Behavior

New Resource for Understanding Autism

Individuals with PWS struggle with a variety of behavioral issues and have an increased incidence of autism compared to the general population and to most other developmental disabilities.  Even in those with PWS who don't have a diagnosis of autism, many behavioral similarities can be found.

A Preliminary Analysis of the Phenomenology of Skin-Picking in Youth with PWS

Below is a special guest blog from Jessica Morgan, a graduate student working with Dr. Eric Storch at the University of South Florida.  Their group has an interest in understanding skin picking (and other obsessive/compulsive behaviors) in PWS so that they can help develop more effective ways to decrease the behavior.  Many thanks to Jessica for summarizing their study:

If I had three wishes......

[Contributed by Mayim Bialik, Ph.D.] The Sentence Completion and Three Wishes Tasks: One of the great challenges in studies of individuals with PWS and others with cognitive or linguis

Genetics and behavior

Two new articles that just arrived in the new issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics caught my eye. Both articles deal with the serotonin system, and common genetic variants of the components of the system.

A role for PWS-snoRNAs, finally!

There's a new paper out in a top journal, Science, on what is may be the first understanding of the underlying molecular basis of features of PWS - The snoRNA HBII-52 regulates alternative splicing of the serotonin receptor 2C -- I've put the link at the end of the message. Here's the lowdown: