Chelsey B. Coombs
Former Engagement Editor
From this contributor
Community Newsletter: Making MRIs more comfortable for autistic people, long-term potentiation and learning
Twitter is talking about a review of how to make autistic people more comfortable during magnetic resonance imaging scans, and a study that upends a popular idea about learning — namely, that it requires long-term potentiation of synapses.

Community Newsletter: Making MRIs more comfortable for autistic people, long-term potentiation and learning
Community Newsletter: Post-traumatic stress in older autistic people, Michael Rutter’s legacy
In this week’s Community Newsletter, we look at conversations around a study of trauma and autism traits in older adults, and an editorial that looks back at late child psychiatrist Sir Michael Rutter’s contributions to the field.

Community Newsletter: Post-traumatic stress in older autistic people, Michael Rutter’s legacy
Community Newsletter: How bias affects clinician attitudes on caregiver coaching
In this week’s Community Newsletter, we look at a study on clinician bias toward marginalized groups and how it affects early intervention, and why accurate demographic information is so important.

Community Newsletter: How bias affects clinician attitudes on caregiver coaching
Community Newsletter: Which came first, the diet or the gut microbiota?
In this week’s Community Newsletter, we look at discussions about the relationship between autism and the gut microbiome, plus a new single-cell chromatin remodeling atlas.

Community Newsletter: Which came first, the diet or the gut microbiota?
Community Newsletter: Autistic researcher strengths, challenging the medical research model
In this week’s Community Newsletter, we dive into two studies that look at how the autism research paradigm could become more inclusive.

Community Newsletter: Autistic researcher strengths, challenging the medical research model
Explore more from The Transmitter
Null and Noteworthy: Neurons tracking sequences don’t fire in order
Instead, neurons encode the position of sequential items in working memory based on when they fire during ongoing brain wave oscillations—a finding that challenges a long-standing theory.

Null and Noteworthy: Neurons tracking sequences don’t fire in order
Instead, neurons encode the position of sequential items in working memory based on when they fire during ongoing brain wave oscillations—a finding that challenges a long-standing theory.
How to teach this paper: ‘Neurotoxic reactive astrocytes are induced by activated microglia,’ by Liddelow et al. (2017)
Shane Liddelow and his collaborators identified the factors that transform astrocytes from their helpful to harmful form. Their work is a great choice if you want to teach students about glial cell types, cell culture, gene expression or protein measurement.

How to teach this paper: ‘Neurotoxic reactive astrocytes are induced by activated microglia,’ by Liddelow et al. (2017)
Shane Liddelow and his collaborators identified the factors that transform astrocytes from their helpful to harmful form. Their work is a great choice if you want to teach students about glial cell types, cell culture, gene expression or protein measurement.
Astrocytes sense neuromodulators to orchestrate neuronal activity and shape behavior
Astrocytes serve as crucial mediators of neuromodulatory processes previously attributed to direct communication between neurons, four new studies show.

Astrocytes sense neuromodulators to orchestrate neuronal activity and shape behavior
Astrocytes serve as crucial mediators of neuromodulatory processes previously attributed to direct communication between neurons, four new studies show.