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Spectrum: Autism Research News

Tag: brain imaging

February 2011

‘Mind blindness’ affects moral reasoning in autism

by  /  17 February 2011

High-functioning adults with autism pass false belief tests with ease, but struggle with moral judgment in real-life situations.

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Window into brain reveals real-time growth of neurons

by  /  15 February 2011

A new technique allows researchers to watch the long-term effects of disease on the brain, according to a study published in the February Nature Medicine. The approach could help scientists study changes in the brain that result from neurological disorders such as autism.

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Families hint at diverse effects of chromosome 16p deletion

by  /  14 February 2011

Two new studies of families carrying glitches on a region of chromosome 16, which has been strongly associated with autism, reveal the wide range of effects caused by the variant and narrow the list of possible culprit genes.

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Lost in translation

by  /  8 February 2011

The National Institutes of Health is adding a new $1 billion institute for early-stage drug development. But the agency’s plan to fund it by closing the National Center for Research Resources is causing some consternation.

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Cognition and behavior: Connectivity askew deep in autism brains

by  /  7 February 2011

Children with autism show abnormally strong synchrony between deep and outer layers of the brain, according to a study published online 31 December in Biological Psychiatry.

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Brain expands too fast, shrinks too soon in autism

by  /  7 February 2011

The brains of people with autism show three distinct periods of abnormal development — overgrowth in infancy, prematurely arrested growth in childhood, and shrinking between adolescence and middle age — according to a study in Brain Research.

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January 2011

Molecular mechanisms: Scientists debut fruit fly ‘connectome’

by  /  19 January 2011

Using tricks of genetic engineering, researchers in Taiwan have created the first comprehensive map of the myriad neuronal connections in the fruit fly brain. The findings appeared 11 January in Current Biology.

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Scientists debut fruit fly ‘connectome’

by  /  19 January 2011

Using tricks of genetic engineering, researchers in Taiwan have created the first comprehensive map of the myriad neuronal connections in the fruit fly brain. The findings appeared 11 January in Current Biology.

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Some siblings of children with autism only share traits

by  /  10 January 2011

The goal of studying siblings of children with autism is to identify an early diagnostic marker for the disorder. What researchers are finding instead are distinct traits shared by family members who remain healthy.

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High-tech national project set to trace brain’s connections

by  /  4 January 2011

Over the next five years, dozens of researchers funded by the $40 million ‘NIH Human Connectome Project’ will map the circuits of the human brain, tracing neural pathways and learning how different regions work together in synchrony.

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