Topic: Fmr1-/y mice

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by impairments in social communication and interactions, as well as restricted behaviours. Strikingly most of ASD patients also exhibit aberrant reactivity to sensory stimuli including tactile stimuli. Tactile information is perceived in the periphery and processed in the spinal cord under the control of inhibitory neurons before being sent to higher brain structures. However, whether these inhibitory neurons undergo functional alterations in ASD models remains poorly investigated. To explore the functional plasticity of those neurons in ASD, we

Altered sensory experience is one of the core features of autism, affecting approximately 90% of autistic individuals, exerting a strong negative influence on day-to-day life and contributing to the development of other core symptoms and medical conditions that co-occur with autism. Touch is particularly crucial during development and tactile alterations in autistic individuals include differences in stimulus perception and sensory-related neural excitability. Better understanding and synthetizing these features is crucial in characterizing altered tactile experience in autism and can provide