Their plans stand to improve how autistic children from racial or ethnic minorities are evaluated.

Two groups are working to increase representation among neuropsychology researchers, in part to improve behavioral assessments for autism.

A standard questionnaire can help identify social (pragmatic) communication disorder more readily in school-age children.

The code may help scientists identify people with the autism-linked condition and recruit them into clinical trials.

Highlights this week include two gene studies — one on the role of autism-linked genes in developing interneurons and another on the genetic origins of overlapping autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

After a brain transplant of reprogrammed human cells, the animals can for the first time recapitulate some neuronal changes seen in people with fragile X syndrome.

People with the autism-linked syndrome lack a protein implicated in several cancers, but it’s unclear whether — or how — they are protected from malignancies.

The results highlight the importance of subgrouping study participants based on their underlying genetics, the researchers say.

The talk of the Twittersphere turned around two influential neuroscience papers, plus a virtual trip to the World Congress of Psychiatric Genetics.

The long-standing link between maternal infection during pregnancy and having a child with autism may reflect common genetic or environmental factors instead.