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Spectrum: Autism Research News

Tag: hypothalamus

October 2015

Linking autism, sex, gender and prenatal hormones

by  /  19 October 2015

Elevated levels of fetal sex steroid hormones such as testosterone may explain many of autism’s unique features.

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February 2015

Autism gene guides early neuron development

by  /  12 February 2015

The little-studied autism gene ANKRD11 helps to package DNA in the nucleus and plays a critical role in the early growth and positioning of neurons.

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October 2014

Analysis of mouse brains maps subgroups of autism

by  /  13 October 2014

A brain imaging study of 26 mouse models of autism reveals a broad range of structural abnormalities. The models cluster into groups with similar features, reports a study published 9 September in Molecular Psychiatry.

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August 2013

Cognition and behavior: Oxytocin linked to brain connections

by  /  2 August 2013

An autism-linked variant in the receptor for oxytocin may alter connections in the brain, according to a study published 17 May in Neuroimage.

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March 2012

Looking at autism through the fruit fly

by  /  6 March 2012

The characteristics, interactions and roles of autism-associated genes in the fruit flies’ brain will help guide how we think about the same genes in humans, says Ralph Greenspan.

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June 2011

Molecular mechanisms: Autism linked to small hypothalamus

by  /  17 June 2011

Children with autism have less brain matter than normal in a region that synthesizes the social hormones oxytocin and vasopressin, according to a study published 29 April in Biological Psychiatry.

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April 2011

An ape with ‘autism’

by  /  15 April 2011

Similarities between us and our closest ape relatives — chimpanzees and bonobos — have shaped our understanding of what it means to be human. The latest surprise is Teco, a young bonobo who shows behaviors that look suspiciously similar to those associated with autism.

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July 2010

Deep sequencing questions role of imprinted genes in autism

by  /  8 July 2010

The mouse brain has more than 1,300 regions for which the copy from one parent is expressed more often than the one from the other parent, according to two studies published today in Science. These so-called imprinted genes have been proposed to cause some cases of autism, but the researchers say their findings do not support that theory.

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May 2010

Rat study sniffs out vasopressin’s role in social behavior

by  /  7 May 2010

Neuroscientists have discovered a population of cells in the smell-perception area of the rat brain that express the hormone vasopressin. The study, published in Nature, begins to unpack the complicated molecular interactions of the hormone in the brain, which could lead to new autism treatments.

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April 2010

Rett gene found to control genome structure in neurons

by  /  9 April 2010

The protein that is mutated in Rett syndrome controls the expression of other genes by changing the way DNA packs into a cell, rather than turning genes on or off, according to a study published in Molecular Cell.

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