Researchers have created sponge-like assemblies of hundreds of thousands of short fragments of RNA, which can be used to dampen the expression of certain genes, according to a study published 26 February in Nature Materials.
A ten-year initiative announced last month by the Allen Institute for Brain Science aims to catalog the development, structure and function of neural circuits in the brain at an unprecedented level of detail.
A computerized video analysis tool can simultaneously track two mice and catalog their social interactions. The results were published 4 March Nature Methods.
Researchers have generated neurons from the blood cells of individuals with autism, according to a study published 7 March in Neuroscience Letters.
Two large-scale neuroscience projects aim to integrate many different types of information about the brain into cohesive models and to share resources with the research community.
Researchers have developed a tool that can predict whether DNA mutations that change a single base pair are likely to alter RNA splicing, a process that modifies the sequence of mRNA, the genetic message that codes for protein. The results were published 10 February in Bioinformatics.
Prenatal genetic tests that can detect copy number variations, including those linked to autism, could raise tough questions for doctors and parents.
Researchers have developed functional magnetic imaging devices that are optimized to fit children’s heads, according to a study published in the December issue of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine. These tools increase the quality of the data and deter head motion, which research suggests can lead to spurious results.
Engineers have debuted several new robots to help children with autism, including a boy that can sense when it’s touched, a female head that expresses a wide range of emotions and a low-cost fuzzy penguin that can track a child’s eye movements.
Simulating neuronal development in culture with cells derived from human brain tissue offers a new way to study the function of autism-linked genes, according to research published in the February issue of Molecular Psychiatry.