Excitation-inhibition balance as a framework for investigating mechanisms in neuropsychiatric disorders
By V. Sohal, John L. Rubenstein. Molecular Psychiatry, 2019
848 citations recorded by the source corpus.
In 2003 Rubenstein and Merzenich hypothesized that some forms of Autism (ASD) might be caused by a reduction in signal-to-noise in key neural circuits, which could be the result of changes in excitatory-inhibitory (E-I) balance. Here, we have clarified the concept of E-I balance, and updated the original hypothesis in light of the field’s increasingly sophisticated understanding of neuronal circuits. We discuss how specific developmental mechanisms, which reduce inhibition, affect cortical and hippocampal functions. After describing how mutations of some ASD genes disrupt inhibition in mice, we close by suggesting that E-I balance represents an organizing framework for understanding findings related to pathophysiology and for identifying appropriate treatments.
Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience, Genetics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/79bc8d8d0d5f7c814db05e0f4b817febc7e5b7ec
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience
In Cognitive Neuroscience
Citations in the corpus
- Relating ADHD to the aperiodic component of the EEG signal in both males and females across development (2026, unknown): “Alterations to this ratio are thought to give rise to normal variation in human traits, but at extreme levels could contribute to various psychiatric conditions, including ADHD, autism spectrum disorder, and schizophrenia (Selten et al., 2018; Sohal and Rubenstein, 2019).”
- Resting state aperiodic and periodic EEG activity in preschool-aged autistic children: differences from neurotypical peers and links to language skills (2026, unknown): “Increased inhibition, especially in frontal brain circuits, is thought to reduce neural noise and potentially enables more efficient processing of complex inputs, such as language, during early childhood [68], thereby potentially supporting the development of language.”
- The developmental trajectory of functional excitation‐inhibition balance relates to language abilities in autistic and allistic children (2023, background): “Specifically, an imbalance between the brain ’ s excitatory (E) and inhibitory (I) neurons and their connections has been suggested to be linked to autism (Rubenstein & Merzenich, 2003; Sohal & Rubenstein, 2019).”
- Glutamatergic and GABAergic Receptor Modulation Present Unique Electrophysiological Fingerprints in a Concentration-Dependent and Region-Specific Manner (2023, background): “Suboptimal EIB is described in neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders (Sohal and Rubenstein, 2019; Liu et al., 2021) and aging (Ghosh et al., 2021).”
- Globally elevated excitation–inhibition ratio in children with autism spectrum disorder and below-average intelligence (2021, background): “Therefore, despite simplification, the concept of a global E–I balance is important for understanding the pathophysiological mechanisms associated with ASD [2].”