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Autism and Developmental Disorders Colloquium Series

“Neurobiological approaches to the understanding of autism”

David G. Amaral, Ph.D.

Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, Beneto Foundation Chair and Research Director of the M.I.N.D. Institute, UC Davis

6:00 pm, Wednesday, May 16, 2007
MIT Building 46-3002 (auditorium), followed by a reception

Building Address: 43 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA 02139

Hosted by Charles A. Nelson, Ph.D., and the Brain Development and Disorders Project

Supported by the Simons Foundation, the Anne and Paul Marcus Family Foundation, and the Autism Treatment Network

Colloquia sponsored by the Autism Consortium

Please RSVP to lmavros@mit.edu

Autism now affects 1:150 children in the United States. It is a complex disorder that likely has many variants and various etiologies. This presentation begins with a summary of some of the features of autism and the need for better definition of the phenotypes of autism. The presentation then evaluates the hypothesis that the amygdala plays an important role in the pathophysiology of autism. First, MRI studies of the amygdala in children with autism are presented. Then, recent postmortem data on the morphology of the amygdala in autism are described. Taken together these data confirm that the amygdala is clearly pathological in autism. Given that the amygdala is pathological, what might this pathology contribute to the behavioral impairments of autism? To address this issue, research on the nonhuman primate is discussed. These studies highlight a role for the amygdala in fear regulation and perhaps in abnormal anxiety in autism. Finally, preliminary data concerning a nonhuman primate model based on a neuroimmune intervention are described.