"BBC - Brain Find Sheds Light on Autism"

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BBC News - Brain Find Sheds Light on Autism

This is actually a super cool finding. The scientists basically took skin cells from individuals with Timothy Syndrome, and made neurons. From my understanding, they compared the growth of neurons to neurotypical children, and found that there were fewer neurons equipped for the upper cerebral cortex, and few for the lower part. They said that it "...meant there were fewer neurons equipped to work in a part of the brain called the corpus callosum, which has the role of helping the left and right "hemispheres" of the brain communicate." Many scientists think that autism is partially due to poor communication between both hemispheres of the brain (and other parts), and I think it's cool that an experiment like this demonstrates this theory. They also said that the neurons in individuals with Timothy Syndrome were making too much norepinephrine and dopamine, which "play a significant role in sensory processing and social behaviour". Timothy Syndrome is different from an autism spectrum disorder (with specific physical anomalies to do with structure of the heart and webbing of digits...I don't really know much about it), although they say ASDs occur with the syndrome. I hope they continue with studies comparing other ASDs to each other. I'd definitely be interested in learning about that.

i long have had the feeling that the different parts of my noodle weren't on too good speaking terms.

You, too, Auntblabby?

^^^
misery loves company

Well, people have said that our "brain wiring" is a bit off. Though I am curious if MRIs and other tests have revealed how our brains go about storing and retrieving information. Would some areas highlight that aren't normally associated with a typical region of the brain's function? Stuff like that would be interesting to find out.

We have more brain cells.

Do you suppose this is what accounts for uneven test scores?

Like my mother used to say, "How can you be so smart and so stupid!"