The primordial cells that give rise to most other brain cells do not proliferate in a typical way in autistic people—and that could explain how common traits emerge from a range of genetic origins, according to a new study.
The idea that autism disrupts the proliferation of neural precursor cells isn’t new, but until now, few studies had investigated how that difference arises.
In the new study, scientists fashioned neural precursor cells out of cord blood cells from five autistic boys ages 4 to 14 and, to serve as controls, either their non-autistic brothers or unrelated non-autistic people. Three of the autistic children have idiopathic cases, in which there is no known genetic cause for their autism; the other two have deletions in 16p11.2, a chromosomal region linked to autism and other neuropsychiatric conditions. Three of the autistic children have macrocephaly, or a large head.
Neural precursors from the autistic ...
