Aresearch team led by Prof Mingie Zhang, Kerry Holdings Professor of Science of the Division of Life Science at The Hong KongUniversity of Science and Technology (HKUST, has achieved a breakthrough that provides mechanistic insights into the causes thatlead to various neuropsychiatric disorders such as autism, intellectual disorders IDJland schizophrenia. With their discoveries, newtreatments for these disorders may be developed in near future.

All neurons in our brain are wired via a micron-sized connection unit called synapse, and each synapse contains a layer of dense-ly-packed, protein-rich compartment called postsynaptic density (PSDJ, which is responsible for brain signal processing and trans-mission.While the existence of PSDs has been known to scientists for 60 years, how PSDs form and change in response to brain ac-tivities are poorly understood.