SHANK3 and Cognitive impairment: Interestingly, the extra-neural levels of Aβ peptide oligomers have been shown to strongly correlate with the severity of cognitive impairment (using the Blessed information-memory-concentration score and mini-mental state examination, MMSE) and with the loss of synaptic markers such as SHANK3 that results in the disruption of synaptic function (5, 28).