• Infants born before 30 weeks gestation who have either elevated scores on a neurological screen or at least two medical morbidities are at an increased likelihood of having a positive autism screen at age 2. Journal of Pediatrics
• Adapting a dentist office for people with sensory sensitivities — by using low light, a calming soundtrack and a weighted blanket — can lower stress levels in autistic children during a cleaning. JAMA Network Open
• A Fitbit outperforms an actigraph in classifying wakeful periods, though both devices measure sleep parameters well. Spectrum reported last week on various wearable and nearable devices to measure sleep in autism. Sleep Health
• A model to distinguish a human-written scientific paper from a ChatGPT-written one relies on paragraph length, variable sentence length and frequent use of words such as “however,” “but” and “although.” Cell Reports Physical Science
• Medications that increase acetylcholine, such as galantamine and donepezil, have — at most — small effects on autism traits, according to a review of clinical studies. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
• Several distinct factors make up restricted and repetitive behaviors, and questions remain about how they relate to overall functioning in autistic people, according to a review. Clinical Psychology Review
• Autistic people exhibit less recall than non-autistic people on a task that involves matching images of real-world scenes, suggesting a difference in how images are processed or categorized in the brain. PLOS One
• Autistic toddlers have atypical facial responses compared with non-autistic toddlers when watching videos of social situations, suggesting that computer vision analysis may enable early detection of autism-associated behavior. IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing
• The Autism Science Foundation is partnering with the Health Research Alliance to help its grantees publish in open-access journals without having to pay author fees. Autism Science Foundation
• The postdoctoral researcher landscape is changing, with fewer newly minted Ph.D. scientists in the life sciences choosing the traditional path, especially those with families or from underrepresented groups. STAT
• Autistic medical students have strengths that bode well for their career, but they also experience challenges in their training, according to a small qualitative study. Spectrum has covered similar tensions encountered by autistic doctors and psychiatrists. Medical Education
• Children who were born preterm tend to have cortical thinning in some brain regions and thickening in others, unlike those born full term. eNeuro
  

  Brain building: Moderately preterm (left) and very preterm (right) babies show some thickening (red) and thinning (blue) in parts of the cortex, relative to full-term babies.

• Psychedelic drugs with differing biological targets seem to share a capacity to reopen critical periods of learning; they enable adult mice to learn social-reward behavior. Spectrum covered MDMA’s effects on this behavior in 2019. Nature
• Autistic adults who are transgender or non-binary report that clinicians often seem to be unknowledgeable about their health-care needs, according to a small study. Autism in Adulthood
• Many transgender or nonbinary autistic people confront disbelief and disparities in health-care settings, which the clinical research community should acknowledge and address, according to an expert panel discussion. Autism in Adulthood
• Black girls and women with autism have been largely overlooked by researchers, an issue that may contribute to delayed diagnoses and treatment. The 19th
• Citing inadequate study design, the journal Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience has retracted a paper about a machine-learning algorithm that the authors claimed distinguishes autistic children by their facial features. Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience

Cite this article: https://doi.org/10.53053/ORLU6548