Spectrum: Autism Research News

Home videos may ease social deficits in babies, and a supplement maker is scolded over autism claims.

An ancient drug eases symptoms of fragile X syndrome in mice, and “The Imitation Game” draws ire over an autism innuendo.

The U.S. government is expanding its autism monitoring program to better understand the rising prevalence of the disorder, particularly in light of controversial changes to autism’s diagnostic criteria.

Advocates warn of a dearth of support services for the 50,000 people with autism who enter adulthood each year in the U.S., and Cell gets cute with a stop-motion video about chromatin.

Nestled between galleries in Manhattan’s art district is a studio like no other. It brims with the energy of 40 artists, all of whom have autism.

Here’s a selection of our quotes, both pithy and funny, from news and opinion articles published in 2014.

2014 has been a big year for autism research, with a long list of notable papers and advances. Still, there’s plenty for autism researchers to learn from the successes — and struggles — of their colleagues in other fields.

For 2014, rather than compile the ‘top tools and techniques’ — a list certain to include CRISPR and other technical tricks detailed in our weekly Toolboxes — we asked researchers to dream up the next big tool in autism research. Their wishes range from protein sequencers to scanners that can capture brain activity during daily activities.

When big research findings hit the press, it’s usually just the lead investigators who get the kudos. But they know their work stands on the shoulders of many, many individuals whose crucial roles go mostly unappreciated.

A rare form of autism linked to a duplication of the 15q11-13 chromosomal region shares a molecular signature with more common forms of the disorder, suggests unpublished research presented yesterday at the 2014 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Washington, D.C.