Clinical neurochemistry of autism and associated disorders

Advances in information concerning brain function in animals and advances in analytical neurochemical methods for determining extremely low levels of compounds in physiological fluids have opened great opportunities for clinical neurochemical studies of autism. Nevertheless, the behavioral deficits in autistic individuals are major obstacles to clarification of the relations between symptoms and biochemical dysfunction in the brain. The fundamental preclinical and clinical studies of serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine metabolism related to infantile autism are reviewed, and new studies are suggested as examples of the productive strategies that will illuminate features of the autistic syndrome in the next decade.