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The institute is a consortium of scientists, educators, physicians and parents dedicated to researching the causes of and treatments for autism spectrum disorders, fragile X syndrome, and other neurodevelopmental disorders. The director of the MIND institute is Dr. Leonard Abbeduto. [1]
The amygdala, cerebellum, and many other brain regions have been implicated in autism. [15]Unlike some brain disorders which have clear molecular hallmarks that can be observed in every affected individual, such as Alzheimer's disease or Parkinson's disease, autism does not have a unifying mechanism at the molecular, cellular, or systems level.
Courchesne made his initial major contribution to autism research in 1988 when he published one of the first neuroimaging studies of autism in the New England Journal of Medicine, demonstrating that autism involves developmental brain defects in the cerebellum and is definitively a neural biological disorder of early development and not a psychological disorder.
A 2018 review suggests that the frequent association of gastrointestinal disorders and autism is due to abnormalities of the gut–brain axis. [109] The "leaky gut syndrome" hypothesis developed by Andrew Wakefield, known for his fraudulent study on another cause of autism, is popular among parents of children with autism.
Autism is associated with several genetic disorders, [4] perhaps due to an overlap in genetic causes. [5] About 10–15% of autism cases have an identifiable Mendelian (single-gene) condition, chromosome abnormality, or other genetic syndrome, [6] a category referred to as syndromic autism.
The imprinted brain hypothesis is an unsubstantiated hypothesis in evolutionary psychology regarding the causes of autism spectrum and schizophrenia spectrum disorders, first presented by Bernard Crespi and Christopher Badcock in 2008.
Rett syndrome brain samples and autism brain samples show immaturity of dendrite spines and reduction of cell-body size due to errors in coupled regulation between MECP2 and EGR2. [62] However, because of the multigene involvement in autism, the MECP2 gene has only been identified as a vulnerability factor in autism. [63]
Hippocampal sclerosis is the most common brain abnormality in those with temporal lobe epilepsy. [16] Hippocampal sclerosis may occur in children under 2 years of age with 1 instance seen as early as 6 months. [17] About 70% of those evaluated for temporal lobe epilepsy surgery have hippocampal sclerosis.