Aditi Shankardass: A second opinion on learning disorders

When I was 10 years old,

a cousin of mine took me on a tour of his medical school.

And as a special treat,

he took me to the pathology lab

and took a real human brain

out of the jar

and placed it in my hands.

And there it was,

the seat of human consciousness,

the powerhouse of the human body,

sitting in my hands.

And that day I knew that when I grew up,

I was going to become a brain doctor,

scientist, something or the other.

Years later, when I finally grew up,

my dream came true.

And it was while I was doing my Ph.D.

on the neurological causes

of dyslexia in children

that I encountered a startling fact

that I'd like to share with you all today.

It is estimated that one in six children,

that's one in six children,

suffer from some developmental disorder.

This is a disorder that

retards mental development in the child

and causes permanent mental impairments.

Which means that each and every one of you here today

knows at least one child that is suffering

from a developmental disorder.

But here's what really perplexed me.

Despite the fact that each

and every one of these disorders

originates in the brain,

most of these disorders

are diagnosed solely on the basis

of observable behavior.

But diagnosing a brain disorder

without actually looking at the brain

is analogous to treating a patient with a heart problem

based on their physical symptoms,

without even doing an ECG or a chest X-ray

to look at the heart.

It seemed so intuitive to me.

To diagnose and treat a brain disorder accurately,

it would be necessary to look at the brain directly.

Looking at behavior alone

can miss a vital piece of the puzzle

and provide an incomplete, or even a misleading,

picture of the child's problems.

Yet, despite all the advances in medical technology,

the diagnosis of brain disorders

in one in six children

still remained so limited.

And then I came across a team at Harvard University

that had taken one such advanced medical technology

and finally applied it,

instead of in brain research,

towards diagnosing brain disorders in children.

Their groundbreaking technology

records the EEG, or the electrical activity

of the brain, in real time,

allowing us to watch the brain

as it performs various functions

and then detect even the slightest abnormality

in any of these functions:

vision, attention, language, audition.

A program called Brain Electrical

Activity Mapping

then triangulates the source

of that abnormality in the brain.

And another program called

Statistical Probability Mapping

then performs mathematical calculations

to determine whether any of these abnormalities

are clinically significant,

allowing us to provide a much more accurate

neurological diagnosis

of the child's symptoms.

And so I became the head of neurophysiology

for the clinical arm of this team,

and we're finally able to use this technology

towards actually helping

children with brain disorders.

And I'm happy to say that I'm now in the process

of setting up this technology here in India.

I'd like to tell you about one such child,

whose story was also covered by ABC News.

Seven-year-old Justin Senigar

came to our clinic with this diagnosis

of very severe autism.

Like many autistic children,

his mind was locked inside his body.

There were moments when he would

actually space out for seconds at a time.

And the doctors told his parents

he was never going to be able

to communicate or interact socially,

and he would probably never have too much language.

When we used this groundbreaking EEG technology

to actually look at Justin's brain,

the results were startling.

It turned out that Justin was almost

certainly not autistic.

He was suffering from brain seizures

that were impossible to see with the naked eye,

but that were actually causing symptoms

that mimicked those of autism.

After Justin was given anti-seizure medication,

the change in him was amazing.

Within a period of 60 days,

his vocabulary went from two to three words

to 300 words.

And his communication and social interaction

were improved so dramatically

that he was enrolled into a regular school

and even became a karate super champ.

Research shows that 50 percent of children,

almost 50 percent of children

diagnosed with autism

are actually suffering from hidden brain seizures.

These are the faces of the children

that I have tested

with stories just like Justin.

All these children

came to our clinic with a diagnosis

of autism, attention deficit disorder,

mental retardation, language problems.

Instead, our EEG scans revealed

very specific problems hidden within their brains

that couldn't possibly have been detected

by their behavioral assessments.

So these EEG scans

enabled us to provide these children

with a much more accurate neurological diagnosis

and much more targeted treatment.

For too long now, children with developmental disorders

have suffered from misdiagnosis

while their real problems have gone undetected

and left to worsen.

And for too long, these children and their parents

have suffered undue frustration and desperation.

But we are now in a new era of neuroscience,

one in which we can finally look

directly at brain function in real time

with no risks and no side effects, non-invasively,

and find the true source

of so many disabilities in children.

So if I could inspire

even a fraction of you in the audience today

to share this pioneering diagnostic approach

with even one parent whose child

is suffering from a developmental disorder,

then perhaps one more puzzle

in one more brain will be solved.

One more mind will be unlocked.

And one more child who has been misdiagnosed

or even undiagnosed by the system

will finally realize his or her true potential

while there's still time

for his or her brain to recover.

And all this by simply watching the child's brainwaves.

Thank you.

(Applause)