Hi, I'm a special education teacher with a child who exhibits signs of autism spectrum. His parents are immigrants with little English and little education. The child has not been declared as an autistic child though he was placed in a special education class. He is now in the fifth grade and may not be able to handle a 5th grade curriculum. I visited his Mom who told me that he was NOT autistic because he was given an MRI and she was told that he wasn't. I was under the assumption that MRI's were not a diagnostic tool for autism. Am I wrong? Can MRI's detect some form of autism. Does the brain look different?