The cause of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is not known yet, but it is clear that there is a complex interaction between many genes and many environmental factors. Autism affects not only those aspects that are used for diagnosis: social interaction, communication, and restricted and repetitive behaviors, but also many other factors related to the […]
Research on autism is addressing some of the many issues that are pending and one of them is the situation and perspectives of the rest of the family: fathers, mothers, siblings, grandparents… A recent study examines some aspects of women with autism who have had a child with ASD, compared to women without autism who […]
The complexity of the brain stems from its connectivity. This is evidenced by the disproportionate increase in the volume of white substance throughout primate evolution even though the “grey matter” is the one that takes the fame; that is, there are more and more “wires” connecting the different cortical regions over long distances according to […]
“So the goblins came. They pushed their way in and pulled baby out, leaving another all made of ice” Maurice Sendak, Outside over there. Fairy tales are stories, often with an evolution of centuries, that form a mutable and difficult to define genre, with a close relationship to folk tales. The functions of fairy tales […]
For a long time it has been posed that induced pluripotent stem cells or iPSC have a great potential in the treatment of certain health issues, what’s more, attending to the results of a recently published study in the journal PNAS , iPSC can be helpful to revert brain stroke damage in mice. Sara Palma-Tortosa […]
Humans are not the only animals with a taste for alcohol. It has been described in different animals in the wild, especially mammals, that they do like to eat overripe fermented fruit, and with it experience similar effects to the ones almost all of us are familiar with. It turns out that some mammals cannot […]
In a new publication led by Dr. Albert Giralt, the researchers discovered the interaction between a transcription factor identified as “Helios” and a protein called “WDFY1” that could help elucidate the link between immunity and schizophrenia . Schizophrenia is an incurable mental illness characterized by relapsing episodes of psychosis. This disorder affects approximately 1% of […]
A reported case study in a Colombian woman , member of a family carriers of a mutation in the presinilin 1 gene which leads to early onset Alzheimer’s, has shown that a certain mutation in the gene APOE3 can protect from the cognitive decline associated with Alzheimer’s disease. This woman was already aged 70 but […]
As important as remembering, it is forgetting. As Sherlock Holmes said the brain is like a room that you furnish with memories but where space is limited and unnecesary information should be erased. Much on how this erasing works is unkown, but a new study points out to a certain immune cell population in the […]
What differentiates us from our closest relatives and how are these differences caused? Scientists are trying to answer t his question by comparing the genomic information of us and our closest relatives . Yet, we are far from having a genomic explanation that justifies the observed phenotypic differences. Human Accelerated Regions (HARs) However, some findings […]