Figure 3.

MSO dysmorphology in ASD. The top image shows a reconstruction of a human MSO neuron (Mansour and Kulesza, 2021). Human MSO neurons have slender cell bodies that form symmetric dendrites on both the medial and lateral sides of the MSO cell column. MSO neurons receive symmetric glutamatergic input from both ipsilateral and contralateral VCN and these are distributed symmetrically on distal dendrites, glycinergic inputs are distributed primarily on the cell body and proximal dendrites and originate from the medial and lateral nuclei of the trapezoid body (MNTB and LNTB, respectively). Additionally, there are GABAergic inputs from the superior paraolivary nucleus (SPON). MSO neurons integrate these precisely arranged and timed inputs to extract spectral and temporal features of sound. MSO neurons in subjects with ASD lack the same morphology and distribution and the arrangement of these inputs are unknown.