[{"id":256147,"date":"2026-09-10T00:00:51","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T04:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/?p=256147"},"modified":"2026-09-15T11:03:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T15:03:14","slug":"sensory-over-responsivity-tied-to-autism-anxiety-but-not-other-conditions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/spectrum\/sensory-over-responsivity-tied-to-autism-anxiety-but-not-other-conditions\/","title":{"rendered":"Sensory over-responsivity tied to autism, anxiety but not other conditions"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Negative reactions to sensations track with certain neurodevelopmental traits in more than 15,000 children\u2014pointing to shared neurobiological roots.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":256149,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[152],"tags":[135,83,17,21,90,228,20,197],"class_list":["post-256147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-adhd","tag-anxiety","tag-autism","tag-brain-imaging","tag-fmri","tag-psychiatric-disorders","tag-sensory-perception","tag-spectrum"],"acf":{"primary_tag":197,"doi_url":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.53053\/KOQU3761","citation_count":"0","custom_js_library":"","hero_type":"feat_image","hero_alt_image":null,"hero_youtube":"","hero_video":null,"hero_layout":"landscape","hero_caption":"Overloaded:<\/strong> Sensory over-responsivity is overrepresented in certain conditions but may be uniquely linked to autism and anxiety.","hero_by":"Cavan Images \/ Alamy Stock Photo","hero_credit":"","hero_bg_color":"tan","authors":[235058],"other_authors":"","related_title":"Explore more from The Transmitter<\/em>","related_hide":false,"related_filter":"latest","related_tag":null,"related_category":null,"related_custom":{"articles":null},"related_custom_wwn":{"articles":null},"newsletter":"","banner_content":"","banner_url":"","apple_article_id":"c7dd2fea-246d-49bc-9538-0c4f1b505442","apple_article_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA==","google_button_text":"","google_btn_bg_color":"","tooltip_text":"","sidebar_related_hide":false,"sidebar_related_title":"related articles","sidebar_related_hide_images":false,"sidebar_related_articles":"","comps":[{"acf_fc_layout":"copy_comp","copy":"Strong negative reactions to everyday stimuli, such as the feeling of clothes on skin or the sounds of ambient noises, are uniquely linked to anxiety and autism, and not to other neuropsychiatric conditions such as attention-deficit\/hyperactivity disorder, according to a new <\/span>study<\/span><\/a>.<\/span>\r\n\r\nThese responses, termed sensory over-responsivity, have long been part of the diagnostic criteria for autism. This trait occurs in <\/span>about 15<\/span><\/a> to <\/span>20 percent<\/span><\/a> of children in the general population and is overrepresented in various psychiatric conditions, including anxiety disorders, ADHD and obsessive-compulsive disorder.<\/span>\r\n\r\nPrior studies have primarily assessed neuropsychiatric conditions in isolation\u2014for example, by comparing a group in one diagnostic category with a control group, says <\/span>Rebecca Schwarzlose<\/span><\/a>, assistant professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. But autism, anxiety and other neurodevelopmental conditions often co-occur. Sensory over-responsivity may be the result of this overlap in many cases, rather than being linked to the condition in question, according to the new work, published last month in the <\/span>Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry<\/span><\/i>.<\/span>\r\n\r\nSchwarzlose and her colleagues brought together five independent, previously collected datasets containing a mix of community samples\u2014people randomly selected from the general public\u2014and samples containing a high proportion of autistic people. In total, they analyzed 15,728 children aged 6 to 18 years.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nSensory over-responsivity was associated with the traits of all six psychiatric conditions the team assessed in analyses that considered one diagnosis at a time. But a different picture emerged when the researchers analyzed all the traits simultaneously: Sensory over-responsivity appeared to be uniquely associated with anxiety symptoms and autism traits. The links with other conditions, such as ADHD, were reduced to small effect sizes or became insignificant.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\n\u201cIt\u2019s a huge strength to be able to look at sensory over-responsivity in such a large sample,\u201d says <\/span>Grace Baranek<\/span><\/a>, professor of occupational science and occupational therapy at the University of Southern California, who was not involved in the work. \u201cWe haven\u2019t had the capabilities or the resources, necessarily, to kind of merge these datasets in the way that they were able to do.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\n[tt_text class='']T[\/tt_text]he findings confirm those in previously reported, smaller studies and provide additional evidence that over-responsivity to sensory stimuli may have cascading effects on neurodevelopment, Baranek says. But the findings don\u2019t necessarily rule out a link between sensory processing differences and ADHD, she adds.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\n[tt_sidebar_quote author='Grace Baranek<\/span>']It\u2019s a huge strength to be able to look at sensory over-responsivity in such a large sample.