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.

The majority of people lacking a functional copy of the SHANK3 gene have both autism and severe intellectual disability, according to a study published 11 June in Molecular Autism.

A new software tool detects chromosomal alterations present in only a subset of cells in the body. This method, described 31 May in BMC Genomics, may help reveal mosaicism’s contribution to neurological disorders.

Adults feel more distress when hearing the cries of babies that later develop autism than those of typical infants, according to a study published 14 June in Research in Developmental Disabilities.

Duplication of a chromosomal region that includes the autism-linked gene MBD5 leads to intellectual disability, language impairment and autism-like symptoms, according to a study published 1 May in the European Journal of Human Genetics.

A new three-dimensional, whole-brain model provides an unprecedented level of detail of the brain and its connections. Can it be used to study autism?
 

Two university-based clinics have debuted large programs that rely on sequencing to diagnose genetic disorders, including developmental disorders such as autism.

A new network analysis of autism genes, published 11 June in Translational Psychiatry, highlights both the pitfalls and the promise of the approach, says Alan Packer.
 

Children with autism have similar language deficits to those who have specific language impairment, but are better at seeing the details in a scene, according to a study published 15 May in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. The results support the idea that the two disorders resemble each other only superficially.

Researchers have sliced a human brain into more than 7,400 slivers, and stained and scanned them to create ‘BigBrain,’ the most detailed three-dimensional map of a human brain to date, they reported 21 June in Science.