Spectrum: Autism Research News

A 3D optogenetics method can mimic natural rhythms of neural activity, rendering previously unanswerable questions amenable to inquiry — including questions about autism.

This edition of By the Numbers plots the rising rates of mental health conditions over the past 50 years, prescribing patterns in New Zealand and the gender gap among neuroscience journal editors.

In an online survey, autistic people reported that they often have trouble using the telephone to make medical appointments and experience sensory overload in waiting rooms, among other health care barriers.

People who heard about SPARK, a genetic study of autism, directly from a physician were more likely to enroll than those who heard about the project elsewhere.

The new method, called sonogenetics, noninvasively manipulates neural circuits in mice.

This monthly newsletter offers quick statistics on the latest data-centric, autism research studies.

Just 30 percent of editors of neuroscience journals are women, according to a new study. For autism-specific journals, by comparison, women make up 48 percent of editors, a Spectrum analysis shows.

This edition of By the Numbers plots the rise of biology-centric autism grants, a dearth of West African autism research and the lack of racial data in intervention studies.

Only a quarter of more than 1,000 autism intervention studies published since 1990 report on participants’ races and ethnicities, and just one included a Native American participant.

The connection is likely mediated by environmental, not genetic, factors, according to a new study.