To understand the amygdala’s role in autism, researchers should study its connections with other brain structures and explore its role in development, says Ralph Adolphs.

When choosing whether to look at a face or an object, children with autism generally pick the same thing controls do, according to a study published 10 April in Frontiers in Psychiatry. The finding contradicts the widely held belief that people with autism tend not to look at faces.  

In 2003, John Rubenstein and Michael Merzenich first described the theory, now popular in autism, that the disorder reflects an imbalance between excitation and inhibition in the brain. Takao K. Hensch and Parizad M. Bilimoria review the paper and its impact on the field.

Families of individuals with autism may share their abnormal patterns of brain activation, according to a study published 3 December in Molecular Autism.

Children with autism are better than controls at remembering melodies and detecting differences in pitch, according to a study published 13 November in Autism.  

Children with autism have higher levels than controls of dendritic cells, a subset of immune cells, according to a study published 11 October in Brain Behavior and Immunity.

In a virtual reality game intended to improve social skills in teenagers with autism, the players must ask computer avatars the right questions while seeming engaged in the conversation. The game was described 27 September in IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering.

Men with autism struggle with attention to detail and dexterity, according to a study published 17 October in PLoS One. Men and women with the disorder both have trouble with social skills, however.

Nearly half of children with malformation of the corpus callosum, which links the two hemispheres of the brain, have symptoms of autism, according to a study published 5 October in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

Adults with autism are less specific and less reliable than controls at recognizing emotions from facial expressions, according to a study published 27 September in Neuropsychologia.