Brain Changes in Autism

According to new research, brain changes in autism are comprehensive throughout the cerebral cortex rather than just particular areas thought to affect social behavior and language




UCLA study is the most comprehensive effort ever to study how autism affects the brain at the molecular level.

Brain changes in autism are comprehensive throughout the cerebral cortex, not only confined to particular regions traditionally considered to affect language and social behavior. These are the findings of a new study, led by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), which substantially refines scientists’ understanding of how autism spectrum disorder (ASD) progresses at the molecular level.


Published on November 2 in the journal Nature, the study represents a comprehensive effort to characterize ASD at the molecular level. Although neurological disorders like Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease have well-defined pathologies, autism and other psychiatric disorders have had a lack of defining pathology. This had made it particularly difficult to develop more effective treatments.


The new study finds brain-wide changes in virtually all of the 11 cortical regions analyzed. This holds true regardless of whether they are higher critical association regions – those involved in functions such as reasoning, language, social cognition, and mental flexibility – or primary sensory regions.

“This work represents the culmination of more than a decade of work of many lab members, which was necessary to perform such a comprehensive analysis of the autism brain,” said study author Dr. Daniel Geschwind, the Gordon and Virginia MacDonald Distinguished Professor of Human Genetics, Neurology and Psychiatry at UCLA.  READ MORE...