autism tagged posts

Excess fat triggers immune cells to overeat serotonin in the brain of developing male mice, leading to depression-like behavior. More than half of all women in the United States are overweight or obese when they become pregnant. While being or becoming overweight during pregnancy can have potential health risks for moms, there are also hints that it may tip the scales for their kids to develop psychiatric disorders like autism or depression, which often affects one gender more than the other.

What hasn’t been understood however is how the accumulation of fat tissue in mom might signal through the ...

Up to 90% of people with autism suffer from gut problems, but nobody has known why. New research reveals the same gene mutations – found both in the brain and the gut – could be the cause.

The discovery confirms a gut-brain nervous system link in autism, opening a new direction in the search for potential treatments that could ease behavioural issues associated with autism by targeting the gut.

Chief Investigator Associate Professor Elisa Hill-Yardin, RMIT University, said scientists trying to understand autism have long been looking in the brain, but the links with the gut nervous system have only been recently ex...

Raúl Méndez and Eulàlia Belloc from the Translational Control of Cell Cycle and Differentiation Lab at IRB Barcelona.
Credit: IRB Barcelona

The protein CPEB4, which coordinates the expression of hundreds of genes required for neuronal activity, is altered in the brains of individuals with autism, according to new research. Recent years have brought about important breakthroughs in autism research through the genetic analysis of thousands of these individuals. Researchers have been able to find correlations between defects in the expression and/or function of about 200 genes and susceptibility to autism. However, the bases underlying the dysregulation of these genes in subjects with autism were unknown.

An international team headed by José Lucas, researcher at the Spanish National Researc...

This image shows the selective response of a subplate neuron to sounds of different frequencies (horizontal axis) and volume levels (vertical axis). Warmer colors indicate a stronger response. Subplate neurons are among the first neurons to form in the cerebral cortex and were previously thought to serve a primarily structural role in brain development. A new study suggests that these neurons do, in fact, transmit sensory information. This cell only responded to higher frequencies, especially at low volume levels; increased volume expanded the cell’s frequency range of response. Prior to this study, the ability of the cortex to selectively respond to certain sounds was thought to emerge later in brain development. Credit: Patrick Kanold

Brain cells that support early structural development...