2023-09-05 23:00:41
Autism Spectrum Disorder includes autism, Asperger’s syndrome, childhood disintegrative disorder, and an unspecified form of pervasive developmental disorder.
According to the WHO, one in 160 children globally is born with this condition.
Research from the Mayo Clinic and Yale University used human mini-brain models to uncover the roots of this disorder.
He Autism Spectrum Disorder remains a mysterious condition. Its origin is genetic, although to date the reason why it occurs is unknown, and since it is not a disease, there is no cure. People with this characteristic maintain it from birth until death.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one in 160 children globally has this condition. With respect to Mexico, there is no official census, although it is estimated that around 6,200 children are born with this condition each year.
Based on the above, scientists from Mayo Clinic and Yale University used human mini-brain models known as organoids to discover the roots of this disorder.
Among the conclusions it is mentioned that it could be associated with an imbalance of specific neurons that play a fundamental role in the way the brain communicates and works. The specific cells are known as excitatory cortical neurons. The study titled Modeling idiopathic autism in forebrain organoids reveals an imbalance of excitatory cortical neuron subtypes during early neurogenesis was published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
Findings
The team discovered an abnormal imbalance of excitatory neurons in the forebrains of people with the disorder, based on their head size.
“This organoid technology allowed us to recreate the alteration in brain development that occurred in patients in the womb, which is believed to be where autism spectrum disorder originates,” said Dr. Alexej Abyzov, a genomics researcher at Department of Quantitative Health Sciences in the Center for Individualized Medicine at Mayo Clinic.
What is Autism Spectrum Disorder?
It is a neurological condition that affects the way people perceive and interact with others, leading to difficulties in social communication and behavior.
The term “spectrum” emphasizes the wide range of symptoms and severity, and includes the autism, Asperger’s syndrome, childhood disintegrative disorder, and an unspecified form of pervasive developmental disorder.
How do mini brains work?
For the study, the scientists first created miniature three-dimensional models similar to the brain, called organoids. The pea-sized clumps of cells began as skin cells from people with autism spectrum disorder.
The skin cells were placed in a culture dish and reprogrammed back to a stem cell-like state, called induced pluripotent stem cells. These so-called master cells can be induced to become any cell in the body, including neurons in the brain.
Next, the scientists used a special technology called single-cell ribonucleic acid (RNA) sequencing to study the gene expression patterns of individual brain neurons. In all, they examined 664,272 brain neurons at three different stages of brain development.
The scientists also discovered that the neural imbalance resulted from changes in the activity of certain genes known as transcription factors, which play a crucial role in directing cell development during the early stages of brain formation.
Evidence Creation
This study builds on 13 years of published studies on autism spectrum disorder by Dr. Abyzov and colleagues, including Dr. Flora Vaccarino, a neuroscientist at Yale University.
In a pioneer studyshowed molecular differences in organoids between people with autism and those without, and implicated dysregulation of a specific transcription factor called FOXG1 as an underlying cause of the disorder.
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