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Neuron research offers autism hope
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CITY scientists claim to have made a breakthrough in the understanding of conditions such as autism and schizophrenia.
Researchers say they have detected the molecular mechanism of information transmission between neurons in the brain and how they grow in a competitive system.
The Institute of Neuroscience of the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences under the Chinese Academy of Sciences team found differences between children and adults.
Children brains have more connections than adults, but while adults have fewer, these are stronger, they said.
The team also detected differences in people with conditions such as autism and schizophrenia compared to the general population.
Differences centered on the part of a neuron connection that receives information, known as “dendritis spines.”
“We found people with autism and schizophrenia have an abnormal spine reduction,” said Yu Xiang, leading scientist on the project.
“This offers a new route to study patients’ brain changes for possible treatment.”
The human brain consists of some 100 billion neurons that send, receive and interpret information. Each neuron makes on average 1,000 connections with other neurons.
The number of information-receiving dendritis spines are “trimmed” during the brain’s growth through competition for proteins, for better information transmission and storage, said the team.
The study was published in the journal “Cell” yesterday.
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