The expression levels of certain genes that track with brain activity vary between people with autism and their non-autistic peers, according to a new study. Many of the affected genes code for proteins important for brain development, particularly in neurons that dampen brain activity.
Studying differences in activity-linked gene expression in the brain could help illuminate the pathways that contribute most to autism, says co-lead investigator Genevieve Konopka, associate professor of neuroscience at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.
The results are the product of an approach that compares brain activity measurements from imaging studies with gene-expression data from postmortem brain samples. The study “is one of the first to use postmortem gene expression from individuals with autism and assess how those gene-expression patterns might inform autism-relevant phenotypes,” Konopka says. Previous research using this approach found 38 genes that are associated with brain activity, 9 of which ...
