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Open AccessJournal ArticleDOI

Brain plasticity and disease: a matter of inhibition.

TLDR
Recent findings showing that the inhibition-excitation balance controls adult brain plasticity and is at the core of the pathogenesis of neurodevelopmental disorders like autism, Down syndrome, and Rett syndrome are summarized.
Abstract
One major goal in Neuroscience is the development of strategies promoting neural plasticity in the adult central nervous system, when functional recovery from brain disease and injury is limited. New evidence has underscored a pivotal role for cortical inhibitory circuitries in regulating plasticity both during development and in adulthood. This paper summarizes recent findings showing that the inhibition-excitation balance controls adult brain plasticity and is at the core of the pathogenesis of neurodevelopmental disorders like autism, Down syndrome, and Rett syndrome.

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Journal ArticleDOI

Brain Hyperconnectivity in Children with Autism and its Links to Social Deficits

TL;DR: Brain hyperconnectivity predicted symptom severity in ASD, such that children with greater functional connectivity exhibited more severe social deficits and was associated with higher levels of fluctuations in regional brain signals.
Journal ArticleDOI

Environment and Brain Plasticity: Towards an Endogenous Pharmacotherapy

TL;DR: This survey aims to review past and recent work concerning the influence exerted by the environment on brain plasticity processes, with special emphasis on the underlying cellular and molecular mechanisms and starting from experimental work on animal models to move to highly relevant work performed in humans.
Journal ArticleDOI

The Default Mode Network in Autism

TL;DR: It is suggested that aberrancies in key nodes of the DMN and their dynamic functional interactions contribute to atypical integration of information about the self in relation to 'other', as well as impairments in the ability to flexibly attend to socially relevant stimuli.
Journal ArticleDOI

Down syndrome: the brain in trisomic mode

TL;DR: New data from functional neuroimaging studies are challenging the authors' views of the cognitive phenotypes associated with Down syndrome and their pathophysiological correlates, and these advances hold promise for the development of treatments for intellectual disability.
Book ChapterDOI

Neurological phenotypes for Down syndrome across the life span.

TL;DR: The neurological phenotype of Down syndrome in early development, childhood, and aging is reviewed and mouse models for DS are providing a platform for the formulation of clinical trials with intervention targeted to synaptic plasticity, brain biochemistry, and morphological brain alterations.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI

Rett syndrome is caused by mutations in X-linked MECP2, encoding methyl-CpG-binding protein 2.

TL;DR: This study reports the first disease-causing mutations in RTT and points to abnormal epigenetic regulation as the mechanism underlying the pathogenesis of RTT.
Journal ArticleDOI

Autism as a strongly genetic disorder: evidence from a British twin study.

TL;DR: The findings indicate that autism is under a high degree of genetic control and suggest the involvement of multiple genetic loci.
Journal ArticleDOI

Model of autism: increased ratio of excitation/inhibition in key neural systems

TL;DR: In this paper, a model that postulates that some forms of autism are caused by an increased ratio of excitation/inhibition in sensory, mnemonic, social and emotional systems is proposed.
Journal ArticleDOI

Advances in autism genetics: on the threshold of a new neurobiology

TL;DR: Systems biology approaches, including array-based expression profiling, are poised to provide additional insights into this group of disorders, in which heterogeneity, both genetic and phenotypic, is emerging as a dominant theme.
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