News / Spectrum

Video: Postmortem studies unlocking puzzle of autism

Counting neurons in the brains of people with autism who died young might strike some people as grisly or tedious. But Eric Courchesne sees it is the key to understanding why people with autism experience rapid overgrowth of certain brain regions early in life.

By Deborah Rudacille

14 November 2010 | 1 min read

This article is more than five years old.

Neuroscience—and science in general—is constantly evolving, so older articles may contain information or theories that have been reevaluated since their original publication date.

Counting neurons in the brains of people with autism who died young might strike some people as grisly or tedious. But Eric Courchesne sees it as the key to understanding why people with autism experience rapid overgrowth of certain brain regions early in life.

Courchesne is director of the MRI project on early brain development in autism at the University of California, San Diego. He points out that autism is a genetic disorder that involves how the brain develops, connects and functions — and that postmortem brains are crucial to uncovering some of this information.

Courchesne spoke to SFARI Thursday at a meeting on the Emerging Neuroscience of Autism Spectrum Disorders, which preceded the Society of Neuroscience’s annual meeting in San Diego.