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The 2017 ASF Science Year-End Roundup

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In 40 minutes, ASF summarizes the highlights in autism research from before diagnosis through adulthood.   It includes new intervention studies, ways to better diagnose ASD, to understand symptoms, females, sexuality, employment, neurobiology, genetics, and gene x environment interactions.   The major themes are the “H” word, or heterogeneity in symptoms across the spectrum, ways to make the broad spectrum smaller, and how big data approaches are helping make this happen.  Thank you to families who participated in research and tireless autism researchers for lending their skills to answer the tough questions.  And of course, thank you all for listening to these podcasts all year long.  The transcript with all the references used will be posted on the ASF blog in the upcoming days.

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Gamma waves and autism brains

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Gamma waves are brainwave activity at a certain speed and have been linked to consciousness and seem to help coordinate activity in different parts of the brain.  They have also been associated with processing of information, including sensory information.  This week, researchers at Oxford University led by Dr. David Menassa explore gamma waves in the brains of autistic adults who perform better on a visual processing task than those without a diagnosis.  Gamma waves are controlled by the coordinated activity of neurons in the brain, which are regulated by inhibitory interneurons which make sure excitatory neurons aren’t taking over.  In a study using brain tissue of people with autism, it was found by another study at Oxford that there are fewer of these inhibitory interneurons to control this activity.  Dr. David Menassa provides his own interpretation of the data on this week’s podcast.

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The more you know…….about infertility and interpregnancy interval

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This week, two studies from the large CDC funded study called the Study to Explore Early Development were published that examines probability of having a child with autism after infertility treatments (first paper) and long or short times between pregnancies (second paper).  These studies put to rest some of the questions moms have been interested in.  First, it’s infertility not infertility treatments that is linked to autism, and second, spacing pregnancies too close together or too far apart is also associated with an increased probability of having a child with severe autism symptoms.  This podcast explains what the studies mean and what parents should know.  The references are here:

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29164825

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28900768