A pediatrician writing for The Daily Beast discusses a recent study in the journal Neuron that found links between autism and brain injury during fetal development. “For children known to have a cerebellar injury at birth, Dr. Wang’s paper reports an increased relative risk for an [autism spectrum disorder] roughly equivalent to that of a smoker developing lung cancer.”
Dr. Samuel Wang, an associate professor of molecular biology and neuroscience at Princeton University, tells Daily Beast that, “Problems in cerebellar function (whether caused by injury or genetic mechanisms) aren’t the cause of autism, but they are potentially a significant cause of autism.”
“Autism researchers have been hacking away at the genetics for years, but genes are a far cry from brain circuits,” says Wang. “There’s such a gap between genes and child development. I hope our article can help bridge that gap.”
Early Brain Injury Might Be the Root of Autism (The Daily Beast, September 9, 2014)