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Lookup NU author(s): Emeritus Professor Elaine Perry
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The broad variation in phenotypes and severities within autism spectrum disorders suggests the involvement of multiple predisposing factors, interacting in complex ways with normal developmental courses and gradients. Identification of these factors, and the common developmental path into which they feed, is hampered by the large degrees of convergence from causal factors to altered brain development, and divergence from abnormal brain development into altered cognition and behaviour. Genetic, neurochemical, neuroimaging, and behavioural findings on autism, as well as studies of normal development and of genetic syndromes that share symptoms with autism, offer hypotheses as to the nature of causal factors and their possible effects on the structure and dynamics of neural systems. Such alterations in neural properties may in turn perturb activity-dependent development, giving rise to a complex behavioural syndrome many steps removed from the root causes. Animal models based on genetic, neurochemical, neurophysiological, and behavioural manipulations offer the possibility of exploring these developmental processes in detail, as do human studies addressing endophenotypes beyond the diagnosis itself.
Author(s): Belmonte MK, Cook Jr EH, Anderson GM, Rubenstein JLR, Greenough WT, Beckel-Mitchener A, Courchesne E, Boulanger LM, Powell SB, Levitt PR, Perry EK, Jiang YH, DeLorey TM, Tierney E
Publication type: Review
Publication status: Published
Journal: Molecular Psychiatry
Year: 2004
Volume: 9
Issue: 7
Pages: 646-663
ISSN (print): 1359-4184
ISSN (electronic): 1476-5578
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/sj.mp.4001499
DOI: 10.1038/sj.mp.4001499
PubMed id: 15037868