Autistic scientist to pioneer new diagnostic tool

A SCOTTISH scientist who is also autistic will collaborate with academics at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston on groundbreaking work into helping people with his own condition.

Aberdeen University academic James Cusack’s research will focus on infants and is aiming to help identify the condition as early as possible.

Currently, the earliest at which children can be diagnosed as having the condition is between two and three years old.

If successful, 26-year-old Mr Cusack’s work could result in diagnosing children born with the condition within months of birth.

He said: “At the moment the behaviours are measured by observation.

“This involves people sitting with a checklist just observing their actions, measuring the child’s behaviour by a very strict criteria. This method is time consuming, subject to high training costs, it subject to human error, a whole range of problems.”

Mr Cusack plans to work with MIT to harness existing computer technology that accurately measures emotional responses in the human body and facial expressions, to speed up the process of diagnosis of autism.

“At the moment it can take a person 30 minutes to analyse one minute of observation video footage,” he said. “We could have an automated system that meant we could shoot hours of footage of a child in their natural environment, instead of a clinic, and the computer would analyse it for us.”

He is currently looking for funding to support the research.

Mr Cusack was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome aged 12. He said that he felt this gave him an empathy and deep understanding for his research.