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The research was done in the laboratories of Ralph Adolphs, Bren Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and professor of biology, and collaborator Ueli Rutishauser (PhD '08) of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and a visiting associate in biology and biological engineering at Caltech. It appears in the April 21 issue of  Nature Communications . "We have long known that the amygdala is important in processing emotion from faces," says Adolphs. "But now we are starting to understand that it incorporates a lot of complex information to make fairly sophisticated decisions that culminate in our judgments." When looking at a face, brain cells in the amygdala fire electrical impulses or "spikes" in response. However, the role of such face cells in social cognition remains unclear. Adolphs and his group measured the activity of these cells, or neurons, in patients while they were shown images of faces expressing different degrees of happiness ...

The investigators saw the migrating nerve cells, or neurons, hook up with other neurons in the target region to form functioning circuits characteristic of the cerebral cortex. These observations showcase neuroscientists ' newfound ability to monitor, assemble and manipulate so-called neural spheroids, generated from human induced pluripotent stem cells, to study the normal development of the human forebrain during late pregnancy. "We've never been able to recapitulate these human-brain developmental events in a dish before," said the study's senior author, Sergiu Pasca, MD, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. "The process happens in the second half of pregnancy, so viewing it live is challenging. Our method lets us see the entire movie, not just snapshots." The findings, and the techniques used to obtain them, carry potential for the personalized study of individuals' psychiatric disorders. In the study, to be publishe...

The team also found that if the maternal grandmother smoked, this increased by 53% the risk of her grandchildren having a diagnosed autism spectrum disorder (ASD). These discoveries suggest that if a female is exposed to cigarette smoke while she is still in the womb, it could affect the developing eggs -- causing changes that may eventually affect the development of her own children. Further research is now needed to find out what these molecular changes might be, and to see whether the same associations are present in other groups of people. Unlike the analysis of autistic traits, which was based on over 7,000 participants, the 177 diagnosed with ASD were too few to analyse grandsons and granddaughters separately. The discovery, published today in  Scientific Reports , is part of an ongoing, long-term study of the effects of maternal and paternal grandmother's smoking in pregnancy on the development of their grandchildren, who are all part of Children of the 90s. By using...

Alterations in excitation/inhibition (E/I) balance constitute an emerging theme in clinical neuroscience, wrote Anticevic and Dr. John Lisman of Brandeis University in a commentary accompanying the special issue. The effects of E/I imbalance stretch across diagnostic boundaries, as indicated by the variety of psychiatric disorders addressed in the reviews, including schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorder , major depressive disorder, and bipolar disorder. Presenting both human and animal studies, the reviews summarize research on the developmental aspects of E/I regulation and how alterations in circuit stability and compensatory mechanisms with negative effects may emerge when the E/I balance tips. In particular, multiple reviews frame the disturbances in the E/I balance around altered glutamate synaptic development -- the excitatory arm of the E/I balance -- and present hypotheses for how those developmental alterations may lead to impaired structural and functional circuitry in...

The findings were published in  Science . "By pinpointing the genes that guide the organization of neurons, we can draw a line between changes to those genes, and the cellular, circuitry and behavioral deficiencies that can occur as a result," said Tom Maniatis, PhD, a principal investigator at Columbia's Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, the Isidore S. Edelman Professor and Chair of department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics at Columbia University Medical Center and the studys' senior author. Today's research is the result of parallel efforts by Dr. Maniatis, his lab and collaborators across Columbia to understand how individual neurons in the brain 'see' each other -- and how each of their hundreds, or even thousands, of branches wind through the brain without getting tangled up along the way. To investigate this problem, Dr. Maniatis and his team focused on a group of genes called clustered protocadherins , or Pcdh...

"Our study suggests that social skills are a key domain affected by paternal age. What was interesting is that the development of those skills was altered in the offspring of both older as well as very young fathers," said Magdalena Janecka, PhD, a fellow at the Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment at Mount Sinai. "In extreme cases, these effects may contribute to clinical disorders . Our study, however, suggests that they could also be much more subtle." Dr. Janecka and her co-authors used a UK-based sample of more than 15,000 twins who were followed between the ages of 4 and 16. To find out whether children's social skills were affected by how old their father was when they were born, the team looked for differences in the developmental patterns of social skills, as well as other behaviors, including conduct and peer problems, hyperactivity, and emotionality . Separately, they investigated whether the effects of paternal age on development were ...

Being able examine brain activity while animals engage in different behaviors is a powerful way to learn about normal brain function. When animal models of neurological disorders are added into the mix, researchers can test whether different manipulations can improve symptoms , with the ultimate goal of helping people who are affected by similar disorders. One difficulty is that recording brain activity, especially using imaging technology, is difficult when animals are allowed a full range of movements. This is particularly true when studying how animals navigate the world, remember locations, find objects, and interact with each other. To solve this problem, scientists have begun to use virtual reality with rodents. In order for these studies to be useful however, we need to know that the same parts of the brain are used the same way in a virtual setting. To test this, RIKEN scientists led by Masaaki Sato developed a virtual reality track for mice that required them to stop runni...

Children with autism experience more tantrums than children without, according to the researchers, and speech therapists, preschool teachers, parents and others often blame these frequent outbursts on speech and language problems. Some children with autism spectrum disorder are not able to speak or have speech that is not clear or well-understood by others. To investigate this correlation, the researchers studied the relationship between language and tantrum frequency in 240 children with autism between the ages of 15 and 71 months of age. The researchers, who published their results in a recent issue of the  Journal of Development and Physical Disabilities , said that the children's IQ, their ability to understand language and their ability to use words and speak clearly, explained less than 3 percent of their tantrums. "We had children in our sample with clear speech and enough intelligence to be able to communicate, and their tantrums were just as high in that group,...

Now, as reported online May 3, 2017 in  Neuron , a consortium of top researchers -- led by scientists at UC San Francisco, Rutgers University, Massachusetts General Hospital, the University of Florida, and Yale School of Medicine -- has made a significant advance, identifying the first "high-confidence" risk gene for Tourette disorder as well as three other probable risk genes. These findings are a step forward in understanding the biology of the disorder, the authors said, which will aid in the search for better treatments. "In the clinic, I have seen again and again the frustration that patients and families experience because of our lack of understanding and the limitations of our current treatments. But we have now taken a major initial step forward in changing this reality, thanks to new genomic technologies and a very successful long term collaboration between clinicians and geneticists," said Matthew State, MD, PhD, Oberndorf Family Distinguished Profess...

Researchers will discuss the study abstract, "Impact of Tracking Device Technology on Quality of Life for Families with a Child with an Autism Spectrum Disorder," during a platform presentation on Saturday, May 6, at the Moscone West Convention Center in San Francisco. They will also present 5 other abstracts about studies they conducted using the same cohort, currently the largest national sample of children who have wandered, during a poster session on Tuesday, May 9. According to national estimates, more than a quarter million children with autism and other developmental disorders wander away from adult supervision each year, said Andrew Adesman, MD, FAAP, a senior investigator for the abstracts being presented and Chief of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics at the Seven and Alexandra Cohen Children's Medical Center of New York. "In recent years, parents and professionals have become increasingly aware of not only the dangers associated with wandering...