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Excitatory GABA
gamma-Aminobutyric Acid, otherwise more commonly known by its acronym, “GABA,” is a primary neurotransmitter of the central nervous system. While most of us may be more familiar with the concept of...
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Common Genetic Variants & Autism Risk
A letter was published this month in Nature Genetics by Gaugier et al. which has received notable attention. While many of us may be familiar with rare variants of genes that show strong association to...
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“Vaccine Encephalopathy”– Autism, Epilepsy, & Age of Onset
“Vaccine Encephalopathy”. Despite the medical-sounding terminology, it’s a very poorly defined term and is used to describe developmental regression, seizures, and sometimes coma in an infant or young...
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Calcium Signaling in Neurodevelopment: Relevance to Autism, Epilepsy,...
Calcium ions (Ca2+) are the most widely used signal transduction molecules in living organisms, ranging from prokaryotes to complex eukaryotes such as ourselves. Calcium levels must be tightly...
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Schizophrenia, Autism, and Sensory Processing
“During the last while back I have noticed that noises all seem to be louder to me than they were before. It’s as if someone had turned up the volume. . . . I notice it most with background noises– you...
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The Shape of the Neuron in Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is defined by its core symptomatology, which includes thought disorder, psychosis (including delusions, hallucinations, and paranoia), and negative symptoms, the latter which include...
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The Science of Paris
My fiancé and I have been in France since August 30th, enjoying a combination of early honeymoon and a Brain Disorders conference. This post, rather than offering anything innovative and particularly...
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Emily Who???
Hi, folks. This is just a quick update to let all my readers know that I’m getting married next week. More importantly for Science Over a Cuppa, my last name will be changing as I’ll be taking my...
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Brain Size in Autism: Some New Preliminary Reports
I attended a conference last week in La Ciotat, France, called the EMBO Conference on Brain Development and Disorders. While the title may suggest a width breadth of research, it has come to primarily...
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The Essence of Christopher Gillberg’s E.S.S.E.N.C.E. Theory
“While in the past, child psychiatry had little interest in operationalised diagnosis, recent trends have made categorical diagnosis an integral part of everyday clinical and research practice. So...
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Sex Differences, GABA Signaling, and Autism Risk
Awhile back, I wrote about how the neurotransmitter, GABA, can behave as an excitatory signal in certain cell types rather than the inhibitory signal with which we’re more familiar. As a quick recap, a...
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Maternal Inflammation during Pregnancy, Autism, & Big Brains
A paper published this month in Stem Cell Reports by Le Belle et al. out of UCLA suggests that maternal inflammation during pregnancy, such as occurs during an acute illness or a chronic disease, may...
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Frozen Poo Pills: Continued Trials Are Successful in Treating Recurrent C....
I remember all too well what it was like for my mother when she had Clostridium difficile infection. Post-surgery for colon cancer, the recovery was a breeze compared to the C. difficile she brought...
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Alu Transposable Elements and the Human Genome
For those not familiar, transposable or mobile elements are segments of DNA that have, or at one time had, the potential for moving about the genome. This occurs either via a cut-and-paste method as...
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Brief Update: What’s New in the Field of Autism Genetics?
Unfortunately this week I’m bogged down with a lot of writing (grant, manuscript revision, etc.) and so my post is going to have to be rather short. But I wanted to take the opportunity to point my...
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Where Have All the Axons Gone in Autism?
Okay, I’ll admit, the study of neurite (i.e., axon and dendrite) formation isn’t my area of expertise. My background is more in neuropathology and genetics. But I had been working on some revisions for...
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Neuronal Connectivity, Brain Size, & Gender
An article was published just this month in Frontiers by Hänggi et al. titled, “The hypothesis of neuronal interconnectivity as a function of brain size– A general organization principle of the human...
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Our Latest Publication: Genetics studies indicate that neural induction and...
Just this month we published our latest manuscript in the journal, Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience, titled, “Genetics studies indicate that neural induction and early neuronal maturation are...
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Klinefelter Syndrome, Autism, & the Female Protective Effect?
I spoke with an individual a few days ago who had Klinefelter Syndrome (KS). For those who aren’t familiar, KS is one of the most common intersex conditions in which a “genetic male” inherits at least...
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Do Disturbances to Neuronal Maturation Lead to Autism?
A few weeks ago I summarized the findings of our latest study in Frontiers. Unfortunately, I gather as there was almost no interest in the blog that I did a very poor job of explaining why our findings...
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