Many mouths making conversation, with speech bubbles in red and blue.
Illustration by Laurène Boglio

Sensory traits in fragile X; epidurals and autism

This week on social media, researchers discussed research on sensory issues in fragile X mice, and they considered yet another study of epidurals and autism. That and more in this week’s Community Newsletter.

Nazim Kourdougli of the University of California, Los Angeles, linked to his team’s study, “Improvement of sensory deficits in fragile X mice by increasing cortical interneuron activity after the critical period,” published in Neuron 13 July. Spectrum covered a preprint version of the study in July 2022.

Hannah Dahlen of Western Sydney University linked to the study “Association of labor epidural analgesia, oxytocin exposure, and risk of autism spectrum disorders in children,” published in JAMA Open Network 21 July. In April, Spectrum covered research that refutes the link.

Mohammad Farhan of Hamad Bin Khalifa University linked to the study “The ortholog of human ssDNA-binding protein SSBP3 influences neurodevelopment and autism-like behaviors in Drosophila melanogaster,” published in PLOS Biology 24 July.

Philip Hubbard of the Janelia Research Campus linked to the connectome resource NeuronBridge.

The Allen Institute linked to the article “A high-level explanation of the protocols necessary to implement the Expansion Selective Plane Illumination Microscopy (ExA–SPIM) pipeline,” published on its site 13 July. Spectrum covered the pipeline earlier this month.

 

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Benjamin Sun of the University of Cambridge described his team’s preprint, “isGWAS: ultra-high-throughput, scalable and equitable inference of genetic associations with disease,” posted on bioRxiv 27 July.

Arabella Bouzigues of the Paris Brain Institute posted about a keynote speech from the Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM) annual meeting. The speech, titled “Mapping brain functional and structural differences in ASD: moving toward precision treatment,” was given by Xujun Duan of the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China.

Iva Ilioska of the Donders Institute posted about her talk from OHBM, “Multiscale heterogeneity of functional connectivity in autism.”

Gal Kepler of Tel Aviv University shared his poster from OHBM, “Robust removal of confounds in longitudinal studies.”

Johanna Calderon of the University of Montpellier and Nancy Beluk of the University of Pittsburgh replied to posts about “Change of heart and mind: Autism’s ties to cardiac defects,” published in Spectrum 21 July.

The Autism Research Institute linked to “‘A catalyst for change’: NIH makes first call for research supporting minimally verbal autistic people,” published in Spectrum 18 July. Gene Bensinger of the Profound Autism Alliance commented about the article.

 

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Mark Zylka of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill linked to “‘Gain-of-function’ mutation spawns autism traits,” published in Spectrum 24 July.

That’s it for this week’s Community Newsletter! If you have any suggestions for interesting social posts you saw in the autism research sphere, feel free to send an email to [email protected].

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