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The media accurately described a recent study from Dan Geschwind’s lab at UCLA as “groundbreaking”. That’s because the findings help people with autism better understand how and why their symptoms are different to other mental conditions, specifically bipolar depression and schizophrenia. It turns out the gene expression patterns in the brains of people with autism are similar to those with bipolar depression and schizophrenia, but not alcoholism or major depression. It also offers hope for a more accurate biological signature of autism that can be distinguished from bipolar depression and schizophrenia. Below is a graph that represents these different profiles, and if you want to read a version of the article that is available online (but before it was peer reviewed in the journal Science) you can find it here: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/02/18/040022.full.pdf 