About one in three children with autism abruptly lose language, social or other developmental skills in their second year of life, according to a meta-analysis published 2 August in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

Home videos suggest that babies later diagnosed with autism gesture differently than typically developing babies or those with other developmental disorders.

Among siblings of children with autism, those with better prefrontal cortex functioning — observable as relatively strong executive functions for their age — are better able to compensate for atypicalities in other brain systems early in life, and are therefore less likely to receive a diagnosis of autism later in their development, argues Mark H. Johnson.

Studying tuberous sclerosis provides researchers with a unique opportunity to find a common pathway among the various genetic causes of autism, says neurologist Mustafa Sahin.

Charles Nelson, who famously showed that social deprivation damages the developing brain, is analyzing brain waves in babies to study how different genetic risk factors might lead to autism.

Two new studies of the brain’s electrical activity bring the autism field one step closer to a physiological measure that can detect the disorder and predict who will go on to develop it.

Infants at high risk for autism have difficulty integrating information from different senses, such as vision and hearing, a new study suggests.

Two studies published over the past month followed individuals with autism at various ages and showed that they gain developmental skills differently than controls do.

A $38.7 million project in the European Union — the largest single grant for autism research in the world — aims to bring together academic labs and pharmaceutical companies to speed the move from basic to clinical research.

By studying pregnant women who already have a child with autism, researchers hope to understand how epigenetic changes — those that affect gene expression but don’t directly alter DNA — during pregnancy influences risk of the disorder.