The latest autism research news stories with ASF Chief Science Officer Alycia Halladay
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….or at a podcast with at least an attempt at an explanation of what synaptic density is and how it is affected in brains of people with autism. This week we review three convergent lines of evidence – whole brain, brain cell then genes within those brain cells – that show that the autistic brain has a decrease in cell-to-cell communication in multiple brain regions, leading to social communication impairments.
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Are you the grandparent, cousin, aunt, uncle, sibling, or half-sibling of someone with autism and wondered “what is the likelihood of autism in families, and the likelihood of comorbid conditions if I have a family member with autism?” Researchers at the AJ Drexel Autism Research Institute and Aarhus University in Denmark collaborated to calculate probabilities between autism in a person and dozens of other comorbid conditions in family members. They not only made the paper open to the public for everyone to read it, but they also created a publicly available data visualization tool so anyone can go on and look at specific situations of particular family relationships relating to anything from autoimmune conditions to mental health and psychiatric diagnosis. Links below for reference:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39283002
Interactive graphs: https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/diana.schendel/viz/ASDPlots_16918786403110/e-Figure5
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Despite many years fighting it, families with autism still experience societal stigma. The experiences depend on many factors, summarized in the October 21st podcast. This week, Mia Kotikovski explores cultural factors involved in stigma. As examples, she explores the literature from Asia, the Middle East and the United Kingdom, how they are different, and how families cope with that stigma in different areas of the world.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40489-023-00373-7
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9330163
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10803-019-04218-3
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-23978-0
https://molecularautism.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13229-023-00579-w
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0261774