Credit: UT Southwestern Medical Center
DALLAS - Feb. 3, 2021 - Inactivating a gene in young songbirds that s closely linked with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) prevents the birds from forming memories necessary to accurately reproduce their fathers songs, a new study led by UT Southwestern shows.
The findings, published online today in
Science Advances, may help explain the deficits in speech and language that often accompany ASD and could eventually lead to new treatments specifically targeting this aspect of the disorder.
Study leader Todd Roberts, Ph.D., associate professor of neuroscience and a member of the Peter O Donnell Jr. Brain Institute at UT Southwestern, explains that the vocalizations that comprise a central part of human communication are relatively unique among the animal world - not just for their complexity, but in the way they re passed down from caregivers to offspring. Songbirds such as zebra finches also learn complex vocalizations from caregivers (songs a