Children with autism show abnormally strong synchrony between deep and outer layers of the brain, according to a study published online 31 December in Biological Psychiatry.
The brains of people with autism show three distinct periods of abnormal development — overgrowth in infancy, prematurely arrested growth in childhood, and shrinking between adolescence and middle age — according to a study in Brain Research.
A new intervention that teaches toddlers skills in a real-world environment — a playgroup rather than a one-on-one interaction with a researcher, for instance — more than doubles their ability to imitate others, according to a January study in The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.
Children with autism spend less time in the rapid eye movement stage of sleep than do either controls or those with developmental delays, according to a November report in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
A rare childhood speech disorder related to social anxiety is associated with a gene linked to autism, according to a study published in December in Biological Psychiatry. The results suggest that the two disorders share a common mechanism.
Infant siblings of children with autism tend to lag behind their peers at the earliest stages of language development before catching up at around 12 months of age.
Researchers have identified a rare genetic variant linked to autism in DLX1, a gene that regulates the growth of neurons, they reported in December in the American Journal of Medical Genetics.
A man’s risk of fathering a child with autism begins to rise at age 30 and significantly increases after age 50, according to a report published online 30 November in Molecular Psychiatry.
Children with autism do not use efficient, systematic methods to search for an object, according to a study published in January in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Children with autism understand fewer words than their verbal ability would suggest, according to a study published in December in the International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders.