People with autism who have mutations in a gene called PTEN have a distinct profile of cognitive impairments and structural abnormalities in the brain. The profile, published 7 October in Molecular Psychiatry, points to a subtype of autism with these features.

Many brain imaging studies of autism focus on neurons’ connections or activity, but examining neuronal tracts across the brain is equally informative, say Julia Owen and Pratik Mukherjee. 

Having an enlarged head in early childhood is not a reliable marker of autism, according to two new studies that tracked changes in head and body size in children over time.

A method for measuring myelin, the protective sheath around neurons, indicates that there is less of it in the brains of people with autism than in those of controls.

British psychologist Uta Frith has singlehandedly transformed our understanding of autism. In partnership with her husband, neuroimaging expert Chris Frith, she helped launch the field of cognitive neuroscience and shaped a generation of scientists.

A new technique helps researchers trace the nerve fibers that connect brain regions by revealing how the fibers physically relate to curves and folds on the brain’s surface. The method was described 8 July in Medical Image Analysis.

Researchers have developed a set of software tools called Thunder that can find meaningful patterns in large-scale data on brain activity.

Mice modeling autism have trouble integrating different kinds of sensory information such as sight, sound and touch. A study published 31 July in Neuron reports that an imbalance between signals that calm neurons and those that excite them leads to these sensory problems.

Researchers measure how brain networks work together by scanning volunteers’ brains either while they’re resting passively or while they’re engaged in a task. A study published 2 July in Neuron argues that the networks activated in these two scenarios are more similar than previously thought.

A new method for measuring severity in disorders such as autism can help researchers correct for the widely varying autism symptoms in the study participants, according to a paper published 2 May in NeuroImage.