<\/span>[\/tt_sidebar_quote]\r\n\r\nA key limitation of this study is that it measured sensory over-responsivity based on a single yes\/no questionnaire item that asked parents if their child seemed overly sensitive to sounds, textures or smells, she says.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nSchwarzlose says that in unpublished work, she and her colleagues have endeavored to use a more objective measure, assessing how children react to sensory stimuli in the lab while playing games. Those observations have aligned more closely with parent reports of sensory over-responsivity in everyday life than with children\u2019s reports, which she says gave her team greater confidence in their published findings.<\/span>\r\n\r\nBut sensory over-responsivity is complex and encompasses many factors, including how a person experiences a sensation and their behavioral responses. Sensory under-responsivity, which other studies have linked to ADHD and autism, should also be considered, Baranek says.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nShulamite Green<\/span><\/a>, associate professor of developmental psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in this work (but is one of Schwarzlose\u2019s former supervisors), agrees that the case for ADHD and sensory over-responsivity\u2014which she has seen frequently overlap in the clinic\u2014is not closed.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nHowever, the new study suggests that perhaps the mechanisms underlying sensory over-responsivity\u2014such as its biological underpinnings or how it develops over time\u2014are more similar in people with anxiety and autism than in those with ADHD, Green says. \u201cWe see these differences in sensory reactivity across all of these different groups of kids.\u201d But what hasn\u2019t been well understood is whether these differences develop in the same way, she adds.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\n[tt_text class='']S[\/tt_text]chwarzlose and her colleagues also analyzed neuroimaging data, which had been collected using resting-state functional MRI, in a subset of 9,197 children. They found that sensory over-responsivity was linked to reduced functional connectivity between the cingulo-parietal network, which is involved in memory, and both the left and right caudate nuclei, which are involved in bridging sensory inputs and behavior.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nThese findings are preliminary, Schwarzlose says. Some of the effect sizes are small and do not appear to be significant in a smaller dataset the researchers used to replicate their findings, she and her co-investigators note. The team is now looking more closely at these brain circuits using fMRI studies in which participants\u2019 brains are scanned while they are exposed to certain sensory stimuli.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nIt is still \u201cvery early days\u201d for this research, but the hope is that this work will help the field better understand what drives a trait that can be debilitating to those who experience it, Schwarzlose says. \u201cWe know that sensory over-responsivity can be really impairing. It is pretty universally hated by people who experience it.\u201d <\/span>"}]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256147"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":256365,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256147\/revisions\/256365"}],"acf:post":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor\/235058"}],"acf:term":[{"embeddable":true,"taxonomy":"post_tag","href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags\/197"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":256107,"date":"2026-09-09T00:00:28","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T04:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/?p=256107"},"modified":"2026-09-22T14:15:27","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T18:15:27","slug":"neuromechanical-models-deepen-our-understanding-of-animal-motor-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/motor-behavior\/neuromechanical-models-deepen-our-understanding-of-animal-motor-control\/","title":{"rendered":"Neuromechanical models deepen our understanding of animal motor control"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thanks to recent progress in physics-based simulators and robotics, it has never been easier for neuroscientists to use neuromechanical modeling to test hypotheses about animal movement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":256110,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[139],"tags":[27,189,589,192,11,1183,167],"class_list":["post-256107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-perspectives","tag-audio-research-news","tag-behavioral-neuroscience","tag-locomotion","tag-modeling","tag-motor-behavior","tag-natural-neuroscience","tag-systems-neuroscience"],"acf":{"primary_tag":11,"doi_url":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.53053\/ACRL8123","citation_count":"0","custom_js_library":"","hero_type":"video","hero_alt_image":null,"hero_youtube":"","hero_video":256109,"hero_layout":"landscape","hero_caption":"Bold bots:<\/strong> Neuromechanical models are becoming key scientific tools for neuroscience to test whether proposed biological mechanisms are sufficient to generate behavior.","hero_by":"Courtesy of Kamilo Melo, Biorobotics Laboratory, EPFL","hero_credit":"","hero_bg_color":"tan","authors":[251982],"other_authors":"","related_title":"Explore more from The Transmitter<\/em>","related_hide":false,"related_filter":"latest","related_tag":null,"related_category":null,"related_custom":{"articles":null},"related_custom_wwn":{"articles":null},"newsletter":"","banner_content":"","banner_url":"","apple_article_id":"7803d346-77b4-4b30-be89-8445f52dea80","apple_article_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQ==","google_button_text":"","google_btn_bg_color":"","tooltip_text":"","sidebar_related_hide":false,"sidebar_related_title":"related articles","sidebar_related_hide_images":false,"sidebar_related_articles":"","comps":[{"acf_fc_layout":"audio_comp","audio_title":"LISTEN TO THIS STORY:","audio":256645,"apple_link":"","spotify_link":"","google_link":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"copy_comp","copy":"The renowned physicist Richard Feynman famously stated, \u201cWhat I cannot create, I do not understand.\u201d I believe the same holds true for neuroscience\u2019s understanding of how the nervous system controls the body.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nThe remarkable agility and robustness of animal movements arise from tight interactions between the central nervous system, the peripheral nervous system, the musculoskeletal system and the environment. Understanding the mechanisms underlying animal behavior therefore requires integrative approaches that consider the nonlinear interactions among all these components.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nNeuromechanical models that integrate neural circuits, the body and the environment are becoming key scientific tools for neuroscience to test whether proposed biological mechanisms are sufficient to generate behavior. These models\u2014implemented either as computer simulations or in physical robots\u2014offer neuroscientists the chance to consider the important roles of the body and the environment in the study of animal motor skills and behaviors.<\/span>\r\n\r\nNeuromechanical models can complement animal experiments. Building a neuromechanical model is a rigorous intellectual exercise that requires explicitly representing the relevant components and interactions underlying a target animal behavior. Once implemented, it enables the typical iterations of a <\/span>scientific methodology<\/span><\/a>, including hypothesis design, synthetic experiments, predictions and comparisons with animal experiments.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nThis type of synthetic approach is particularly useful for demonstrating the <\/span>sufficiency<\/span><\/i> of specific mechanisms as opposed to their necessity. Animal experiments can often show that a particular control loop is <\/span>necessary<\/span><\/i>\u2014for example, through ablation experiments\u2014but can rarely demonstrate that it is <\/span>sufficient <\/span><\/i>to explain a given behavior. By contrast, a robot or simulation, in which different components of a control circuit can be selectively activated or deactivated, not only demonstrate sufficiency but help reveal the nonlinear interactions among all components involved in animal motor control.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\n[tt_text class='']T[\/tt_text]he field of neuromechanical modeling finds its roots in early work in cybernetics and robotics; in the 1950s, <\/span>W. Grey Walter developed tortoise robots<\/span><\/a> that exhibited phototaxis\u2014moving away or toward a light\u2014and conditional learning. These robots were physical precursors of <\/span>Braitenberg \u201cvehicles,\u201d<\/span><\/a> a series of thought experiments that explored how behaviors could emerge from sensorimotor circuits in virtual agents. In the 1990s, <\/span>\u00d6rjan Ekeberg<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>Sten Grillner<\/span><\/a> combined neural circuits, an elongated body and a fluid dynamics model to develop a <\/span>neuromechanical simulation of the lamprey<\/span><\/a>. Their work\u2014one of the first complete neuromechanical simulations of animal motor behavior\u2014provided an understanding of how coupled neural oscillator circuits could be modulated for speed and heading control.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nSince then, several landmark studies have used neuromechanical models and simulations to demonstrate the sufficiency of hypothesized biological mechanisms. For example, one showed that measurements of optical flow are sufficient to mediate bees\u2019 ability to <\/span>avoid obstacles and regulate speed and landing<\/span><\/a>. Another demonstrated that a relatively simple bilateral auditory circuit was sufficient to explain <\/span>phonotaxis, or sound-seeking, in crickets<\/span><\/a>. In my lab, we have shown that incorporating slow limb oscillatory circuits<\/span> into a fast axial swimming network is sufficient to explain <\/span>gait transitions in salamanders<\/span><\/a>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nCollectively, these studies support the view that animal motor control relies on multiple interacting control loops, with substantial redundancy between central and peripheral mechanisms. Because several mechanisms operate simultaneously, their respective contributions are often difficult to disentangle without neuromechanical modeling. In particular, these circuits are often controlled by a combination of <\/span>feedforward and feedback control loops<\/span><\/a>, and their relative contributions in different animals likely depend on the mechanical stability of locomotion.<\/span>\r\n\r\n[tt_sidebar_quote author='']Animal experiments can often show that a particular control loop is necessary\u2014for example through ablation experiments\u2014but can rarely demonstrate that it is sufficient to explain a given behavior.