Mouse Models
23 May 2016, 4:12 pm
Why are these even thing? There is no such thing as an autistic mouse, the concept doesn't even make sense, so why waste our time trying to create one? Mouses simply don't have the mental capacity to be actually autistic; if you were to take man with the mind of mouse, he's probably already be mislabeled as severally autistic, so would an autistic mouse be like double-autistic? No, that's not how autism works. And yes, mice socialize with other mice, but mice socialization can't be compared to human socialization. For one, mice don't have language, and disorders in language is a major part of autism. You can't investigate disorders in a part of something when it doesn't even have said part! So all mouse models are going to give is very superficial social problems, not anything related to the complex reality that is autism. So why waste our time with mice? It's only going to give us misleading results.
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23 May 2016, 9:12 pm
Generally those studies are designed on the basis of trying to establish a link between neurology (often relative levels of neurotransmitters) and their effect on behaviour. Occasionally they seem to find evidence that is potentially translatable, though I can understand your concern about inter-species generalising too.
This one and others like it, on the relative levels of GABA, does seem to me to offer something potentially useful:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 130332.htm
23 May 2016, 9:30 pm
Often such mice are engineered with a knock-out gene, that can be controlled. It's a way to study what happens when that gene expresses normally vs when it doesn't, and has the advantage of the availability of a control group since lab mice are so genetically similar. When we humans also have that gene and a correlation is found between it expressing or not expressing and certain autistic traits, it can be useful to be able to switch the gene on and off across a population.
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23 May 2016, 10:20 pm
Sure, you can test for neurotransmitters, but that's not autism, that's just neurotransmitters. And you can test for some specific genes, but those are just specific genes, it's hardly autism. All these tests are really showing is these things affect the behavior in both mice and humans. So maybe this things factor into autism, but it's just one factor, autism is the result of the collusion of many different factors.
_________________
Cinnamon and sugary
Softly Spoken lies
You never know just how you look
Through other people's eyes
Autism FAQs http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt186115.html
