The Science of Salt Lake City
This week my husband and I are in Salt Lake City, Utah, for the upcoming International Meeting of Autism Research (IMFAR). Since we had a little free time this weekend, […]
Author Archives: Emily Casanova
Changing Our View of Dinosaurs: The Deep Roots of Bird Evolution
For many of us, the movie, Jurassic Park, summarizes our concepts of dinosaurs: giant long-toothed ferocious reptiles. Though the Victorians once considered them slow, stupid, and plodding, for those who […]
Yes, Scientists Get Paid to Tickle Mouse Whiskers
I can just hear Sarah Palin now: “And sometimes taxpayer money goes to projects . . . where scientists get paid to tickle mouse whiskers. I kid you not!” As […]
Why Late-stage Cancer Patients Often Waste Away
One of the things that often kills cancer patients isn’t just the invasiveness and spread of a tumor but the physical wasting, known as cachexia, that the disease can cause. […]
Ancient Bipedal Crocodiles? Oh Hell Yeah
If you’re anything like me, I used to think that dinosaurs were dinosaurs and crocodiles were crocodiles. Easy to tell apart, right? Of course. Because crocodiles were sprawling quadrupedal semi-aquatic […]
Do Rare Mutations Play Important Roles in Common Conditions Like Autism?
The common disease, common variant hypothesis (CD/CV) stated that a few common allelic variants could account for the genetic variance in disease susceptibility, whereas the rare variant (CD/RV) hypothesis stated […]
Autism & Intelligence: Might Disability and Genius Have More in Common than Meets the Eye?
We’re all familiar with the caricature of the stereotypical nerd: male, glasses, nasally monotonic voice, pedantic, obscure sense of humor, highly intelligent, calculators spilling from every pocket, and woefully socially […]
When the Brain Is Under Stress, It Gets Excited Thanks to GABA
I’ve written previously about the dual excitatory-inhibitory roles GABA plays during development and adulthood. Interestingly, when it comes to many neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism and epilepsy, we keep revisiting this […]
Specific Genetic Enhancers May Have Contributed to Larger Brains in Humans
Though humans don’t have the largest and most complex brains of the mammals (those distinctions go to the sperm whale and the elephant, respectively), the complexity of our language and […]
The Different Causes of Epilepsy
Because much of my current work is bringing me to the crossroads of autism and epilepsy, I’ve been trying to bone up on my knowledge of the latter. Recently, I’ve […]
Science Over a Cuppa 
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