<\/span>[\/tt_sidebar_quote]\r\n\r\nIn addition, neuromechanical models offer interesting advantages in comparison with animal experiments: They are repeatable; they offer access to variables or quantities that would be difficult to measure in animals; and their morphology and environments can be systematically changed. They are particularly useful for experiments that cannot be performed on real animals for practical, financial or ethical reasons. For locomotion control, for instance, it is interesting to investigate all possible gaits that an animal could, in principle, perform (including gaits that animals do not exhibit), to identify the tradeoffs that an animal has to satisfy in terms of <\/span>speed versus energy efficiency<\/span><\/a> or <\/span>sensing versus locomotion performance<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nSometimes I am asked whether it is better to implement neuromechanical models in a robot or in simulation. I always advocate for trying computer simulations first. Thanks to the rapid improvement of physics engines, such as <\/span>MuJoCo<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>Isaac Lab<\/span><\/a>, and the availability of various <\/span>computational models of muscles and neurons<\/span><\/a>, it is now possible to simulate neural circuits, the musculoskeletal system and the environment faster than ever possible before. Examples include simulations of the <\/span>fruit fly<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>lamprey<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>zebrafish<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>mouse<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>human<\/span><\/a>. Compared with physical robots, simulations are generally faster, cheaper, more accessible, easier to tune and more accurate for modeling some components, such as muscle-tendon pairs.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nAt the same time, going the extra mile to build a physical robot is often worth it, for two reasons. First, the robot benefits from real-world physics, which is important for situations in which the body-environment interactions are difficult to simulate numerically, such as <\/span>complex fluid dynamics<\/span><\/a> or <\/span>complex terrains<\/span><\/a>, including sand, mud and grass. Second, robots can interact with animals and real environments, enabling real-world experiments that provide realistic and rich sensory inputs, including natural visual, auditory and chemical cues. Recently, we modeled the <\/span>optomotor response in zebrafish<\/span><\/a> and demonstrated that it could help a fish-like robot maintain its position in a river, despite the complex water flow and visual inputs of the real world. The ability to directly interact\u2014physically and socially\u2014with animals, potentially even in their natural environments, has led to interesting studies investigating <\/span>collective behavior in fish<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>cockroaches<\/span><\/a>.<\/span>\r\n\r\nIn the next few years, I foresee tighter interactions between neuroscience, numerical modeling and robotics. Interestingly, robotics is moving toward neuroscience and biology in several ways. In terms of morphologies, there is currently a boom of animal-like, quadruped and humanoid robots, several of which are commercially available for reasonable prices. In terms of control, the state-of-the-art locomotion controllers are now implemented as neural networks trained with deep reinforcement learning algorithms, similar to how animals learn to move.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nAs a result, we will have many opportunities to investigate important questions about animal motor control and behavior, such as agility, fault tolerance, multimodal sensorimotor integration, action selection and evolution and developmental processes. This will benefit not only neuroscience but also robotics and the development of more agile biologically inspired robots for field applications such as planetary robotics, environmental monitoring, facilities inspection, agriculture and transport.<\/span>"}]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256107"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":256649,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256107\/revisions\/256649"}],"acf:post":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor\/251982"}],"acf:term":[{"embeddable":true,"taxonomy":"post_tag","href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags\/11"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":255555,"date":"2026-09-08T00:00:41","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T04:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/?p=255555"},"modified":"2026-09-11T11:01:23","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T15:01:23","slug":"fruit-flies-use-memory-to-track-odors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/olfaction\/fruit-flies-use-memory-to-track-odors\/","title":{"rendered":"Fruit flies use memory to track odors"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When flies encounter a tasty smell, they stroll in and out of the odor plume\u2014a process that depends on encoding a memory of the angle needed to travel back to the plume, according to a new study.