Social behavior is a complex and dynamic process shaped by movement, coordination and physical touch. A new study in Cell written by members of SFARI's Autism Rat Consortium introduces s-DANNCE, a machine-learning system that can map the fine-scale movements of freely interacting rats in three dimensions. By applying s-DANNCE to seven genetic rat models of autism, researchers have uncovered distinct social phenotypes, offering new insights into the diversity of autism-related behaviors.

Two studies by different research groups — one led by Flora Vaccarino and the other by Juergen Knoblich — used brain organoids derived from pluripotent stem cells of people with autism and showed how transcriptional alterations affecting certain cell types during human brain development could contribute to the early emergence of ASD.

In a mouse model of fragile X syndrome, Emily Osterweil and her colleagues show that excessive protein synthesis drives a pathological compensatory rise in protein degradation (by the ubiquitin proteasome system), which can be targeted to correct various phenotypes including audiogenic seizures.