As awareness about autism has spread in California, lower-income families have become more likely to seek a diagnosis of autism, says a new study.

A delayed response to unexpected changes in sound frequency is a marker for language impairment and autism, according to a study published in March in Biological Psychiatry.

People with autism are better able to visualize objects rotating in space — perhaps because their brains are wired differently than healthy controls.

Early trauma alters both behavior and gene expression in three generations of mice, suggesting that epigenetic changes may contribute to ‘hidden heritability’ in neuropsychiatric disorders.

Similarities between us and our closest ape relatives — chimpanzees and bonobos — have shaped our understanding of what it means to be human. The latest surprise is Teco, a young bonobo who shows behaviors that look suspiciously similar to those associated with autism.

A powerful cell that dampens electrical signaling in the brain could help unravel the disrupted brain wiring seen in people with autism, according to results presented yesterday at the Wiring the Brain meeting in Ireland.

Thomas Südhof has achieved stellar scientific results with a style that colleagues call typically German — sober, meticulous and highly competitive.

Small duplications or deletions of DNA regions — called micro-copy number variations — may not lead directly to disease, but could raise the risk of autism when combined with other mutations, according to a study published in March in the American Journal of Medical Genetics Part B: Neuropsychiatric Genetics.

Exosomes, the brain’s system for delivering and recycling molecules, can be manipulated to carry therapeutic fragments of RNA or DNA across the blood-brain barrier and into neurons. The ingenious new technique was published 20 March in Nature Biotechnology.

Autism advocacy backed by science has fueled significant social change as an emphasis on the higher-functioning end of the spectrum lessens the stigma of the diagnosis.