Age-based cutoff scores for BISCUIT, an early diagnostic tool for children with autism traits, help clinicians accurately identify children who also have other disorders, says Johnny Matson.

Despite a sizable overlap in symptoms and medications, autism, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia each has a defining signature. The findings are based on an analysis of electronic medical records from California hospitals, published 16 August.

Neurons derived from individuals who carry extra copies of an autism-linked chromosomal region have gene expression patterns that are unexpectedly similar to those of neurons with deletions of the region. The unpublished findings were presented Thursday at the Dup15q Alliance Scientific Meeting in Sacramento, California.

The same genetic region that is missing in people with Williams syndrome is likely to be duplicated in some people with schizophrenia, according to a study published 17 July in Biological Psychiatry.

Children with autism struggle to understand their own card-game strategies, suggesting that they learn differently than controls do, reports a study published 24 July in Autism Research.

Oxytocin may well have established its reputation as the ‘social hormone’ in the popular imagination, but it has no effect on symptoms in children with autism, according to a study published 26 July in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

Understanding the basis of sexual dimorphism in autism may not only inform our treatment of this condition, but may translate to therapies for many other mental illnesses, say Nirao Shah and Devanand Manoli.

Children with autism, even those with low intelligence, can improve their self-control by practicing a Chinese mind-body exercise technique, reports a study published 10 July in PLoS One.

Children who meet the criteria for both autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder have more severe behavioral problems than do children with either disorder alone, according to three studies published in the past few months.

Introducing gut bacteria to mice that lack them increases their sociability, but mainly with familiar mice, reports a study published 21 May in Molecular Psychiatry.