By far the most common animals used to model ASDs are mice because of the well-established techniques to manipulate their genome and study brain function at several levels of analysis. As mammals, mice are genetically and biologically similar to humans, but their rapid reproduction and accelerated development allow for the testing of large numbers of animals at a relatively low cost. Various assays have been developed to test mice for behaviors that resemble the core features of autism (Silverman et al., 2010b), allowing researchers to determine the face validity of their models, but the translatability of these assays to humans is unknown.
