Around 1995, when the National Alliance for Autism Research was founded, a prominent neuroscientist invited to serve on its science advisory board mused, “ ‘autism research’—that's an oxymoron.” Yet, in little over a decade, autism and autism research are prominent in the public's awareness, more that many other prevalent diseases. Funding for autism research has increased significantly each year. Editorials in prominent science journals have commented on the phenomena, even suggesting that other diseases are being neglected due to the “marketing” of autism.
Notwithstanding these changes, scientific investigators still face an enormous task in understanding and ameliorating autism spectrum disorders. Pivotal to the effort to help affected families is the recruitment of additional scientists with crucial areas of expertise and new perspectives. This volume is intended to provide a focused overview on the state of the science—both to stimulate and help enlist brain tissue researchers in this undertaking. We express our gratitude to Brain Pathology and its Editor, Arie Perry, for inviting us to contribute to this symposium on autism.
Drs. Pardo and Eberhardt have exhaustively outlined the many neurobiological findings that are in the autism literature. One can readily see that, along with the excitement of new discovery, we are faced with so many leads that formulating coherent hypotheses is an urgent priority. Dr. Casanova reviews the neuropathology literature and presents some of those hypotheses. Dr. Crawley describes the state of the art with respect to studying mice behaviors as a model for autism. Drs. Pickett and Haourtunian provide a practical outline of the Autism Tissue Program, how it is administered and the nature and availability of tissue samples. Finally, I review the clinical diagnosis of autism, with its very substantial problems, and suggest that tissue researchers may offer profound contributions in refining our understanding of the disease.
We hope that this symposium is helpful and that it stimulates tissue researchers and others to participate in our quest to solve and ameliorate this terrible disorder.