"Recognizing facial emotions is a very early process, so young children could be screened for a predisposition to mental disease by measuring their brain connectivity while detecting emotional cues," she added.
An objective early marker of the disease would be especially useful for those already considered high risk, such as children with an immediate family member with the disease.
With early diagnosis to guide individually tailored treatment, it may be possible to reduce the effect of the disease and, in some cases, even prevent its outbreak.
"Current drugs treat the abnormal behaviour, not the brain disorder that is causing the behaviour," she said.
"We want to be able to develop more specific treatments based on objective brain markers, which are the actual characteristics of the disease," she added.
Source-ANI
SPH