Illustration by Laurène Boglio

On LinkedIn, Eunji Kong of Columbia University described the second part of her Ph.D. thesis, “Dynamic and stable hippocampal representations of social identity and reward expectation support associative social memory in male mice,” published 5 May in Nature Communications.

Casey Maguire of Harvard University posted a link to his team’s new work, “Increased striatum transduction with an engineered AAV capsid and selective transduction of striatal cholinergic neurons using a truncated human choline acetyltransferase promoter,” published 8 May in Molecular Therapy: Methods & Clinical Development.

Baptiste Lacoste of the University of Ottawa shared a link to his team’s latest study, “16p11.2 haploinsufficiency reduces mitochondrial biogenesis in brain endothelial cells and alters brain metabolism in adult mice,” published 6 May in Cell Reports.

Joshua Dubnau of Stony Brook University and Michael Lombardo of the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia each posted a Twitter thread describing the preprint “A study of gene expression in the living human brain,” posted 26 April on medRxiv.

Important, but should not be surprising. No animal model neuroscientist would wait for the animals to die of natural causes, find them in their cage or vial the next day, put the corpse in a refrigerator until the postdoc arrived, then isolate RNA. https://t.co/GxWd3VfCq9

— Josh Dubnau (@joshdubnau) May 7, 2023

Wow… 80% of genes are differentially expressed in living versus post-mortem prefrontal cortex tissue. Importantly implications for studying the ‘living’ biology of the human brain, rather than heavy reliance on what post-mortem tissue shows us. https://t.co/SJyqBZnpvp

— Michael Lombardo (@mvlombardo) May 7, 2023

“Wow this blows my mind. But indeed, hardly surprising- mRNA profiles of dead brains may not correspond to the same brains when they were alive,“ wrote Christos Proukakis of University College London in a quote tweet.

wow this blows my mind. But indeed, hardly surprising- mRNA profiles of dead brains may not correspond to the same brains when they were alive… just as well that i study brain DNA! https://t.co/tzMhy83Glo

— Christos Proukakis (@proukakis) May 7, 2023

Richard Bethlehem of Cambridge University shared a link to a study called “Mapping human brain charts cross-sectionally and longitudinally,” published 8 May in PNAS.

Some stellar work from Maria Di Biase, @yetianmed, @jakob_seidlitz , @Aaron_A_B and @AndrewZalesky thoroughly evaluating longitudinal and cross-sectional #braincharts! Wonderful @UniMelb, @CHOP_Research & @Cambridge_Uni/@CambPsych collab to be part of. https://t.co/IZflQ0VSug

— Richard Bethlehem (@rai_bethlehem) May 9, 2023

Andrew Zalesky of the University of Melbourne, Magdalena Martínez-García of the University of British Columbia, Kuldeep Kumar of the University of Montreal and James Booth of Vanderbilt University all quote tweeted Bethlehem.

Working with NORMATIVE MODELS of brain measures?

Check out this work by Maria Di Biase & co!

– Models fitted with x-sectional data can underestimate age-related changes

-Individual trajectories are difficult to infer, highlighting importance of modelling measurement errors https://t.co/VIPORgQzon pic.twitter.com/cNO01WwqWj

— Andrew Zalesky (@AndrewZalesky) May 9, 2023

“As we endeavor to accurately map human brain development, we must also incorporate longitudinal measurements of the brain” One proud longitudinal researcher of the ??? here https://t.co/uakcn8QpID

— Magdalena Martínez-García PhD (@MagdaMartinezGa) May 9, 2023

Mapping human brain charts cross-sectionally and longitudinally.

Another stellar normative modeling paper. https://t.co/GOFXZNAWUu

— Kuldeep Kumar (@kkumar_iitkgp) May 9, 2023

Brain charts inferred from cross-sectional data underestimate brain changes directly observed in longitudinal data https://t.co/fiYqzZIH4t

— James Booth (@DrJamesBooth) May 9, 2023

That’s it for this week’s Community Newsletter! If you have any suggestions for interesting social posts you saw in the autism research sphere, feel free to send an email to [email protected].

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Cite this article: https://doi.org/10.53053/RVRS7649