 |
| Synaptic connections by Bernard Barnes |
Mo Cost at Neurophilosophy has a fascinating interview with neuroscientist, VS Ramachandran. This follows on from a pretty spot-on review on the Simon's Foundation blog of Ramachandran's controversial "mirror neuron" theory of autism.
Another busy person I've recently discovered is Emily Willingham. She writes some amazing stuff on the biology of autism. In the last couple of weeks, she's written some great blogposts on possible links between autism and mitochondrial disease and the interaction between genes and sex hormones. They're all way out of my area and pretty technical but I think even I understood them. If that wasn't enough, Emily also provides some brilliant insights into the nature of autism, courtesy of her autistic nine-year-old. If you only follow one link from this post, make it this one!
Steve Silbersman has a really interesting interview with Seth Mnookin, author of The Panic Virus (next on my reading list), which covers the autism-MMR/thimerosol scare. And while we're on the topic of vaccines, Orac has an extremely clear (if provocative) review of a study of vaccinated versus unvaccinated kids in Germany. Bottom line, the only differences they found were in the number of vaccine-preventable diseases.
Left Brain Right Brain provides an update on a story that broke late last year about a Danish study linking episodes of jaundice just after birth to increased risk of autism. The journal published a number of critical commentaries, the authors of the original study went away and did some new analyses, and ended up agreeing with the critics that their own original conclusions were not justified. This, as far as I'm concerned, is exactly how science should work. It's just unfortunate that the change of interpretation almost certainly won't get the coverage that the original story did.
Finally, I have to go back to the consistently excellent Simons Foundation autism research blog. Highlights in the last couple of weeks include a piece on the controversy over new boundaries for diagnosing autism; and a review of a study looking at how the behaviour of mice with Fragile X syndrome is affected by their genetic background. One of the great things about the blog is that the writers often look at research that isn't directly about autism but is potentially important in the longer term. A case in point is this piece by Emily Anthes on gut bacteria and behaviour in mice (although the headline is somewhat misleading).
Links to these and some other pieces can be found in the "Of Interest" links down the side of the blog. I'd be interested to know which format is more popular (I currently have no idea whether anyone actually follows any of those links) so comment away. If people prefer the round-up I might do away with the list and tidy things up a bit. Also, feel free to add more links in the comments section - just so long as they are relevant!
Another busy person I've recently discovered is Emily Willingham. She writes some amazing stuff on the biology of autism. In the last couple of weeks, she's written some great blogposts on possible links between autism and mitochondrial disease and the interaction between genes and sex hormones. They're all way out of my area and pretty technical but I think even I understood them. If that wasn't enough, Emily also provides some brilliant insights into the nature of autism, courtesy of her autistic nine-year-old. If you only follow one link from this post, make it this one!
Steve Silbersman has a really interesting interview with Seth Mnookin, author of The Panic Virus (next on my reading list), which covers the autism-MMR/thimerosol scare. And while we're on the topic of vaccines, Orac has an extremely clear (if provocative) review of a study of vaccinated versus unvaccinated kids in Germany. Bottom line, the only differences they found were in the number of vaccine-preventable diseases.
Left Brain Right Brain provides an update on a story that broke late last year about a Danish study linking episodes of jaundice just after birth to increased risk of autism. The journal published a number of critical commentaries, the authors of the original study went away and did some new analyses, and ended up agreeing with the critics that their own original conclusions were not justified. This, as far as I'm concerned, is exactly how science should work. It's just unfortunate that the change of interpretation almost certainly won't get the coverage that the original story did.
Finally, I have to go back to the consistently excellent Simons Foundation autism research blog. Highlights in the last couple of weeks include a piece on the controversy over new boundaries for diagnosing autism; and a review of a study looking at how the behaviour of mice with Fragile X syndrome is affected by their genetic background. One of the great things about the blog is that the writers often look at research that isn't directly about autism but is potentially important in the longer term. A case in point is this piece by Emily Anthes on gut bacteria and behaviour in mice (although the headline is somewhat misleading).
Links to these and some other pieces can be found in the "Of Interest" links down the side of the blog. I'd be interested to know which format is more popular (I currently have no idea whether anyone actually follows any of those links) so comment away. If people prefer the round-up I might do away with the list and tidy things up a bit. Also, feel free to add more links in the comments section - just so long as they are relevant!