The common belief that people with autism look at people’s mouths instead of their eyes is inaccurate and has little evidence, say Nouchine Hadjikhani and Quentin Guillon.
 

Proteins that help guide neurons to their correct destination in the brain may be involved in autism, says Christopher Cowan.

A Norwegian study published in February suggested that the Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers fails to detect many cases of autism at 18 months of age. The creators of the test explain why there’s more to the story.

To understand the role of FOXP2, a gene that links autism and language, researchers should look at its partner genes and at language models such as songbirds, say Genevieve Konopka and Todd Roberts.  

The best predictors of treatment outcomes for children with autism may be subtle learning characteristics that are not specific to children with the disorder, rather than the symptoms that led to their diagnosis, say David Trembath and Giacomo Vivanti.

Poorly designed animal drug studies for motor disorders have led to spurious conclusions for the clinical trials that follow. This may be even more true for autism research, says Michael Ehlers.

Researchers should investigate a broad spectrum of human- and animal-derived tissues to fully capture the complexity of autism, say Michael Talkowski and James Gusella.

Prebiotics — nutrients that promote the growth of some beneficial gut bacteria — can influence brain chemistry and behavior. New findings suggest prebiotics as treatments for people with neurological disorders, say Sarkis Mazmanian and Gil Sharon.

Thought until recently to only coordinate motor skills, the cerebellum is involved in diverse cognitive functions such as language and social interaction, and may play a role in autism, says Emanuel DiCicco-Bloom.

Sequencing studies over the past few years have made a dramatic and unexpected discovery: Many of the mutations in individuals with autism are in genes that regulate chromatin, which helps package DNA in the cell nucleus, say Gerald Crabtree and Aryaman Shalizi.