2014 International Meeting for Autism Research

May 14 - 17, 2014

Brain over-growth in infancy is one of the best-replicated imaging findings in ASD. Considering the high correlation between HC and total brain volume, particularly in infancy, atypical HC trajectory may also provide a proxy for abnormal brain development during infancy. Even though early brain growth and, more generally, early somatic overgrowth is well-recognized in ASD, the underlying biological mechanisms and relationships to the etiology of ASD remain poorly understood. The proposed symposium will address a number of key questions regarding early overgrowth in ASD, including its prevalence and effects of gender on growth patterns, evidence from neuroimaging studies of infant siblings of children with ASD, animal models of autism risk factors, as well as studies modeling neuronal growth using induced pluripotent stem cells.