Pre-natal neuron disorganization may cause autism

Nobody knows what causes autism, a condition that varies so widely in severity that some people on the spectrum achieve enviable fame and success while others require lifelong assistance due to severe problems with communication, cognition, and behavior. Scientists have found countless clues, but so far they don’t quite add up. The genetics is complicated. The neuroscience is conflicted.

Now, a new study adds an intriguing, unexpected, and sure-to-be controversial finding to the mix: It suggests the brains of children with autism contain small patches where the normally ordered arrangement of neurons in the cerebral cortex is disrupted. “We’ve found locations where there appears to be a failure of normal development,” said Eric Courchesne, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego and an author of the study, which appears in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“If it’s real, if it’s replicated and it’s a consistent finding, it’s more evidence that autism starts prenatally and only manifests itself when kids start to have trouble with language or social behavior around age two or three,” said Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health. “These kinds of changes in cellular architecture would happen during brain development, probably around the first part of the second trimester.”

Read the full, original story: An Unexpected Discovery in the Brains of Autistic Children

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