Scientists on social media this week discussed alternative treatments for aggression and self-injury in children with autism and addressed issues young researchers face when it comes to reimbursement for conference travel.

Here is a roundup of news and research for the week of 10 April.

If a therapy for autism’s core traits makes it to market, it will likely take one of three forms, the researchers say.

Neuronal alterations outside the brain may help to explain a host of the condition’s characteristic traits, including sensory changes, gut problems and motor differences.

The Gender Self-Report could help autism researchers include more gender-diverse people across a range of ages and neurotypes in their work.

A study published in JAMA Pediatrics suggests that autism is more common among people born in areas with high levels of lithium in drinking water, but it is too soon to say whether prenatal lithium exposure is truly a concern.

The mutation prevents certain amino acids from entering neurons, causing the cells to die early in development.

Social-media attention this week centered on two new studies of the brain’s memory hub: One employed virtual reality to probe how people use and update their cognitive maps, and the other tracked individual hippocampal neurons in mice as they learned.

Here is a roundup of news and research for the week of 3 April.

The result raises hopes for an ongoing clinical trial in people — and offers fresh insight into the biology of imprinting and the UBE3A antisense transcript.