r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Feb 08 '25

Neuroscience Specific neurons that secrete oxytocin in the brain are disrupted in a mouse model of autism, neuroscientists have found. Stimulating these neurons restored social behaviors in these mice. These findings could help to develop new ways to treat autism.

https://www.riken.jp/en/news_pubs/research_news/rr/20250207_1/index.html
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u/bigasssuperstar Feb 08 '25

Scientists' presumptions that what looks like autism in their judgment of mouse behaviour is the same thing as what they think looks like autism in human behaviour is still stuck in the idea that what makes humans autistic can be understood from analysis of behaviour by non-autistic people.

IOW, they think they understand human autism; they think mouse autism is that, too; they think helping mouse autism will help autistic humans. But I don't believe they understand human autism at the start of that chain.

I don't question the methods they're using to test their hypotheses, but this is so many steps removed from autistic adults and what they say about their experience of the world that I don't trust it to be applicable to human autism.

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u/[deleted] Feb 08 '25 edited Feb 24 '25

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u/Curious_Flower_2640 Feb 09 '25 edited Feb 09 '25

There really are issues with these autism mouse models though. The people using them are assuming that the mouse model is likely to be a relevant parallel to human autism. That's why these studies get funded and why they extrapolate results from them to human treatment for autism.

Usually "mouse autism" looks like "this mouse initiates socialization less and is slower at solving mazes". Which could be caused by any number of issues the mouse has with no connection to the human mechanisms of autism. Especially since the "autistic mice" are often just created by injecting their mothers with valproic acid. I was honestly shocked at how shallow the parallels often are in the mouse models when looking at autism research papers.

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u/sagerobot Feb 09 '25

It's pretty arrogant of you to assume that all of these things haven't already been considered by the people doing this work.

Sounds like you should go and tell them how to conduct their studies since you so clearly know better than them.

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u/TheLastBallad Feb 09 '25

"How dare you criticize someone's methodology, in order to that you must be better than them!"

Are you sure you understand how science works, let alone peer review?

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u/sagerobot Feb 09 '25

Are you sure you understand how science works, let alone peer review?

Yeah I do thats why I wrote:

Sounds like you should go and tell them how to conduct their studies since you so clearly know better than them.

Did you think I was being facetious?