Autism Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Autism, including details on symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, causes, effects. | ||||||
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The critical period of valproate exposure to induce autistic symptoms in Sprague-Dawley rats.Kim KC, Kim P, Go HS, Choi CS, Yang SI, Cheong JH, Shin CY, Ko KH Department of Pharmacology, College of Pharmacy, Seoul National University, Shillim-Dong, Kwanak-Gu, Seoul 151-742, Republic of Korea. Prenatal exposure to valproic acid (VPA) induces neural tube defects and impairment in social behaviors related to autistic spectrum disorder in newborns, which make it a useful animal model of autism. In this study, we compared the effects of different time window of prenatal valproic acid exposure for inducing the altered social behaviors relevant to autism from embryonic day 7 to embryonic day 15 in Sprague-Dawley rats to determine the critical periods for the impairment. Compared to E7, E9.5 and E15 exposure, VPA exposure at E12 showed most significant changes in behaviors over control animals with reduced sociability and social preference. E9.5 exposure to valproic acid showed strong reproductive toxicity including decrease in the number of live birth. In general, exposure at E15 showed only marginal effects on reproduction and social behaviors. Finally, VPA-exposed rats at E12 were more sensitive to electric shock than VPA-exposed rats at any other periods. These results suggested that E12 is the critical period in rats when valproate exposure has prominent effects for inducing the altered social behavior similar to human autistic behavior. Published 14 February 2011 in Toxicol Lett, 201(2): 137-42. Articles on Autism published 5 January 2011: Children with autism are neither systematic nor optimal foragers. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 108(1): 421-6. It is well established that children with autism often show outstanding visual search skills. To date, however, no study has tested whether these skills, usually assessed on a table-top or computer, translate to more true-to-life settings. One prominent account of autism, Baron-Cohen's "systemizing" theory, gives us good reason to suspect that they should. In this study, we tested whether autistic children's exceptional skills at small-scale search extend to a large-scale environment ... [Abstract] [Full-text] Articles on Autism published 3 January 2011: Genome-scan for IQ discrepancy in autism: evidence for loci on chromosomes 10 and 16. Hum Genet, 129(1): 59-70. Performance IQ (PIQ) greater than verbal IQ (VIQ) is often observed in studies of the cognitive abilities of autistic individuals. This characteristic is correlated with social and communication impairments, key parts of the autism diagnosis. We present the first genetic analyses of IQ discrepancy (PIQ-VIQ) as an autism-related phenotype. We performed genome-wide joint linkage and segregation analyses on 287 multiplex families, using a Markov chain Monte Carlo approach. Genetic data included a ... [Abstract] [Full-text] Articles on Autism published 20 December 2010: Role of UBE3A and ATP10A genes in autism susceptibility region 15q11-q13 in an Italian population: a positive replication for UBE3A. Psychiatry Res, 185(1): 33-8. The aetiology of autism is still largely unknown despite analyses from family and twin studies demonstrating substantial genetic role in the aetiology of the disorder. Data from linkage studies and analyses of chromosomal abnormalities identified 15q11-q13 as a region of particular aetiopathogenesis interest. We screened a set of markers spanning two known imprinted, maternally expressed genes, UBE3A and ATP10A, harboured in this candidate region. We replicated evidence of linkage ... [Abstract] [Full-text] Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and autistic features: EEG evidence for comorbid disorders. Psychiatry Res, 185(1): 225-31. Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) is the most common psychiatric disorder of childhood, although AD/HD is rarely the only diagnosis given to these children. Within the literature there is some debate as to whether it is valid to diagnose AD/HD with autism as a comorbid disorder, since the present diagnostic systems exclude the diagnosis of both disorders in the same child. The aim of this study was to determine whether electroencephalography (EEG) differences exist between two ... [Abstract] [Full-text] Articles on Autism published 16 December 2010: Importance measures for epistatic interactions in case-parent trios. Ann Hum Genet, 75(1): 122-32. Ensemble methods (such as Bagging and Random Forests) take advantage of unstable base learners (such as decision trees) to improve predictions, and offer measures of variable importance useful for variable selection. LogicFS has been proposed as such an ensemble learner for case-control studies when interactions of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are of particular interest. LogicFS uses bootstrap samples of the data and employs the Boolean trees derived in logic regression as base ... [Abstract] [Full-text] Articles on Autism published 1 December 2010: Mitochondrial dysfunction in autism. JAMA, 304(21): 2389-96. Mitochondrial dysfunction in autism. JAMA, 304(21): 2389-96. Articles on Autism published 4 November 2010: Changes in prefrontal axons may disrupt the network in autism. J Neurosci, 30(44): 14595-609. Neural communication is disrupted in autism by unknown mechanisms. Here, we examined whether in autism there are changes in axons, which are the conduit for neural communication. We investigated single axons and their ultrastructure in the white matter of postmortem human brain tissue below the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), and lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC), which are associated with attention, social interactions, and emotions, and have been consistently ... [Abstract] [Full-text] © 2004-2011 Autism Research Today. All Rights Reserved. |
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