In this week’s newsletter, we feature tweets about the Lancet Commission, a new initiative from the International Society for Autism Research, a highlighted paper about the link between autism and the microbiome, and reactions to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s decision to acknowledge a hair-based autism test.

Autism studies are appearing in the reference lists of entirely unrelated papers, suggesting what a few scholars worry is a plot to manipulate citations.

In this edition of By the Numbers, we discuss geographic disparities in access to behavior therapy, autism incidence among the privately or publicly insured and the rarity of criminal charges against autistic people in New Zealand.

Infusions of the hormone oxytocin may make mice that model autism more social by normalizing their brain activity patterns.

Autistic people from historically marginalized races and ethnicities are more likely than their white peers to be diagnosed with accompanying health conditions.

Infection during pregnancy can tweak a mouse’s gut microbiome in ways that have lasting effects on her pups’ immune system and increase their chances of gut inflammation, a new study suggests.

Despite scant publicly available data, makers of the ‘exposome’-based method say it could help with diagnosing autism and identifying subtypes.

Twitter is talking about a review of how to make autistic people more comfortable during magnetic resonance imaging scans, and a study that upends a popular idea about learning — namely, that it requires long-term potentiation of synapses.

Loss of the POGZ gene in mice makes certain genes inaccessible and prevents their expression.

In this week’s Community Newsletter, we look at conversations around a study of trauma and autism traits in older adults, and an editorial that looks back at late child psychiatrist Sir Michael Rutter’s contributions to the field.