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":255559,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[152],"tags":[73,225,606,266,307],"class_list":["post-255555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-drosophila","tag-memory","tag-olfaction","tag-sensory-systems","tag-spatial-cognition-and-navigation"],"acf":{"primary_tag":606,"doi_url":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.53053\/JFVQ1352","citation_count":"0","custom_js_library":"","hero_type":"video","hero_alt_image":null,"hero_youtube":"","hero_video":255561,"hero_layout":"landscape","hero_caption":"Boundary pusher:<\/strong> Fruit flies maneuver along the edge of an odor plume (trajectory shown in red) rather than traveling through the middle, no matter how the concentration changes. ","hero_by":"Siliciano et al<\/em>., Nature<\/em> 2026","hero_credit":"","hero_bg_color":"tan","authors":[107167],"other_authors":"","related_title":"Explore more from The Transmitter<\/em>","related_hide":false,"related_filter":"custom","related_tag":null,"related_category":null,"related_custom":{"articles":[{"article":232361},{"article":252041},{"article":225088}]},"related_custom_wwn":{"articles":null},"newsletter":"","banner_content":"","banner_url":"","apple_article_id":"d373256b-5fc2-48f6-89bf-7dba55897a1e","apple_article_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA==","google_button_text":"","google_btn_bg_color":"","tooltip_text":"","sidebar_related_hide":false,"sidebar_related_title":"related articles","sidebar_related_hide_images":false,"sidebar_related_articles":"","comps":[{"acf_fc_layout":"copy_comp","copy":"When bats use echolocation to find an object, they don\u2019t point their sonar beam directly at the target, where the intensity of the signal bouncing back would be the strongest. Instead, they aim slightly off axis, so the returning beam contains sharper signal differences. The research team that <\/span>observed this in 2010<\/span><\/a> predicted that the same strategy would apply to scent tracking.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nThat prediction was correct, a <\/span>paper<\/span><\/a> published in July in <\/span>Nature <\/span><\/i>shows. When fruit flies catch a whiff of apple cider vinegar, they zigzag along the edge of the odor plume, where the concentration difference is sharpest, rather than traveling through the middle, where a stronger concentration is likely to hold steady.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\n\u201cThe edge of the plume is potentially where some of the most information might be stored,\u201d says <\/span>Marie Suver<\/span><\/a>, assistant professor of biological sciences at Vanderbilt University, who was not involved in the work. \u201cWhereas if you\u2019re in the middle of the plume, you\u2019ll be getting more packets of odor, but it\u2019s not as stark of a concentration gradient as at the edge.\u201d<\/span>\r\n\r\nKeeping tabs on a plume is also more complex than researchers previously thought. When flies and other insects first encounter an odor, they surge upwind and cast side to side when they lose the trail\u2014a behavior that seemed to be a simple reflex, says <\/span>Matthieu Louis<\/span><\/a>, associate professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the study.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\n\u201cIt was supposed to be a memoryless system,\u201d says study investigator <\/span>Vanessa Ruta<\/span><\/a>, professor and head of the Laboratory of Neurophysiology and Behavior at Rockefeller University. \u201cBasically, all the animal needed to know was the exact sensory experience and information it had at that one moment, and nothing about its prior history would be relevant.\u201d<\/span>\r\n\r\nInstead, flies can store a memory about the angle their path must take to return to the scent. Neurons in the central complex, the navigational hub of the fly brain, contribute to the memory, imaging experiments show.\u00a0<\/span>"},{"acf_fc_layout":"video_comp","type":"video","video":255560,"youtube_id":"","cover_image":"","caption":"Tiny treadmill:<\/strong> In the virtual-reality paradigm shown here, a tube delivering a stream of air\u2014and apple cider vinegar vapor\u2014rotates around tethered flies as they walk on a foam ball. ","byline":{"by":"Siliciano et al<\/em>., Nature<\/em> 2026","credit":""}},{"acf_fc_layout":"copy_comp","copy":"[tt_text class='']T[\/tt_text]his level of insight had evaded olfaction researchers because odors travel through the air in chaotic, turbulent plumes. \u201cYou really don\u2019t have the detailed, moment-to-moment information of what an animal is experiencing,\u201d Ruta says.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nSo Ruta and her team created a virtual-reality setup that provided those details. In the paradigm, a tethered fruit fly walks on a foam ball about 6 millimeters across that functions as a tiny treadmill. As the fly turns itself in different directions, a tube delivering a stream of air rotates around it, simulating the wind. The researchers created odor plumes with customizable geometries and concentrations by adjusting the amount of apple cider vinegar vapor added to the air stream.<\/span>\r\n\r\n\u201cStimulus control with odors is a nightmare. I really hate it. But they cleverly designed their system to control the timing of odor concentration dynamics with high precision,\u201d says <\/span>Matt Smear<\/span><\/a>, associate professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of Oregon, who was not involved in the work.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\n[tt_sidebar_quote author='Matt Smear<\/span>']Stimulus control with odors is a nightmare. I really hate it. But they cleverly designed their system to control the timing of odor concentration dynamics with high precision.