(ANSA) - TRIESTE, 11 JUN - From hypersensitivity to clothes to extreme visual attention to detail: about 90% of people with autism report typical sensorial experiences.
At the origin of this would be found an imbalance of neuronal activity.
A new project by the neuroscientist of the International Higher School of Advanced Studies (Sissa) Davide Zoccolan, funded by the Simons Foundation AutismResearch Initiative (Sfari), aims to test this hypothesis in the visual system.
The project, according to program, will start in October and for two years the scientist will study the visual abilities and underlying neuronal processes in a type of genetically modified rat.
"Unlike mice - explains Zoccolan - which have cognitive functions and levels of social interactions much more limited than humans, the rat is superior at the behavioral level, at the social structure level of the groups in which it lives and at the level of cognitive ability".
Zoccolan will team behavioral and neurophysiological experiments to study visual processes in animals carrying a mutation in a gene strongly involved in autism.
Researchers will verify the presence of visual abnormalities similar to those reported in autistic people and will investigate the cortical processes involved: "We have proposed experiments that test this perceptual behavioral point of view to investigate what neuronal correlates are and how they differ from neurotypical animals."
The first objective will be "to characterize these models".
Subsequently, "discovering how the visual properties are altered in these animals could have a strong impact on the understanding of the neuronal processes that characterize autism spectrum disorders.
The project is one of seven funded by Sfari, which together with the Medical College of Wisconsin has developed eight different mutant rat models to enable the study of autism and preclinical tests of possible therapies.
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