Researchers have sliced a human brain into more than 7,400 slivers, and stained and scanned them to create ‘BigBrain,’ the most detailed three-dimensional map of a human brain to date, they reported 21 June in Science.
Two new studies raise questions about one of the most frequently reported biological signatures of autism: a larger-than-normal head.
People who show strong autism traits tend to have weak connections between an area of the brain involved in introspection and social memories and other brain regions, according to a study published 5 April in PLoS One.
Advanced imaging techniques may reveal more precise pictures of how of the brain’s regions communicate with one another. How much of the neurodevelopmental riddle of autism lies in these tracts?
New techniques to scan the brain can produce exquisitely detailed views of white matter, which contains the long cellular fibers that connect neurons. Many of the advances are emerging from the Human Connectome Project, a five-year push to map the brain’s wiring.
Researchers should be cautious about interpreting the results of studies that rely on diffusion tensor imaging, says Carlo Pierpaoli.
Teenagers with autism have an atypical balance between the right and left sides of the corpus callosum, which connects the two hemispheres of the brain, according to a study published 23 November in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.
Young boys with fragile X syndrome or autism have larger brains overall than controls do, but the two groups show enlargement of different parts of the brain, according to an imaging study published in September in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
Children with a deletion in the 22q11.2 chromosomal region have one of two distinct sets of symptoms, and only one of those is associated with autism, according to a study published 28 August in Research in Developmental Disabilities.
Researchers have charted patterns of gene expression in a three-dimensional representation of the human brain. The results, published 20 September in Nature, show that different brain regions have distinct molecular and functional roles.