Therapy for severe cognitive and behavioral disorders: A new era

Two stunning results may herald a new era in research, and even therapy, of disorders as diverse as Down's syndrome, schizophrenia, and autism:

• Be the Best You can Be: Reversing the cognitive dysfunction of Down's Syndrome
• Reversing a severe brain disorder in adult mice (murine autism)
  

A year ago I wrote about a deluge of research on autism genetics. Recent mouse models for autism and Down's syndrome are enabling radical new research directions. These models are the equivalents of the early telescopes -- radical new methods to investigate nature.

It's hard not to be carried away with this kind of discovery. We may run into the kind of dead-ends that stymied human gene therapy. If the results are confirmed, however, they will stand as Nobel-quality basic science discoveries.