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Neuroscience

Untangling autism

Nature volume 532, pages 45–46 (2016)Cite this article

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A clever dissection of the roles of the Ptchd1 gene in the brains of mice demonstrates one way to untangle the complex relationships between the causes and symptoms of neurodevelopmental disorders. See Article p.58

Our current understanding of neurodevelopmental disorders can be thought of as a tangled mess of threads. The clinical presentations of such disorders are so variable that people can receive the same diagnosis despite not sharing a single symptom. Furthermore, the underlying risk factors — be they genetic or environmental — can be associated with not just one, but several disorders. Untangling these threads to link cause and outcome seems a Sisyphean task, but it is a crucial one if we are to develop treatment approaches that have a solid neurobiological basis. In this issue, Wells et al.1 (page 58) use a mouse model of a human genetic condition to grasp the loose end of a single thread and carefully extricate it from the tangled mess. In doing so, they map a precise set of genetically linked symptoms onto dysfunction of a neuronal structure that gates the flow of information across multiple brain circuits.

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Figure 1: Tracing the threads between causes and symptoms of autism.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Scott Bolkan is in the Department of Neuroscience, Columbia University, New York, New York 10032, USA.,

    Scott Bolkan

  2. Joshua A. Gordon is in the Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University.,

    Joshua A. Gordon

Authors
  1. Scott Bolkan
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  2. Joshua A. Gordon
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Joshua A. Gordon.

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Gene expression: The autism disconnect

Translational medicine: Mice and men show the way

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Bolkan, S., Gordon, J. Untangling autism. Nature 532, 45–46 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature17311

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