Medical News Today -- Researchers at UCLA have discovered how an autism-risk gene rewires the brain, which could pave the way for treatments aimed at rebalancing brain circuits during early development, according to an article published in Science Translational Medicine. Functional imaging scans have revealed that some of the problems experienced by individuals with autism may be due to too many connections within the frontal lobe of the brain, and poor connections between the frontal lobe and other parts of the brain. The researchers say their discovery, what they described as the result of “a blend of brain imaging and genetic detective work”, located the crucial missing mechanisms linking altered genes to changes in brain functions and disrupted learning.
