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Spectrum: Autism Research News

Tag: sleep

August 2023
A grid of four brain scans showing excess cerebrospinal fluid.

Is excess brain fluid an early marker of autism?

by  /  17 August 2023

Brain scans of hundreds of infants suggest that up to 80 percent of those with autism have unusual amounts of cerebrospinal fluid. Researchers are studying how this might contribute to the condition.

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July 2023
Portrait of Ashura Buckley.

The sleep/wake cycle and autism with Ashura Buckley

by  /  1 July 2023

The NIH neurologist talks about her research, her family and how mental health labels can be limiting.

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June 2023
A young woman sleeps at home wearing a Dreem headband and surrounded by stuffed animals.

Capturing autism’s sleep problems with devices nearable and wearable

by ,  /  6 June 2023

Next-generation trackers could realize a long-standing research dream: conducting sleep studies in large numbers of autistic people.

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February 2023
Picture of a caged mouse with an EEG implanted.

Adult Angelman mice get some benefit from boosting UBE3A gene expression

by  /  9 February 2023

The treatment eases the animals’ sleep troubles, suggesting it has clinically meaningful effects beyond what was thought to be a critical window in early life.

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January 2023
Graham Diering smiles in a portrait in his yard.

Asleep in the Mouse House with Graham Diering

by  /  12 January 2023

Memories from Diering’s life trace the rising star’s scientific path from raising lizards as a child and later exploring home brewing to heading a lab that investigates memory, sleep disturbances and early development in animals with autism-linked mutations.

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November 2022
A grid of clocks placed over a colorful gene sequence.

Autism-linked genes clock daily oscillations

by  /  14 November 2022

Rhythmic variations in the genes’ brain expression levels may help explain the sleep problems that often accompany the condition.

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October 2022
A young girl rubs her eyes in a dark room.

Autistic people at increased genetic risk of sleep problems

by  /  18 October 2022

Compared with their unaffected siblings and unrelated controls, children with autism harbor more copy number variants in genes that govern the circadian cycle or are associated with insomnia.

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September 2022
Lab mice (Mus musculus), tribe Balbc, three 13 day old babies with eyes still closed, laying side by side

Sleepy mice with autism-linked mutation struggle to fall asleep

by  /  12 September 2022

Mice with a mutated copy of SHANK3 fail to establish normal sleep patterns during development.

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August 2022
Illustration of hybrid objects: part light bulb, part lab vial, some in blue and some in red to signify null and replicated results.

Null and Noteworthy: Mind reading, specialist shortage, sleep problems source

by  /  23 August 2022

This month, a commonly used emotion-recognition test doesn’t perform as expected — nor does a survey of past efforts to train autism specialists or a hunt for the sources of the sleep problems that often accompany the condition.

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June 2022

Poor sleep shifts social circuit in mice

by  /  20 June 2022

Even temporary bouts of too little non-REM sleep can lead to long-term changes in how the animals respond to certain social situations, new research suggests.

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