The colorful brain maps created with diffusion imaging — a technique that uses the flow of water as a proxy for nerve tracts — are unlikely to represent the brain’s anatomy with accuracy, says a new study.

A new mathematical method helps researchers understand how brain connectivity in individuals varies from group norms.

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. 

A brain hub responsible for higher-order tasks may be overly connected in autism and thinly connected in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

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.

Thought until recently to only coordinate motor skills, the cerebellum is involved in diverse cognitive functions such as language and social interaction, and may play a role in autism, says Emanuel DiCicco-Bloom.

How can we characterize what is atypical when we don’t fully understand what typical brain development looks like, particularly under the age of 5? Christine Wu Nordahl explains the importance of scanning the brains of typically developing children.

Deletion and duplication of the 16p11.2 chromosomal region have opposite effects on brain size, but produce similar alterations in the brain’s processing of sound. Researchers reported these and other unpublished findings at the 2013 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in San Diego, painting a complex picture of the region’s role in autism.

Elliott Sherr is unraveling the effects of genetics and brain structure in a handful of disparate disorders that each illuminates some aspect of autism.

People who show strong autism traits tend to have weak connections between an area of the brain involved in introspection and social memories and other brain regions, according to a study published 5 April in PLoS One.