Four years after scientists devised a way to paint individual mouse neurons in different colors, two independent groups have adapted the technique for use in the fruit fly. Both papers, replete with stunning images of fly neurons, appeared 6 February in Nature Methods.
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.
A rare childhood speech disorder related to social anxiety is associated with a gene linked to autism, according to a study published in December in Biological Psychiatry. The results suggest that the two disorders share a common mechanism.
The ‘intense world theory’ says autism stems from hyper-sensitive reactions to the world, allowing the individual to zoom in on tiny details, but ignore the bigger picture.
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.
Scientists are changing their minds about the role of microglia, the brain’s strongest and most agile soldiers against damage and infection. In healthy brains, microglia help build and eliminate synapses, the junctions between neurons, according to a study published 2 November in PLoS Biology.
Changes in the bodies of neurons may account for communication deficits in the brains of people with autism, according to a study published 3 November in The Journal of Neuroscience.
An analysis of brain scans correctly distinguishes between people with autism and controls more than 90 percent of the time, according to a study published today in Autism Research.
A variant of the autism risk gene CNTNAP2 may alter the brain to emphasize connections between nearby regions and diminish those between more distant ones, according to a study published 3 November in Science Translational Medicine.
The parts of the brain that help us pay attention to some things and not others have specialized regions for different senses, such as sight and sound, according to a paper published online in November in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.