A new study conducted by researchers at New York's University of Columbia may point to a treatment for autism, a complex disorder that has puzzled doctors and scientists for centuries.

The study found out that those who have autism have too many connections or synapses. A synapse is where one neuron communicates with another, forming functional circuits.

Like Us on Facebook

The researchers said the extra synapses in autistic brains are the result not of overproduction, but of a failure in the normal process of discarding old and degraded cells.

Neurobiologist David Sulzer of Columbia University Medical Center said researchers were able to treat mice after the disease had appeared during a scientific study.

"That suggests the disease could one day be treated in teenagers and adults though there is a lot of work to be done", Sulzer, who led the study published in the journal Neuron, said.

"If we were correct we should be able to have quite effective treatment even after diagnosis," he said.

For the new study, Columbia's Guomei Tang painstakingly counted synapses in a key region of the cortex of 26 children with autism who had died from other causes and compared that to 22 healthy brains also donated to science.

In the autistic brains, synaptic density was more than 50 per cent higher than that in healthy brains and sometimes two-thirds greater.

It is not clear if too many synapses are the main reason for autism, but many genes linked to autism play a role in synapse pruning.

And the discovery that synapse pruning reversed autistic behavior in the lab mice suggests over connectivity may be key.

One in 68 US children is diagnosed on the autism spectrum, according to the most recent government estimates.

TagsAutism, Autism treatment