Teenagers with autism or other psychiatric disorders are far less likely to exercise or play team sports than their typical peers, reports a Norwegian study published 22 January.

Electrical signals generated by dendrites, the branches of neurons that receive information from neighboring cells, may help neurons tune their responses to stimuli, according to a study published 7 November in Nature.

Two large Scandinavian studies confirm the long-standing theory that older men have a higher risk of fathering children with autism, but they disagree on how a mother’s age drives risk of the disorder.

A new tracking system automatically logs and scores mouse behavior as well as a human observer does, according to a paper published 31 December 2013 in Journal of Neuroscience Methods.

Researchers should consider the influence of gut bacteria on brain function, especially when studying neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism, say John Cryan and Roman Stilling.

In premature infants, bleeding inside the skull and respiratory distress requiring a certain type of ventilator may each contribute to an increased risk of autism, suggests a large study published in the January issue of The Journal of Pediatrics.

Most of the children who would lose their autism diagnosis under the diagnostic criteria released last year will fall under the new category of social (pragmatic) communication disorder, reports a large study of Korean children. The study was published last week in the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

A shortage of trained doctors, lack of awareness and long waiting lists for specialized care delay diagnosis and treatment of autism in many low- and middle-income countries, report two new studies.

Rapamycin, a drug given to suppress immune rejection after transplants, improves social behavior in mice with features of autism, reports a study published in the January issue of Brain Research Bulletin.

Spontaneous and rare mutations, particularly in genes related to networks that regulate neuronal connections, contribute a small but significant proportion of the risk for schizophrenia, report two large studies published online 22 January in Nature.