Health Report.Doctors currently identifyautism disordersby observing behavior.Autism affects socialand communication skills.It usually first appearsin young children.Now, researchers thinkthey have found a biologicaltest for autism.A team from Harvard Universityin Massachusetts and the Universityof Utah developed it.The test uses an MRIor magnetic resonance imaging machineto look for abnormalities in the brain.Other studies have not shownmajor structural differencesbetween the brains of autistic peopleand those without autism.But the latest study did not lookat the large structures of the brain.Instead, Harvard's Nicholas Lange saysthe team looked at the circuitry-- the chemical and electrical pathwaysthat link the different parts of the brain.NICOLAS LANGE: "The brain may be OK,the parts that do the work may be OK.But the wiring, the cables betweenthe points in the brain,one to another,may be disrupted in some way."The scientists did MRI scanson sixty males between the agesof eight and twenty-six.Thirty of them had been identifiedas having mild autism,a form also known ashigh-functioning autism.The researchers lookedat the connections in two areasof the brain that controllanguage and social behavior.They used a technique calleddiffusion tensor imaging.This way they could observemicroscopic fibers to see how wellthe brain circuitry was organized.Nicholas Lange says the picturesshowed a clear differencebetween the people with autismand those without.He compared it to spaghetti.NICHOLAS LANGE: "There's a bundleof uncooked spaghetti andthere's clear directionality to that.It's nice and well-organized,as opposed to a cooked bowl of spaghetti that's just a tangle of-- it looks like spaghetti.And that's the way the wiring can be.It can be either very tangled it can be very organized."The researchers saythe tests were able to predict withninety-four percent accuracywhich of the people had beenfound to have autism.The researchers repeated their studywith new participantsand got equally strong results.The results appearin the journal Autism Research.But Doctor Lange says the testis not ready yet for general use.The study was smalland only involved males.It also used older children and adults.Doctor Lange says that, in time,the test might be able to identifyautism in children under three.Three is currently the youngest ageat which most doctors willdiagnose an autism disorder.But most parents begin tosuspect a problem by the age of two.And that's the VOA Special EnglishHealth Report.