The goal of studying siblings of children with autism is to identify an early diagnostic marker for the disorder. What researchers are finding instead are distinct traits shared by family members who remain healthy.

Children with autism are less interested in watching an activity, such as a parent and child putting together a puzzle, compared with typically developing controls, according to a study published in November in Brain Research.

The parts of the brain that help us pay attention to some things and not others have specialized regions for different senses, such as sight and sound, according to a paper published online in November in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Areas of the brain that are active when people are daydreaming or sleeping, and quiet when they are engaged in a task, are imperfectly synchronized in people with autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, researchers say.

The fruit fly is a good model for some of the cognitive defects in fragile X syndrome — but researchers sometimes find themselves having to defend their choice.

Despite the impressive stories of people with autism being able to spot fine details, they are surprisingly susceptible to magic tricks, according to a study published in October in Psychological Science.

Can your brain be trained to make better brain waves? That’s the bizarre premise of ‘neurofeedback,’ a technique in which participants don a cap of electrodes and are rewarded — with soothing music, say, or points in a video game — for ‘desirable’ brain activity.

Mice missing a large protein at the junction between neurons show motor impairments, anxiety and increased social behaviors, according to a study in the American Journal of Psychiatry. The protein, postsynaptic density-95 or PSD-95, is part of a key molecular bridge connecting other proteins linked to autism.

Individuals with autism spend less time looking at eyes than at the mouth because they actively shift their gaze away from the eye region, according to a study published in September in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Parents and siblings of people with autism have abnormal eye movements and score higher on tests evaluating traits associated with the disorder.