Children whose older sisters are on the spectrum are at higher risk for autism than are those with affected older brothers, a new study suggests. Younger brothers of children with autism are at greater risk than younger sisters.

A region of the brain involved in recognizing faces appears to be thinner than usual in women with autism and thicker than usual in men with the disorder. The preliminary results were presented yesterday at the 2015 International Meeting for Autism Research in Salt Lake City, Utah. 

One in every five younger siblings of children with autism will end up being diagnosed with the disorder, according to the largest analysis to date of these ‘baby sibs.’

Peer review panels really can suss out good science, and clinical trials could get extremely personal.

Looking in families with a history of severe autism among women, researchers have unearthed 18 new candidate genes for the disorder. One of these genes, delta-catenin, plays a critical role in brain development, researchers reported yesterday in Nature.

A brain system called declarative memory may help people learn scripts and strategies that alleviate autism symptoms, say Michael Ullman and Mariel Pullman.

Girls and boys show telling differences in social and repetitive behaviors well before receiving an autism diagnosis, helping to explain the gender gap in diagnostic rates.

Watch the complete replay of David Skuse and William Mandy’s webinar on why reported sex ratios for autism may be fundamentally flawed.

Grad students and postdocs prove why basic science matters, and an outbreak sends a sobering message.

The gender gap in science is strongest in fields that most value innate intelligence — perhaps because of mistaken impressions about the differences in innate intelligence between men and women.