Regions of the brain’s fear center expand in autistic children and teenagers with anxiety, but not in their autistic or non-autistic peers without anxiety.

The growth differences vary between autistic boys and girls and are most apparent among children with prominent social difficulties.

Therapies that target the circuit could boost social activity, new findings suggest.

The brain region, which is involved in fear and emotion processing, develops differently in autistic children with anxiety than in those without anxiety or in non-autistic children; its development also depends on the type of anxiety a child experiences.

Activating certain receptors in the amygdala — a treatment that runs counter to a leading theory of what causes the condition — can reverse some traits in rats.

Altered electrical activity in the neurons of mice with a mutated copy of SCN2A may explain the animals’ autism-like social behaviors.

People who experience an autism-specific form of anxiety also tend to have an unusually small amygdala, a brain region associated with emotion processing and fear, according to a new unpublished study.

Blocking connections between the amygdala and hypothalamus prevents mice from finding social interactions as rewarding as they would otherwise.

Misaligned gene expression maps suggest that some autism-linked genes play distinct roles in mouse and human brains.

A glowing protein tracks serotonin levels and location in the brains of living mice and could yield clues to the neurotransmitter’s role in autism.