Abstract
Autism is a pervasive developmental disorder characterized by severe and sustained impairment of social interaction and communication, and restricted or stereotyped patterns of behavior and interest. Though multiple risk factors such as genetic and environmental components and interaction of these factors are suggested, the exact etiology is still not known. Many risk factors have been used to established animal models of psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders. These models can be useful tools for testing epidemiological findings and investigating the molecular mechanisms underlying the neuropathology of these disorders. To improve the validity of animal models, three criteria including behavioral similarity has been proposed. The method described here is for evaluating the impairment of social interaction, one of the three core symptoms of autism.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported in part by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Program for Advancing Strategic International Networks to Accelerate the Circulation of Talented Researchers, Grant No. S2603 and the Japan Foundation for Pediatric Research (to K.I.)
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Iwata, K. (2019). Characterization of an Animal Model of Autism and Social Interaction. In: Guest, P. (eds) Pre-Clinical Models. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1916. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-8994-2_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-8994-2_14
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