Coloring book
Sebastian Seung invites an online community of citizen scientists to revolutionize neuroscience by mapping connections between the brain’s neurons.
Charting the structure and function of the brain’s many circuits may unravel autism’s mysteries.
Sebastian Seung invites an online community of citizen scientists to revolutionize neuroscience by mapping connections between the brain’s neurons.
New work suggests that the skin, a common source for deriving induced pluripotent stem cells, is a genetic mosaic. What does this mean for stem cell research? Are there implications for the human brain?
Mutations in SYNGAP1, which are associated with severe intellectual disability and an increased risk of autism, do damage by speeding up the rate at which neuronal connections mature, according to a mouse study published 9 November in Cell.
Postmortem brains from individuals with autism have astrocytes that are smaller but denser than in control brains, according to a study published 21 September in the Journal of Neuroinflammation. The researchers found similar alterations in a mouse that lacks the autism-linked gene NLGN3.
Several studies in the past two years have claimed that brain scans can diagnose autism, but this assertion is deeply flawed, says Nicholas Lange.
Head movement can bias brain imaging results, undermining a leading theory on the cause of autism, say Ben Deen and Kevin Pelphrey.
Because infants born into families with autism are more likely to develop the condition, studying them might lead to ways to diagnose people in the general population earlier.
Solving the riddle of autism genetics will require looking beyond the growing list of candidate genes to epigenetics and personalized medicine.
Some of the genetic variability seen in stem cells derived from skin arises from differences in the skin cells themselves, according to a study published 18 November in Nature. The findings have implications for both stem cell research and our understanding of human biology.
Children with a deletion in the 22q11.2 chromosomal region have one of two distinct sets of symptoms, and only one of those is associated with autism, according to a study published 28 August in Research in Developmental Disabilities.