The human brain forms trillions of synapses using only a few thousand cell-surface proteins to guide the process. How can distinct functional circuits form when there are far more neurons than molecules to guide them? New findings in mice provide an answer to this numerical puzzle: Across the brain, neurons repeatedly reuse the same pair […]
Growing awareness: This week, we highlight two papers from the Infant Brain Imaging Study, a U.S.-based collaboration to describe developmental trajectories in infants, particularly those with an autistic sibling, who have elevated odds of being diagnosed with autism, referred to as high-likelihood infants. One paper found that executive function measures stayed the same from 12 […]
A new type of progenitor cell found deep in the developing human brain spawns a steady supply of inhibitory interneurons and glia, according to a new study. The findings point to a potential origin of the inhibitory imbalance linked to autism and other conditions. The study is a “tour de force” and “adds an important […]
A new method for delivering genes to the primate brain in utero enables researchers to adapt existing genetic tools to monkeys for the first time, according to a new study. The approach could be particularly useful for studying development, says Cory Miller, professor of psychology at the University of California, San Diego, who was not […]
Deep brain structures—including the striatum and thalamus—are more dysregulated in some people with autism than was previously recognized, according to two new preprints that analyze multiple brain regions. During mid-gestation, genes linked to profound autism are most active in the thalamus, one of the studies found. And people with variants and chromosomal alterations linked to […]
Multiple mouse and human brain atlases track the emergence of distinct cell types during development and uncover some of the pathways that decide a cell’s fate. The findings were published today in a collection of Nature papers. The papers highlight the timing and location of cell diversification and offer fresh insights into the evolution of […]
Male and female human fetuses show distinct patterns of gene activity and DNA regulation in the cerebral cortex, according to a new analysis of thousands of individual brain cells. The study offers one of the most detailed maps to date of how such activity differs between boys and girls’ brains during the second trimester. It […]
Butterfly effect: Disabling the ATRX gene in forebrain excitatory neurons during embryogenesis alters brain size, structure and connectivity in adult mice, according to a new preprint. Previous work has shown that this intervention induces autism-like behaviors and thus appears to model ATR-X syndrome in people. ATRX-deficient mice of both sexes were smaller than controls, but […]
Over the objections of the authors, the editors of Nature have retracted a 2022 paper on the cellular origins of medulloblastoma after an independent team’s reanalysis questioned the paper’s key findings. The reanalysis was published as a Matters Arising article today in Nature at the same time as the retraction notice. The 2022 paper, led […]
Early overgrowth: In their first few weeks of development, organoids with two intact copies of CHD8 (top) developed excitatory neurons more slowly than organoids missing a copy of the gene (bottom). Editor’s Note This article was originally published 11 January 2021, based on preliminary findings presented at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting. The results […]
The Importance of Heart For thousands of years humans have considered the heart as the center of the universe. Indeed, in deference to this idea Egyptian royalty was buried with all organs removed except the heart. Our own society in 2012 continues this myth by relating many emotions such as love, hurt, grief and passion […]
Illustration by Laurenne Boglio Longer days in the Northern Hemisphere, longer threads about autism research on Twitter — welcome to the first Community Newsletter from Spectrum this February. Liz Pellicano, professor of education at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, threaded together 14 tweets full of COVID-19 lockdown lessons for autism education. The insights, published in […]
