April is World Autism Month, recognizing April 2 as World Autism Awareness Day, sanctioned by the United Nations in a global effort to spread awareness about autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and how it affects the 75 million people worldwide that fall on the spectrum. Plenty of misinformation about ASD exists because many people do not recognize the range of symptoms, attributing autism only to those with intellectual disabilities. While there are many people on the spectrum facing these challenges, there are also many others with high cognitive ability. Often, these are the people that go undiagnosed until later in life because they can function independently and efficiently, and in some cases, at higher-than-average efficiency.

Recognizing the signs and symptoms of ASD early in a person’s life allows them to build and develop the skills necessary to strengthen areas of weakness. This can include reducing overreaction to sensory overstimulation, reducing obsessive compulsive tendencies, improving social competence and improving interactive, reciprocal conversational abilities allowing for connection with others.

Symptomatic improvement can be made using therapies such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), applied behavior analysis (ABA) and neurofeedback, a type of biofeedback which targets the root of symptoms within the brain using quantitative EEG technology. Individualized protocol is then developed to retrain the patient’s brain naturally using visual and auditory positive reinforcement. Due to neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to change and create new neural pathways, the brain learns how to function more calmly and efficiently.