Neurons in mice with an autism-linked mutation sprout extraneous protrusions, an overgrowth accompanied by above-average motor learning. Inhibiting a cell signaling pathway reverses the effect.
Researchers can roughly project what autistic children’s lives will look like years down the road. But how good is their crystal ball — and what are its benefits?
Over the course of a career spanning more than three decades, Huda Zoghbi has won almost every major biology and neuroscience research award that exists. More than 20 years since she discovered the gene behind Rett syndrome, she remains laser focused on unlocking the condition’s secrets and finding effective treatments.
Girls and women with mutations in the autism-linked gene DDX3X may be particularly vulnerable to anxiety and self-harm.
Mice missing a copy of chromosomal region 16p11.2 are slow to learn motor tasks and have dysfunction in a brain circuit associated with stress and movement, according to a new study. Normalizing this circuit’s activity corrects the learning deficit.
The pace of fetal head growth is associated with behavioral outcomes two years later, according to a new study.
Motor and memory training early in life postpones the onset of difficulties in those areas in a mouse model of Rett syndrome, and stimulating neurons involved in those skills appears to mimic the effects of training.
A Hollywood-inspired video tool that captures movement in three dimensions over extended time periods shows that rats lacking the autism-linked gene FMR1 have different grooming patterns than controls do.
Autistic children may have a harder time catching a ball than non-autistic children do, possibly because they are less able to predict its trajectory.
Mice missing one copy of the autism-linked gene DDX3X have smaller brains and worse motor skills than mice with both copies of the gene, according to a new unpublished study.