Children with autism and their unaffected twins have heads that are significantly larger than average, according to a study published 16 January in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.
Young boys with fragile X syndrome or autism have larger brains overall than controls do, but the two groups show enlargement of different parts of the brain, according to an imaging study published in September in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
The brains of newborn pigs are similar in shape and mature at the same rate as those of human infants. That makes piglets a good model for studying neurological disorders, according to a study published in the November issue of The Journal of Nutrition.
Several studies in the past two years have claimed that brain scans can diagnose autism, but this assertion is deeply flawed, says Nicholas Lange.
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.
Heavier newborns have larger brains later in life, and a larger cerebral cortex — the brain region responsible for high-level functions such as consciousness and language. The findings, published 19 November in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are the first to assess birth weight’s connection to brain development.
Mice with elevated levels of the immune molecule interleukin-6 have abnormally large brains, according to a study published 23 August in the International Journal of Neuroscience.
The action of certain maternal antibodies on the fetal brain may underlie the large brain size seen in some children with autism, according to preliminary findings from both monkey and human studies presented at a conference in Boston last week.
Knocking out an autism-linked gene called PTEN only in neural stem cells of the hippocampus, a brain region central to learning and memory, throws the development of new neurons off course in adult mice, according to research published last month in the Journal of Neuroscience.
By creating genetically engineered fish, two independent groups have identified genes in an autism hotspot on chromosome 16 that influence head size and brain development.