In the past year, several studies have suggested that brain scans will soon help clinicians diagnose autism. But many experts say these scans are far from — and may never be — ready for use as diagnostic tests.

Autism is diagnosed based on the severity and variety of its symptoms. This makes it very difficult to diagnose and easy to confuse with other disorders, such as language delay and intellectual disability, cautions Isabelle Rapin.

Smaller-than-normal volume in several brain regions, including a region involved in relaying motor signals, could be a marker for repetitive behavior in 3-year-old children, according to a study published 7 April in Autism Research.

At 12 months of age, infant siblings of children with autism have a brain response to unfamiliar faces that is characteristic of typical children at a younger age, according to a study published 26 March in Brain Topography. This developmental delay could be used as an early biomarker for autism.

A delayed response to unexpected changes in sound frequency is a marker for language impairment and autism, according to a study published in March in Biological Psychiatry.

An analysis of brain scans correctly distinguishes between people with autism and controls more than 90 percent of the time, according to a study published today in Autism Research.

A five-minute brain scan can help diagnose developmental disorders including autism in young children, headlines blared last week. That may be true several years down the line, but I’d say it’s a pretty big exaggeration of the actual findings.

An imaging study widely interpreted as heralding a diagnostic brain scan for autism is more preliminary than popular media reports would indicate, according to experts familiar with the work.

People with autism struggle to see their own role in social situations. That’s the conclusion from the first study to scan individualsʼ brains while they interact with another person – a technique that could lead to a diagnostic tool.