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Excitatory GABA
gamma-Aminobutyric Acid, otherwise more commonly known by its acronym, “GABA,” is a primary neurotransmitter of the central nervous system. While most of us may be more familiar with the concept of...
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Common Genetic Variants & Autism Risk
A letter was published this month in Nature Genetics by Gaugier et al. which has received notable attention. While many of us may be familiar with rare variants of genes that show strong association to...
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Maternal Inflammation during Pregnancy, Autism, & Big Brains
A paper published this month in Stem Cell Reports by Le Belle et al. out of UCLA suggests that maternal inflammation during pregnancy, such as occurs during an acute illness or a chronic disease, may...
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Where Have All the Axons Gone in Autism?
Okay, I’ll admit, the study of neurite (i.e., axon and dendrite) formation isn’t my area of expertise. My background is more in neuropathology and genetics. But I had been working on some revisions for...
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Neuronal Connectivity, Brain Size, & Gender
An article was published just this month in Frontiers by Hänggi et al. titled, “The hypothesis of neuronal interconnectivity as a function of brain size– A general organization principle of the human...
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Do Disturbances to Neuronal Maturation Lead to Autism?
A few weeks ago I summarized the findings of our latest study in Frontiers. Unfortunately, I gather as there was almost no interest in the blog that I did a very poor job of explaining why our findings...
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The Relationship between Premature Birth, Autism, and Stages of Brain...
Although it’s well known that neurogenesis or the production of new neurons occurs throughout the lifespan, there are only a few select areas of the brain that continue to do so. Examples include the...
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Some Tidbits on Shank3: What Role Does Its Mutation Play in Autism?
For as popular as the study of synapses and Shank3 have been in autism research, we are still fairly ignorant as to the roles this gene’s products might play in anything other than synapse formation....
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Specific Genetic Enhancers May Have Contributed to Larger Brains in Humans
Though humans don’t have the largest and most complex brains of the mammals (those distinctions go to the sperm whale and the elephant, respectively), the complexity of our language and our societies–...
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Our Obsession with the Synapse in Autism – Is It Really that Simple?
Ever since synaptic gene mutations were discovered in autism, the scientific world has been obsessed [1, 2]. Interestingly, however, these synapse-specific genes make up only a small minority of autism...
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