Spectrum: Autism Research News

When covering research on prenatal risk factors, are journalists too quick to blame the mother?

Researchers measure how brain networks work together by scanning volunteers’ brains either while they’re resting passively or while they’re engaged in a task. A study published 2 July in Neuron argues that the networks activated in these two scenarios are more similar than previously thought.

A new stem-cell model of Phelan-McDermid syndrome points to a possible treatment for the rare autism-related disorder, according to a study published in Nature.

Individuals with autism may carry genetic variants in a pathway important for brain development, according to a study published in September in Translational Psychiatry.

Now that genetic studies have implicated several hundred genes in autism, researchers are turning their attention to where and when in the healthy young brain these genes are expressed. The first two studies to tackle these questions appear today in Cell.

A mother’s exposure to infection can exacerbate the effects of a genetic mutation and contribute to autism or schizophrenia in her pups, suggests an unpublished mouse study presented Wednesday at the 2013 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in San Diego.

Three decades of research on anatomical changes in the brains of individuals with autism has yielded few if any consistent patterns. The field needs an overhaul of the methods used, researchers said at a symposium Wednesday at the 2013 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in San Diego.  

Tiny fluctuations in the limb movements of children with autism can predict the severity of their condition and track their response to treatments, according to two unpublished studies presented at the 2013 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in San Diego.

Researchers have shown for the first time that glitches in a gene expressed at junctions between neurons can cause gut problems in mice. The unpublished results were presented Tuesday at the 2013 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in San Diego.

Researchers have created neurons from the skin cells of children with autism, according to an unpublished study presented Monday at the 2013 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in San Diego. These neurons show several distinct features, including elevated markers of inhibitory signaling.