Mutations in the human Shank3 gene – so called “Shankopathies” – are strongly associated with Autism-spectrum disorders and intellectual disability, and appear to increase risk for a number of other disorders such as bipolar disorder and epilepsy. How it is that loss of function of this single gene generates pervasive disfunction within the neural circuits that underlie cognition and behavior is not understood. Now a recent report from the Turrigiano lab at Brandeis (Autism-Associated Shank3 Is Essential for Homeostatic Compensation in Rodent V1. Neuron. 2020 Mar 10. ) sheds light into this process, by showing how Shank3 loss disables mechanisms that normally act to keep brain circuitry in balance. Much as your body maintains a constant temperature through the use of internal thermostats and negative feedback mechanisms, brain circuits maintain balanced activity – neither too low and unresponsive, nor too high and hyperactive – by using a set of so-called “homeostatic” plasticity mechanisms to keep circuit excitability within an ideal range. This process is especially important during childhood and adolescence, because developing circuits can easily get out of balance as brain circuitry changes as a result of normal developmental processes.

Using mouse and rat models of human Shankopathies, the team, led by Research Associate Vedakumar Tatavarty, found that loss of Shank3 disables these homeostatic plasticity mechanisms and prevents brain circuits from compensating for changes to sensory drive. These defects in homeostatic plasticity are due to acute loss of Shank3 within individual neurons, meaning they are not an indirect effect of messed-up circuit wiring caused by loss of the gene throughout development. This finding suggests that Shank3 is a fundamental part of the cellular machinery that normally mediates homeostatic plasticity. The team went on to show that homeostatic plasticity could be restored after Shank3 loss by treatment with Lithium – a drug with a long history of use to treat neuropsychiatric disorders such as bipolar disorder – and that Lithium was also able to reduce a repetitive grooming behavior in mice that lack Shank3. These mice normally groom to excess, even to the point of self-injury, but a week of lithium treatment was able to reduce grooming to normal levels.

So do these findings suggest that Lithium might be useful in treating human Shankopathies? While Lithium remains the frontline treatment for some human disorders such as bipolar disorder, it is not well-tolerated, says Turrigiano, “and of course we cannot extrapolate from findings in mice directly to humans. Instead, we hope to use Lithium as a tool to reveal the pathways that can restore homeostatic plasticity in Shankopathies, which in the long term may allow us to design better, more specific interventions”. Defects in homeostatic plasticity have been implicated in a wide range of human brain disorders ranging from Autism spectrum disorders to Alzheimer’s disease, so these studies are likely to have important implications for overall brain health.

Autism-Associated Shank3 Is Essential for Homeostatic Compensation in Rodent V1. Tatavarty V, Torrado Pacheco A, Groves Kuhnle C, Lin H, Koundinya P, Miska NJ, Hengen KB, Wagner FF, Van Hooser SD, Turrigiano GG. Neuron. 2020 Mar 10. pii: S0896-6273(20)30184-7. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2020.02.033.