Rapamycin, a drug given to suppress immune rejection after transplants, improves social behavior in mice with features of autism, reports a study published in the January issue of Brain Research Bulletin.
By mapping the brains of not 1 but 27 mouse models of autism, researchers are making sense of the widely divergent structural changes seen in autism brains, they reported Wednesday at the 2013 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in San Diego.
Two studies in autism rat models suggest that a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet and an unapproved drug for dementia may improve some symptoms of the disorder, according to unpublished results presented Sunday at the 2013 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in San Diego.
A new test of mouse intelligence closely mimics the types of assays used with people and detects a subtle learning deficit reminiscent of one seen in teenagers with autism, according to findings presented Saturday at the 2013 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in San Diego.
Researchers have developed a new test that reveals complex repetitive behaviors in BTBR mice, a mouse strain with features resembling those of autism, according to a study published 27 August in the Journal of Neuroscience Methods.
Eating a high-fat, low-carbohydrate — or ‘ketonogenic’ — diet for five weeks makes a mouse model of autism more sociable, according to a study published 5 June in PLoS One. The results suggest that this diet may be beneficial for children with autism.
A strain of mice with autism-like behaviors is missing a corpus callosum, a bundle of nerve fibers that connects the two hemispheres of the brain. Two studies published this month investigate the link between these two features.
Exposure to immune factors during gestation may account for the social deficits seen in a mouse model of autism, according to a study published 15 May in the Journal of Neuroimmunology. Fetuses of a normal mouse strain develop the same social deficits when exposed to the immune factors.
The BTBR mouse model, an asocial strain often used to study autism, may not be optimal for autism research, suggests an unpublished study presented today at the 2013 International Meeting for Autism Research in San Sebastián, Spain.
A rare birth defect offers a unique perspective on the connectivity theory of autism. Up to one-third of those missing all or part of the corpus callosum, a thick tract of nerve fibers connecting the left and right brain hemispheres, meet the diagnostic criteria for autism, several recent studies suggest.