Researchers from King's College London have shown that there are variations in how a brain chemical called GABA regulates the processing of visual stimuli. The study showed that when autistic people are given a drug that activates GABA targets, their visual processing becomes more like that of non-autistic people.
Published in Science Translational Medicine, this research has defined a novel way to identify potential new interventions which may be useful in autism, and how to measure individual responses. The study was part funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Maudsley Biomedical Research Center. Autistic people process sensory information differently from people who are not autistic. These differences may contribute to the sensory sensitivities which can be distressing for some autistic people. Before this study little was known about the brain basis of visual processing differences observed in autistic people. Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is a chemical messenger in the brain that regulates the activity of nerve cells in the central nervous system. Genetic and post-mortem research has indicated that there are differences in parts of the GABA pathway between autistic and non-autistic people, but no-one has directly tested the theory that there are differences in how the GABA system functions in the living human brain in autistic people. Read more...
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