According to a new study autism symptoms have been linked to reduced action of GABA, a neurotransmitter responsible for diminishing cellular activity in the brain. The Harvard and MIT researchers strongly believe their results suggest potential treatments for autism in the form of drugs which might increase concentrations of this brain chemical.
For the very first time, the Neuroscientists at Harvard and MIT have indicated a connection between the activity of the neurotransmitter GABA and symptoms of autism. This is a finding that may pave the way for new methods of treating and diagnosing the disorder.
“This is the first connection in humans between a neurotransmitter in the brain and an autistic behavioral symptom,” Caroline Robertson, a postdoc at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research and the study’s lead author, said in a statement.
The research team led by Caroline Robertson, a junior fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows, used brain imaging coupled with a visual test known to trigger different reactions in the brains of people with autism and those without the disorder. The team showed that differences between the two groups were associated with a breakdown in the signaling pathway used by GABA, one of the brain’s chief inhibitory neurotransmitters.
GABA plays the most significant part in restraining and preventing activity in the brain and past studies of animals with autism-like symptoms have found reduced GABA activity in the brain. Until now there has been no direct evidence for such a link in humans. For the new study, first author
Dr. Caroline Robertson of Harvard University and MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and her colleagues explored GABA levels in the autistic brain. They tested 21 people with autism (15 Asperger’s, one high-functioning autism, and four atypical) and 20 typical control individuals on a binocular rivalry task.
All participants had normal or corrected-to-normal vision and below average IQ scores. As expected, the adults with autism were slower to suppress the visual images. (Even when the researchers excluded participants taking medications known to interact with the GABA system, the results were not changed.)
The researchers then measured GABA concentrations as the participants completed the task. Here, they discovered a strong link between binocular rivalry dynamics and levels of GABA in the participants who had not been diagnosed with autism. The same was not true for people with autism, who showed GABA dysfunction.
“Individuals with autism are known to have detail-oriented visual perception, exhibiting remarkable attention to small details in the sensory environment and difficulty filtering out or suppressing irrelevant sensory information,” Robertson said in a press release.
She explained the new findings lend support to the notion that the greater attention to detail might have something to do with GABA and neurotransmitters in general since many others play important roles in autism symptoms.
In the future, the researchers aim to examine binocular rivalry in children with autism as a potential diagnostic marker while also searching for a genetic basis underlying a GABA imbalance.
Be the first to comment on "Harvard Study Links Autism to a Key Neurotransmitter"