A study led by the Ventola Lab in the Yale Child Study Center has been recognized as one of the top twenty most impactful studies of 2016 by the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) at the IACC Meeting on April 26th in Bethsada, MD.
The study, Brain responses to biological motion predict treatment outcome in young children with autism, was published in Translational Psychology in November 2016. “We were able to predict how a child would respond to treatment, based on the pattern of brain activity before we started,” said Pamela Ventola, MD, Assistant Professor at the Yale Child Study Center, and senior author of the paper.
Published at a time when autism subtypes are being identified and categorized with greater precision, Ventola’s research demonstrated for the first time that measurable patterns of brain activity can be analyzed with enough precision to predict an individual’s response to a particular treatment, in this case Pivotal Response Therapy (PRT).
We were able to predict how a child would respond to treatment, based on the pattern of brain activity before we started
Pamela Ventola, MD
Ventola’s investment in this area comes directly from her clinical work with families. “I see the resources families put into treatments to help their children. Any work we can do to connect children to the right treatment that will be effective for them—any work towards that end is exceptionately impactful and novel.”
The entire list of recognized studies is here.