A temporary increase in neuronal activity in the cortex of newborn mice leads to social deficits in adulthood, according to a new preprint. Those adult rodents also show changes in brain electrical activity, gene expression and connectivity that are reminiscent of autism. The analysis lends support to a prominent hypothesis of autism’s origins, which holds […]
Autism-related behaviors and susceptibility to seizures both arise from hyperactivity in a key region of a sensory-information-processing circuit in the brain, a new study finds. The results may help explain the frequent co-occurrence of autism and epilepsy and point to a new therapeutic target. According to current estimates, about 12 percent of people with autism […]
Cell save: Deleting one copy of TSC1 in only Purkinje cells (red) reduces activity in those cells and alters social behavior in mice; a brief treatment with rapamycin seems to block these effects.Courtesy of Peter Tsai Briefly suppressing an overactive signaling pathway in juvenile mice that have an autism-linked mutation blocks them from developing some […]
Illustration by Laurène Boglio In July, psychologist Nichola Raihani tweeted that her paper on social anxiety had been rejected with a zero result. In a single sentence review, one reviewer pointed out “the lack of significant results”, she wrote, and recommended submission to a more specialized journal. “I thought I would tweet it mostly because […]
Calming Rituals: Autistic children and adolescents use some restricted and repetitive behaviors to regulate emotions, so therapies that target emotion regulation may be more beneficial than therapies that target specific behaviors. Studio Omg / Getty Images Some types of restricted and repetitive behavior become more common in autistic children and adolescents over time, depending on […]
Illustration by Laurène Boglio Welcome to the second edition of the By the Numbers newsletter. At Spectrum, we do our best to summarize the latest in autism research – and sometimes the best summary comes in the form of a chart or map. In this newsletter we bring interesting new research results to the point, […]
Illustration by Laurène Boglio Hello and welcome to this week’s community newsletter! I am your host, Chelsey B. Coombs, the engagement editor of Spectrum. If you would like to continue receiving this newsletter after today, please click here to receive an email from Mailchimp and update your settings. We start this week with a tweet […]
