Infants later diagnosed with autism tend to look at the hair and body of someone speaking to them instead of at the eyes and mouth, which convey social cues, reports a study published 13 August in Biological Psychiatry.

Siblings of children with autism who are later diagnosed with the disorder themselves become more active, less adaptable and less likely to approach others over time, according to a study published 3 July in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

Children who have older siblings with autism are seven times more likely than those in the general population to receive autism diagnoses themselves, according to a large Danish study published 19 August in JAMA Pediatrics.

Infants who go on to develop autism have excess fluid between the top of the brain and the skull that persists from about 6 months to 2 years of age, according to a study published 9 July in Brain.

A new rat study suggests that baby brain scans should be interpreted with caution. Unlike scans of adult brains, the study says, baby brain scans may show changes in blood flow that do not necessarily reflect the activity of neurons in the region.

Girls with autism carry more mutations than do boys with the disorder, and show greater differences in brain activity and response to social cues, according to several preliminary studies presented at the 2013 International Meeting for Autism Research in San Sebastián, Spain.

An intervention designed to help infants at high risk for autism also improves interactions between parents and their children, says a study published 27 March in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

A distinct pattern of brain waves related to language comprehension predicts how well 2-year-old children with autism will fare later in childhood, according to unpublished research presented last week at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society annual meeting in San Francisco.

Three new studies published in March suggest that some infants who have a high risk of developing autism show early differences in brain responses to sight and sound.

Infants at high risk of developing autism do not show the typical tendency to shift their language processing ability to one side of the brain around 9 months of age, according to a study published in December in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience.