Possible cause and treatment for Autism

A cause and treatment for Autism!?

CUMC wrote: Children and adolescents with autism have a surplus of synapses in the brain, and this excess is due to a slowdown in a normal brain “pruning” process during development, according to a study by neuroscientists at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC). Because synapses are the points where neurons connect and communicate with each other, the excessive synapses may have profound effects on how the brain functions.

A drug that restores normal synaptic pruning can improve autistic-like behaviors in mice, the researchers found, even when the drug is given after the behaviors have appeared.

During normal brain development, a burst of synapse formation occurs in infancy, particularly in the cortex, a region involved in autistic behaviors; pruning eliminates about half of these cortical synapses by late adolescence.

"In neuroscience, synaptic pruning, neuronal pruning or axon pruning refers to neurological regulatory processes, which facilitate changes in neural structure by reducing the overall number of neurons and synapses, leaving more efficient synaptic configurations. Pruning is a process that is a general feature of mammalian neurological development. Pruning starts near the time of birth and is completed by the time of sexual maturation in humans."


The images show representative neurons from unaffected brains (left) and brains from autistic patients (right); the spines on the neurons indicate the location of synapses. (Image credit: Guomei Tang, PhD and Mark S. Sonders, PhD/Columbia University Medical Center)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWIvZR3YI44

http://newsroom.cumc.columbia.edu/blog/2014/08/21/children-autism-extra-synapses-brain/

I wonder what kind of (other) effects this would have on fully grown adults.. That's quite difficult to assess in mice, because you can only really judge observable behaviour. I guess the only way to know for sure would be human testing but somehow I doubt that will happen any time soon..

Not to mention there are non-negligible advantages in autism...

The rate of Autism has increased greatly in the last decade or so. Maybe finding out why, prevention, would be a food thing?

ren wrote: Not to mention there are non-negligible advantages in autism...

Agreed. I like having autism spectrum people as allies and friends. Some of them only wish that they could "fit in" and be "normal". But, most of the time, they just have a different set of problems that regular people do.

Depends of course, on the level of autism.

There are functional levels of course, just like previously mentioned , there are functional levels of downs syndrome.

However, you cant possible project that functionality, and how right is it to roll the dice to possibly get a "good" case.

Projecting the outcome, not only would it seem they would be able to halt autism, but find out and engineer exactly what makes it useful, in essence engineering those with the benefits without the costs.

Of course, again, it proposes a Gattica scenario, but its not as far fetched as it once was.

Certainly its still a long way off in any case.

I certainly am not so negative in my outlook on it either, but positivity makes for poor cinema.

However, the non-negligable benefits, while they should not be overlooked, should not be a justification to condemn a child to a "different set of problems."

If you really see what its like to take care of one eight hours in a day, or in regards to someone like Kate from the FA, who has a child and has documented what its like to care for her son all the time, you may not see it the same way.

It can be highly stressful for caregivers and, on top of that, like Downs, its progressive throughout life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism

As someone who works with people with learning disabilities and autism I see daily how distressing and debilitating it can be for the individual. Someone who is so obsessed with routine to the point that they can never focus on what they are doing at the time but always worrying about what's coming next...

On the other hand a person with Asperger Syndrome could be much higher functioning that most of us could conceive!