In this SPARK webinar, David G. Amaral, Ph.D. and Cynthia M. Schumann, Ph.D. talk about the importance of brain tissue research to deepen the understanding of the causes of autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. They also provide an overview of how studying the human brain can help develop new and effective treatments to improve the […]
Read More »We are happy to share the Fall 2019 issue of the Autism BrainNet newsletter with you. The Autism BrainNet newsletter frequently summarizes the new science and outreach of this program. Read more here.
Read More »When so many services and interventions are needed to support children and adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), people may wonder why it is important for scientists to study the brain. In fact, the brain is the primary organ affected in ASD, and by investigating how it develops and functions in autistic people, scientists can […]
Read More »Meet our partners. Autism BrainNet can accomplish its goal of advancing autism research through postmortem brain studies thanks to partners from many walks of life. Our most important collaborators are the families in the United States, Great Britain and now Canada, who decided — or are considering — to make the most precious gift of […]
Read More »Research on the postmortem brain has shown that gene expression, the process whereby genes are turned on and off to make proteins, is altered in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Yet the molecular mechanisms that disrupt gene expression in ASD are little understood. Two new studies suggest that changes in gene activity that do […]
Read More »In two articles1,2 that appeared last year in the journals Proceedings of the National Academy of Science and Journal of Comparative Neurology, Cyndi Schumann and her colleagues reported that the brain of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) shows microscopic changes in the number and structure of neurons located in the amygdala, a brain region […]
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Autism BrainNet is for the living While virtually all of the effort of the Autism BrainNet team is dedicated to spreading the word about the need for postmortem brain donations or making it easy for family members to make a donation of the brain of their loved one, we never lose sight of the fact […]
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The 2019 International Society for Autism Research (INSAR) meeting was held in Montreal, Canada, May 1-4. This annual event hosted a variety of presentations on the latest autism research, including a panel on ‘Postmortem studies: Functional genomic profiling studies of ASD brain.” Chaired by Daniel Geschwind (University of California, Los Angeles, UCLA), the panel highlighted […]
Read More »The DUP15q Alliance and Autism BrainNet co-hosted a live Q&A with Dr. Dan Geschwind on July 9th where he shared with families the latest findings in brain research related to DUP15q and autism.
Read More »Research using postmortem brain tissue has helped to identify changes in gene expression and dysregulated pathways associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Because these studies used a ‘bulk’ approach that averages RNA measures across the brain tissue, it has been difficult to assess differences in gene expression specific to the many different cell types in […]
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