Healthy parents of children with autism have an atypical brain response to sound frequency changes that mimics the response of individuals with the disorder.

Children who have more than one older sibling with autism have a one in three chance of developing the disorder themselves, according to a study published today in Pediatrics. The risk is higher for boys: Even if they have only one older sibling with autism, they are almost three times more likely than girls with the same family history to develop the disorder.

Mothers of children with autism are rated by their husbands as rigid and inflexible whereas fathers are viewed by their wives as aloof. Perhaps these qualities are reinforced by the challenges of raising a child with the disorder?

Cognitive traits associated with autism may have helped our ancestors survive, according to a fascinating new study. But those traits are no longer an advantage.

Female-to-male transsexuals show more traits associated with autism than typical males or females, though the reasons for this link remain unclear.

Individuals with autism have multiple mutations in a pathway that functions in the mitochondria, the energy center of the cell, according to a study published 27 April in the European Journal of Human Genetics. They also have higher-than-average numbers of variants in pathways involved in metabolism, gene expression and the regulation of cell division.

Two large studies published in the past two months have found that traits linked to autism are widely distributed in the general population. Although about 1 in 100 children is diagnosed with autism, up to 30 percent of people may have at least one of the traits associated with the disorder.

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.

Infant siblings of children with autism tend to lag behind their peers at the earliest stages of language development before catching up at around 12 months of age.

Relatives of individuals with autism recognize faces and emotions better than people with autism do, but not as well as typically developing controls do, according to a study published in December in Autism Research.