Children with autism who have both severe repetitive behaviors and sensory sensitivities tend to have had unusually structured nerve tracts in infancy.

Decoding distortions in the brain’s largest nerve tract could lay bare basic problems with long-range neural connections in autism.

Children with autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or obsessive-compulsive disorder all show similar disruptions in brain structure.

The brain enlargement seen in many children with autism may reveal hints about the condition’s causes.

The bundle of nerves that connects the brain’s two hemispheres is abnormally thick in infants who are later diagnosed with autism. The broader the bundle, called the corpus callosum, the more severe a child’s symptoms.

One of the most consistent findings in autism, and perhaps the most perplexing, is that it affects about four boys for every girl. This gender bias has become a hot topic in autism research — so much so that Molecular Autism devoted its entire May issue to it.

Among babies who go on to receive a diagnosis of autism at age 2, alterations in brain structures forecast the severity of repetitive behaviors. The preliminary results were presented Saturday at the 2015 International Meeting for Autism Research in Salt Lake City, Utah.  
 

The thick bundle of nerve fibers that links the left and right hemispheres of the brain develops differently in children with autism, a nine-year study has found.

By mapping the connections between autism genes, researchers are finding clues to the disorder’s origins. The key, they say, is to begin without bias.

Several brain regions in people with autism become enlarged earlier than usual during childhood and shrink too soon during adulthood, finds an eight-year imaging study.