD beginning at the age of 3 months to the age of 36 months. The children were assessed through the EEG and Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) several times. The authors used the different functions of EEG data for the creation of algorithms to make predictions for ASD diagnosis. The investigators find that the EEG algorithms were highly useful for the distinguishing the ASD children from those who are not ASD at very early age of 3 months with a rate of 100 % specificity and positive predictive value (PPV). Eventually, 3 children from the low risk group and 32 from the high risk were diagnosed with ASD. The study findings have offered the promising future diagnostic tool for diagnosis of ASD at an early age.

The “Network Science’s” research and time series analysis have suggested that the neural activities can be measured by the mean of Electroencephalography (EEG). The investigation suggest that the EEG signal analysis have the potentials to detect the abnormalities within the brain using three different analysis methods of EEG (Functional connectivity analysis, spectra power analysis and information dynamics). EEG can show the significant difference within the ASD patients and non ASD patients. However, to make generalization of the results is hard due to the heterogeneity factor and not possible with the use of single analysis method. Furthermore, the study suggested that there is need of more research with a large sample size with powerful study designs for developing a specified tool for the diagnosis of the ASD.

Conclusion

Neurodevelopmental disorders are complex disorders. They usually developed from a very early age of a specific person. The disturbed behavior as a result of these disorders can have impact on the whole life of a person. The early detection of this category of disorders is crucial as they are no well-known causes for them. The different researches have attempted to make the diagnosis at an early age but have limitations along. The literature review emphasis on the further research along with strong study designs comprises of large sample size for proper diagnosis. The proper diagnosis would further lead to the necessary measures for the treatment.