CNTNAP2 and autism: Furthermore, PV neurons appear to be especially sensitive to insults, including disruption of ASD-associated genes as deficits in PV neurons were observed in mouse models harboring deletion of other ASD-associated genes including Cntnap2, Mecp2, Nlgn3 and Shank3 and in human postmortem neocortical tissue from subjects with autism [67–70].