Researchers have for the first time identified the type of neurons that produce gamma rhythms, the high-frequency brain waves that are thought to go awry in autism and schizophrenia.
A flaw in brain imaging analysis is more widespread than anyone realized: When choosing from the enormous amounts of data generated from an fMRI experiment, scientists often ‘double dip,’ or use the same subset for setting up a hypothesis and for confirming it.
Applying an emerging technique that combines genetic data and brain scans, researchers have identified two new genes involved in schizophrenia. The method, called ‘imaging genetics’, holds promise for linking genes to brain function in complex psychiatric disorders, including autism.
A few talks today at IMFAR suggest that procedural memory — which we use for everything from riding a bike to conjugating regular verbs — is impaired in people with autism.
People with autism have trouble recognizing facial expressions and judging the emotional tone of spoken words — or at least, that’s what many researchers say.
The answer to a long-standing mystery in visual neuroscience may also help explain how people with autism perceive faces, according to a study published in March in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
You’ve probably noticed that newsstands everywhere are covering a huge breakthrough in autism: the discovery of the first common genetic risk variants for autism.
Autism results from a diverse mix of common and rare genetic variants, many of which act in pathways that form and maintain connections between neurons. That’s the message from the largest genome-wide association studies of autism to date, published online today in Nature.
Scientists have found a handful of genes — including two that had not previously been associated with autism — that may increase risk of the disorder.