Autism Awareness Campaign - Why Early Intervention Important?

I received three questions based on my yesterday’s poster. All three were similar and here is what they meant.  “You lost first three years, for any intervention.  So what? You had many years after that.  You could have done therapies / treatments after 3 years also, which should have covered up for the lost years”.  My answer to these questions is in today’s poster.

Answer to the question “Why early intervention?” is beautifully depicted in the graph presented in today’s poster.  You can see how steep is the graph “brain’s ability to change” in early ages, and as age increases, the graph becomes flatter, implying ‘the brain’s ability gets decreased as age increases’.  The second graph “amount of effort” keeps increasing as the age increases, implying, more work to be done with brain as age increases.

This happens because of Neuroplasticity or brain plasticity, the ability of brain to modify its connections to re-wire itself.  Without this ability, brain would be unable to develop from infancy through to adulthood or recover from brain injury.  Neuroplasticity is maximal as a foetus or neonate, and then decreases as we age, although never going away completely.  

Is in’t it obvious from the graph [taken from a Harward University publication] that the ability to change brains decreases over time? So, spread the awareness. 0 - 2/3 years is very critical, for children.  I would say this is true, not just for those who show autism symptoms, but for all children.  Your ROI on efforts put on children at very early years is much higher than that compared to later years, in their development.