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Spectrum: Autism Research News

Tag: OCD

April 2011

Genetics: New autism mouse reveals candidate gene

by  /  6 April 2011

A new mouse model for autism has obsessive behaviors and is less social and emits fewer vocalizations than controls, according to a study published 17 March in Behavioral Brain Research. These features could be be the result of much higher levels of FAM46, a gene of unknown function that may be involved in signaling between cells.

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January 2011

Mind games

by  /  7 January 2011

As more drugs enter clinical trials for fragile X syndrome and soon, hopefully, for autism, the placebo effect will become an important consideration.

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July 2010

Obsessive mice

by  /  21 July 2010

The biology of obsessive-compulsive disorder becomes even more baffling with the release of two new mouse models, each implicating a different type of brain cell.

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May 2010

Multiple diagnoses

by  /  6 May 2010

A whopping 95 percent of children with autism have at least three other psychiatric disorders, and 74 percent have five or more, according to a study in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

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February 2010

Dog pedigrees unearth genes for psychiatric disease

by  /  22 February 2010

Researchers are using dogs as models of psychiatric and behavioral conditions, including obsessive-compulsive disorder and autism.

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Variants in trust hormone receptor up the risk for autism

by  /  1 February 2010

Genetic variations that tweak the brain’s release of oxytocin — a hormone involved in social bonding and establishing trust — may increase the risk of developing autism or traits of the disorder, according to three new studies published in the past few months.

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Super-cool synapses

by  /  1 February 2010

A chilling new technique shows the intricate and coordinated activity of previously mysterious pieces of the synapse, the all-important junction between neurons that allows cells to talk to each other.

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January 2010

Guoping Feng: Unearthing the roots of compulsive behavior

by  /  4 January 2010

Guoping Feng’s perseverance has proven a boon to the hundreds of neuroscientists who rely on his most celebrated scientific achievement: two dozen mouse strains engineered to have brightly colored brain cells. By creating the first robust mouse model of obsessive-compulsive disorder, Feng has also found a way to study repetitive behaviors, one of the three core characteristics of autism.

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November 2009

Variants associated with autism over-hyped, company says

by  /  6 November 2009

Variations linked to autism and schizophrenia crop up in people with a large variety of conditions, including bipolar disorder, seizures and obsessive-compulsive disorder, as well as in healthy people. This notion gained new support from unpublished data presented at the World Congress for Psychiatric Genetics in San Diego.

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October 2009

Imaging software explains contradictory brain data

by  /  18 October 2009

Computer software that maps the three dimensions of the brain has found that people with schizophrenia have deep grooves and small volumes in brain areas associated with planning and executive control.

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