Sensitive and critical periods during neurotypical and aberrant neurodevelopment: A framework for neurodevelopmental disorders

- Developmental delays are common to many monogenic intellectual disability and autistic disorders.
- Animal models reveal delayed and transient impairments at the level of the synapse.
- Many impairments occur within known critical periods for normal brain development.
- Temporal expression patterns of affected genes may underlie developmental phenotypes directly or indirectly.
- Dysregulated critical periods could unify other key hypotheses underlying these disorders.