According to new research, brain changes in autism are comprehensive throughout the cerebral cortex rather than just particular areas thought to affect social behavior and language
UCLA study is the most comprehensive effort ever to study how autism affects the brain at the molecular level.
Brain changes in autism are comprehensive throughout the cerebral cortex, not only confined to particular regions traditionally considered to affect language and social behavior. These are the findings of a new study, led by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), which substantially refines scientists’ understanding of how autism spectrum disorder (ASD) progresses at the molecular level.
Published on November 2 in the journal Nature, the study represents a comprehensive effort to characterize ASD at the molecular level. Although neurological disorders like Parkinson’s disease and
“We now finally are beginning to get a picture of the state of the brain, at the molecular level, of the brain in individuals who had a diagnosis of autism. This provides us with a molecular pathology, which similar to other brain disorders such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and stroke, provides a key starting point for understanding the disorder’s mechanisms, which will inform and accelerate development of disease-altering therapies.”
Just over a decade ago, Geschwind led the first effort to identify autism’s molecular pathology by focusing on two brain regions, the temporal lobe and the frontal lobe. Those regions were chosen because they are higher-order association regions involved in higher cognition – especially social cognition, which is disrupted in ASD.
For the new study, researchers examined gene expression in 11 cortical regions by sequencing
One of the next steps is to determine whether researchers can use computational approaches to develop therapies based on reversing gene expression changes the researchers found in ASD, Geschwind said, adding that researchers can use organoids to model the changes in order to better understand their mechanisms.
Reference: “Broad transcriptomic dysregulation occurs across the cerebral cortex in ASD” by Michael J. Gandal, Jillian R. Haney, Brie Wamsley, Chloe X. Yap, Sepideh Parhami, Prashant S. Emani, Nathan Chang, George T. Chen, Gil D. Hoftman, Diego de Alba, Gokul Ramaswami, Christopher L. Hartl, Arjun Bhattacharya, Chongyuan Luo, Ting Jin, Daifeng Wang, Riki Kawaguchi, Diana Quintero, Jing Ou, Ye Emily Wu, Neelroop N. Parikshak, Vivek Swarup, T. Grant Belgard, Mark Gerstein, Bogdan Pasaniuc and Daniel H. Geschwind, 2 November 2022, Nature.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05377-7
Other authors include Michael J. Gandal, Jillian R. Haney, Brie Wamsley, Chloe X. Yap, Sepideh Parhami, Prashant S. Emani, Nathan Chang, George T. Chen, Gil D. Hoftman, Diego de Alba, Gokul Ramaswami, Christopher L. Hartl, Arjun Bhattacharya, Chongyuan Luo, Ting Jin, Daifeng Wang, Riki Kawaguchi, Diana Quintero, Jing Ou, Ye Emily Wu, Neelroop N. Parikshak, Vivek Swarup, T. Grant Belgard, Mark Gerstein, and Bogdan Pasaniuc. The authors declared no competing interests.
This work was funded by grants to Geschwind (NIMHR01MH110927, U01MH115746, P50-MH106438 and R01MH109912, R01MH094714), Gandal (SFARI Bridge to Independence Award, NIMH R01-MH121521, NIMH R01-MH123922 and NICHD-P50-HD103557), and Haney (Achievement Rewards for College Scientists Foundation, Los Angeles Founder Chapter, UCLA Neuroscience Interdepartmental Program).