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Spectrum: Autism Research News

Tag: motor skills

May 2021
young woman sitting on steps alone, looking anxious.

Anxiety, self-harm elevated in people with DDX3X syndrome

by  /  3 May 2021

Girls and women with mutations in the autism-linked gene DDX3X may be particularly vulnerable to anxiety and self-harm.

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April 2021
Micrograph comparing locus coeruleus of 16p11.2 mutant mice and control mice show less active noradrenergic neurons in mutant mice.

Circuit flaw underlies motor learning issues in autism mouse model

by  /  12 April 2021

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.

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Ultrasound of a human fetus.

Slow head growth in utero may augur developmental difficulties

by  /  9 April 2021

The pace of fetal head growth is associated with behavioral outcomes two years later, according to a new study.

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March 2021
Mouse brain neurons labeled with a genetic marker show pink on a dramatic blue background.

Early training forestalls motor, memory difficulties in mouse model of Rett syndrome

by  /  24 March 2021

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.

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January 2021
3D image of a rat with motion sensor nodes on, in a clear cage.

Motion-capture videos reveal atypical grooming in fragile X rats

by  /  27 January 2021

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.

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girl about to catch a ball

Autistic children may have trouble predicting movements

by  /  15 January 2021

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.

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Four white mice on a rotarod, blue background.

Motor skills, brain volume affected in mouse model of DDX3X syndrome

by  /  13 January 2021

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.

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November 2020
Photograph of lab researchers at Ultragenyx

Gene therapy trial for autism-linked condition is put on hold

by  /  5 November 2020

All five participants in a clinical trial of a gene therapy for Angelman syndrome experienced leg weakness, leading sponsors to pause the study.

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October 2020
Ralf Schmid, the research director in Neurodevelopmental diseases at the Gene Therapy Program Orphan Disease Center, loads replicated mouse dna into wells in the gel before applying electric current to test the viability of the dna.

A quest for Quincy: Gene therapies come of age for some forms of autism

by ,  /  14 October 2020

A gene therapy for Angelman syndrome stands at the forefront of efforts to treat autism-linked conditions that stem from single genes.

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August 2020
Illustration showing two hands plugging cables into different areas of the brain, eg. prefrontal cortex, motor cortex, etc.

Motor difficulties in autism, explained

by  /  13 August 2020

Most people with autism have motor difficulties, ranging from an atypical gait to problems with handwriting, but researchers still have much to learn about their causes and consequences.

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