Mutations in CUL3, a leading autism gene, may disrupt the movements of neurons during development and interrupt the precise assembly of the brain, a new study suggests. Correcting this misdirection could lead to a therapy for autism in people with CUL3 mutations, the researchers say. Mutations that …

When clinicians suspect someone has autism, they often turn to screening tools — standardized questionnaires or checklists that measure autism traits. If a high score corroborates their hunch, they refer the person to a specialist for a diagnostic evaluation. These screening tools typically come wit…

Pregnant mice treated to mount an immune response have pups that show autism-like behaviors and altered levels of immune cells, according to a new study. Injecting the pups in adulthood with immune cells from other mice reverses both traits, the study also shows. The work may help to explain the lin…

Hello, and welcome to this week’s Community Newsletter! I’m your host, Chelsey B. Coombs, Spectrum’s engagement editor. We’ve got some great tweets for you this week, so let’s dive in. Our first thread comes from Robert McCutcheon, clinical research fellow in psychiatry at King’s College London in t…

The post Spotted around the web: Autistic parents, dopamine signaling, African neuroscience research appeared first on Spectrum | Autism Research News. Source: Spectrum News

Mice missing the autism-linked gene SHANK3 use more neurons to engage in social behavior than control mice do, reflecting a more disorganized, less efficient brain signaling network, according to a new study. Mutations in SHANK3 show up in 1 to 2 percent of autistic people and can also lead to a rel…

Two new wireless devices can synchronize neuronal activity in multiple mice at once, enabling researchers to explore how brain-to-brain synchronization underlies social behaviors. The devices, described in Nature Neuroscience in May, make use of optogenetics, a technique in which pulses of light act…

In theory, researchers know how to reverse many of the debilitating effects of Rett syndrome: Boost expression of the protein MECP2. People with the condition typically have a mutated copy of the MECP2 gene and, as a result, deficient levels of its protein. This loss leads to intellectual disability…

Zemi Yenus, a pioneering teacher and advocate for autistic children in Ethiopia, died of COVID-19 on 11 May. She was 60. We, Zemi’s colleagues, are deeply saddened by her passing. She was a kind and determined mother of a son with autism. And she was instrumental in raising autism awareness in…

Eye-gaze patterns when people look at a face relate more to alexithymia, a condition marked by difficulties recognizing one’s own emotions, than to autism, according to a new study. The findings suggest that some emotion-processing differences considered core to autism are actually due to alex…