13 November 2012

A Newsletter from the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative

NEWS Behavioral treatment for autism may normalize brain activity In hurricane's wake, questions about animal facilities

VIEWPOINT Insights for autism from schizophrenia

IN BRIEF Clinical research: Children with autism have abnormal airways Molecular mechanisms: Regulatory RNA altered in autism Cognition and behavior: Autism families see things differently

TOOLBOX Virtual brain suggests neural connections form randomly

BLOG Growing our community Publishing secrets

NEWS

Behavioral treatment for autism may normalize brain activity

Early intensive therapy may normalize the brain's response to faces in young children with autism, according to a study published in the November issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. The results are part of a randomized, controlled trial of a treatment called the Early Start Denver Model. Read More >

In hurricane's wake, questions about animal facilities

Life for most New Yorkers is getting back to normal after the unprecedented destruction caused last week by Hurricane Sandy, but researchers at New York University face a painful and painstaking recovery.

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VIEWPOINT

Insights for autism from schizophrenia

Lessons learned from postmortem studies of schizophrenia are applicable to research on autism, a disorder for which brain tissue has not been as well studied, say Allison Curley and David Lewis.

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IN BRIEF

Clinical research: Children with autism have abnormal airways

Children with autism have abnormal lung anatomy, according to a study published 28 August in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. The results suggest a potential biomarker of autism, researchers say.

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Molecular mechanisms: Regulatory RNA altered in autism

Postmortem brains from individuals with autism have abnormal levels of long non-coding RNAs, which regulate the expression of genes, according to a study published 5 September in the Journal of Molecular Neuroscience.

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Cognition and behavior: Autism families see things differently

Family members of individuals with autism process faces and scenes differently than do controls, according to two new studies, one of them published in October. This suggests that visual processing may be an autism endophenotype a measurable symptom that represents part of the genetic risk of a disorder. Read More >

TOOLBOX

Virtual brain suggests neural connections form randomly

Researchers are assembling a virtual reconstruction of the brain by piecing together simulations of thousands of neurons, they reported 16 October in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They used this model to show that most junctions between neurons form randomly and not as the result of chemical signals. Read More >

BLOG

Growing our community

SFARI.org is developing an online community for autism researchers to share ideas and opinions. We want your input.

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Publishing secrets
Papers that are turned down by one journal and end up being published by another are cited significantly more often than papers accepted by the firstchoice journal, according to an analysis published 12 October in Science.

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