A mutation that boosts the activity of the autism risk gene UBE3A may cause neurons to form too many connections, disrupting brain development. Some people with autism have extra copies of the gene, so the findings, published last week in Cell, add to evidence implicating UBE3A in autism.

A decision by a U.S. task force to withhold support for early autism screening could have dangerous consequences, researchers say.

A widely cited 2011 study that pegged autism prevalence in South Korea at a whopping 2.6 percent is inherently flawed because of the assumptions the researchers had to make, suggests a new analysis of the data. The findings have implications for estimates of autism prevalence anywhere in the world.

DNA sequences called enhancers — which boost the expression of genes from within or outside them — are enriched for genetic variants linked to autism, suggests a new study. The finding may help researchers understand how variants outside genes contribute to autism.

A region of the brain involved in interpreting social cues is unusually smooth in boys and men with autism, but normal in girls and women with the disorder.

These short reports from our reporter, Nicholette Zeliadt, give you the inside scoop on developments at the 2015 Dup15q Alliance Scientific Meeting.

Researchers have reconstructed in spectacular detail all of the complex circuits in a small piece of the mouse brain. They revealed the sublime images today in Cell.

A training regimen that improves reading comprehension also boosts connectivity in language areas of the brains of children with autism.

Girls with autism are nearly three times as likely as boys with the disorder to have severe epilepsy that responds poorly to medication. The findings add a twist to one of the biggest conundrums in autism: its 4-to-1 ratio of boys to girls.

Children with autism may not inhale sweet and foul scents through their noses the way other children do.