Dear Jose,

This work is interesting about abnormal synaptic pruning:(Kemper and Bauman, 1998).

The literature on synaesthesia and ASDs is relevant to your question, particularly given Daphne Maurer's "Neonatal Synaesthesia Hypothesis."  For example:

http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/2040-2392-4-40.pdf

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3856394/

Contact Autism Speaks or the Autism Science Foundation. Use my name. They will have many suggestions.

Dena

Thankx so much. I already contacted with Autism Science Foundation: good results. However "synaptic pruning" is too specific topic and I need some more help.

Try the MIND center in California. My name won't help there... but they have done some great work. Also, look at the IMFAR site.

On page 17  of the attached (very interesting) article by Happé & Firth several references are given regarding pruning which I didn't follow up.

Belmonte (2004), very informative in itself (http://www.jneurosci.org/content/24/42/9228.short#REF36) mentions Huh et al, which might be a little old: 2000.

Tang et al (2014, attached) seems the most recent and extensive.

Dear Jose,

This is a huge area of research at the moment. There is growing evidence that impairments in neural circuit connectivity is the general feature of Autism Spectrum Disorders, and may be the underlying cause of behavior impairments in ASD. 

Based on the studies of single gene mutations associated with autism, these connectivity impairments may be caused by problems in synaptogenesis and synaptic plasticity, including long-term depression, which ultimately leads to synaptic pruning. 

We have done some work on the role of neuroligins in neuronal-activity dependent synapse stabilization. Mutations in neuroligins and their presynaptic partners, neurexins have been discovered in autistic patients. Later on, it was discovered that neuroligins are cleaved in an neuronal activity-dependent manner, which most likely one of the crucial steps in synaptic pruning. It also involves matrix metalloproteinases, which are believed to be important in direct physical pruning. 

Furthermore, there is another recent paper which shows that in another single-gene model of autism (Tsc2+/− mutation) impairments of synaptic pruning may be causal to autistic phenotype. 

I am attaching these papers below:

Article Activity-Dependent Validation of Excitatory versus Inhibitor...

Article Trans-Synaptic Signaling by Activity-Dependent Cleavage of N...

Article Loss of mTOR-Dependent Macroautophagy Causes Autistic-like S...

Perhaps look into the literature on brain-derived neurotrophin factor and ASD. That might be somewhat tangential to what you are looking for, but it could help.

there is a study by Dr. Sulzer at Columbia University. I don't know the name of the study but it was on the front page of the NY times about a month or two ago