The pandemic has forced many health-care students to train online, raising concerns about their readiness.

Despite scant publicly available data, makers of the ‘exposome’-based method say it could help with diagnosing autism and identifying subtypes.

As 2021 comes to a close, Spectrum recaps some of the biggest trends in autism science this year: studies of sex differences, noncoding regions of the genome and points of convergence, as well as efforts to improve screening and participatory research.

The questionnaires used to screen for autism are far from perfect, and tweaking them may not be enough. Roald Øien wants researchers to find better solutions.

Children who are diagnosed with autism before age 2 and a half years show more gains in their social skills than children who are diagnosed later.

Moving most clinical assessments online during the coronavirus pandemic has created a digital divide while closing some geographical ones, say Somer Bishop and Lonnie Zwaigenbaum.

Many autistic people have a little-known trait called alexithymia, defined as having difficulty identifying one’s own emotions. New research suggests that the overlap has been confounding studies of emotional issues in people with autism for decades.

Scientists should heed these differences when considering resting-state brain activity as a biomarker for autism, the researchers say.

An autism brain imaging study published seven years ago received an expression of concern last month after its authors failed to uphold a promise to make their raw data freely available.

Despite the growing interest in alexithymia in autism research, the tools commonly used to measure this trait may not work reliably in autistic populations. A new scoring method fills that gap.