European Project Proposes Home-based Treatment of Autism
The European Commission is funding a project that, if successful, will bring more effective treatment for autism home — where technology may help children thrive.
The MICHELANGELO project will make assessment and therapy of autism a patient-centric home-based intervention system requiring minimal human involvement, and therefore will be extremely cost effective.
Methods include ICT and other technologies for assessing and treating the Autistic Spectrum Disorder in children where non-obtrusive techniques will be used.
Treatment becomes personalized to each child’s unique circumstance.
Other methods used are: A camera-based system using a wearable EEG system that takes snapshots of eye movement and will allow identification of stimuli that cause reaction in the child. The EEG with an eye-tracking device measures the brain activity while the patient is presented with stimuli and allows analysis to better characterize reactions and with the use of a set of advanced signal processing algorithms, accurate characterization of stimulus-specific brainwave anomalies and connectivity between different brain regions will allow therapies to be developed.
The MICHELANGELO project is expected to impact on a medical, social and economic level.
The results of its research work will be validated through an exploratory study with autistic children in France and in Italy.