<\/span>[\/tt_sidebar_quote]\r\n\r\nAlmost immediately, the team noticed that the flies stuck to the edge of the plume, Ruta says. \u201cIt was a very striking behavior, and very robust.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nThe flies tracked the plume\u2019s edge irrespective of how the odor concentration changed as the fly kept walking. The behavior persisted when the plume\u2019s trajectory tilted away from the wind direction or even ran perpendicular to it. \u201cThat was one of the wildest things for me,\u201d Suver says. To pull this off, the flies must remember the angle to travel when returning to the plume, modeling experiments showed.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nThe memory is indeed directional and not positional: When tracking a jumping plume that shifts 20 millimeters away whenever the flies leave it, the flies walked past the plume\u2019s old location and kept trekking in the direction that they expected would lead them to their goal. The researchers could even rewrite an entry-angle memory by delivering a whiff of vinegar when the flies spontaneously walked in the direction of the new plume.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nA population of neurons in the central complex called FC2 signals the direction flies should walk just before they turn back toward the plume, imaging experiments showed. Silencing the FC2 neurons impaired the edge-tracking behavior.<\/span>\r\n\r\n\u201cI\u2019m convinced that they\u2019re using a memory to go back to where they last encountered the odor,\u201d Smear says.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nFollow-up work should explore when edge tracking fails and which strategies take over, says <\/span>Tobias Ackels<\/span><\/a>, group leader at the University of Bonn, who was not involved in the study. \u201cWhat happens when the signal gets noisy?\u201d Other work could examine if flying, which adds a vertical component to plumes, requires a different tracking approach than walking, and if flies handle non-food-related and aversive odors in the same ways, Suver says.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nIt will also be interesting to see if these findings hold up in a freely moving fly, Louis says. The study is \u201ca very solid basis on which to build.\u201d<\/span>"}]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255555"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":256118,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255555\/revisions\/256118"}],"acf:post":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor\/107167"}],"acf:term":[{"embeddable":true,"taxonomy":"post_tag","href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags\/606"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":255960,"date":"2026-09-08T00:00:19","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T04:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/?p=255960"},"modified":"2026-09-03T14:22:43","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T18:22:43","slug":"new-methods-to-contextualize-autism-linked-genes-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetransmitter.org\/spectrum\/new-methods-to-contextualize-autism-linked-genes-and-more\/","title":{"rendered":"New methods to contextualize autism-linked genes, and more"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is a roundup of autism-related news and research spotted around the web for the week of 7 September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":255961,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[152],"tags":[17,207,197,196],"class_list":["post-255960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-autism","tag-science-and-society","tag-spectrum","tag-spotted"],"acf":{"primary_tag":197,"doi_url":"","citation_count":"","custom_js_library":"","hero_type":"alt_image","hero_alt_image":"","hero_youtube":"","hero_video":null,"hero_layout":"full","hero_caption":"","hero_by":"","hero_credit":"","hero_bg_color":"none","authors":[107484],"other_authors":"","related_title":"Explore more from The Transmitter<\/em>","related_hide":false,"related_filter":"latest","related_tag":null,"related_category":null,"related_custom":{"articles":null},"related_custom_wwn":{"articles":null},"newsletter":"","banner_content":"","banner_url":"","apple_article_id":"24411570-8b94-41d1-8e32-5ca84c53bd5e","apple_article_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","google_button_text":"","google_btn_bg_color":"","tooltip_text":"","sidebar_related_hide":false,"sidebar_related_title":"related articles","sidebar_related_hide_images":false,"sidebar_related_articles":"","comps":[{"acf_fc_layout":"copy_comp","copy":"Group effect:<\/b> Two new studies report on approaches to tackle a long-standing problem in autism research: There are many autism candidate genes\u2014often de-novo variants\u2014but any particular gene is rare in a population of autistic people. The first <\/span>preprint<\/span><\/a> crunched data from past studies to create an atlas of organoid models and, with predictive modeling, explored how gene perturbations may affect developmental pathways. The technique may help prioritize those autism-linked gene candidates with functional, disease-relevant outcomes, the investigators wrote. The second <\/span>preprint<\/span><\/a> used data from gene-association studies to cluster autism-linked genes that contribute to other conditions, such as schizophrenia and epilepsy.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\nAutism research spotted this week:<\/b>\r\n