A variant of the FGF14 gene may decrease the volume of the amygdala, a brain structure needed to interpret emotions in facial expressions, according to results presented on Sunday at the World Congress of Psychiatric Genetics in Washington, D.C.
The brains of boys with autism have a lower-than-normal rate of water diffusion across the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus — a bundle of neurons that connects all four major lobes of the brain, according to a new study.
Even small head movements inside a brain scanner can affect results, according to a report published 23 July in Neuroimage.
Healthy parents of children with autism have an atypical brain response to sound frequency changes that mimics the response of individuals with the disorder.
The brains of teenagers with autism and their unaffected siblings respond similarly to both happy and neutral faces, whereas those of controls seem to prefer happy ones, according to a study published 12 July in Translational Psychiatry.
Autism studies tend to focus on one part of the spectrum, often excluding those who also have other conditions such as anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder or intellectual disability. The result, some experts say, is piecemeal findings that don’t fit together to generate a whole picture.
Broken rules are even more distressing to people with autism than being excluded, according to a new study.
Many toddlers with autism have weak connections between the two sides of the brain, according to the first-ever analysis of brain connections in young children with the disorder, published 23 June in Neuron.
Studying the infant siblings of children who have autism to identify early signs of the disorder is expected to have enormous impact on the field from a clinical and a basic science standpoint, says psychologist Karen Dobkins.