Fetal mice that have too many neurons grow to show social deficits and repetitive behaviors. The finding, reported 11 December in Cell Reports, debuts a mouse model of autism that’s based on a biological abnormality seen in some people with the disorder.

Mice missing PTEN, a strong autism candidate gene, in a subtype of inhibitory neurons in one part of the brain show signaling abnormalities and social deficits. Researchers presented the unpublished work yesterday at the 2014 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

Children with autism show different patterns of brain activity during everyday gestures and movements than controls do, suggest unpublished results presented today at the 2014 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

Mice modeling autism have trouble integrating different kinds of sensory information such as sight, sound and touch. A study published 31 July in Neuron reports that an imbalance between signals that calm neurons and those that excite them leads to these sensory problems.

A “beautiful” new study traces a complex repetitive behavior in a mouse model of autism to a subset of neurons in one brain region.

There are no available medications for treating autism’s core symptoms, but there are several candidates in clinical trials. Jeremy Veenstra-VanderWeele describes the factors researchers must take into account when developing drugs for the disorder.

Deleting MeCP2 from a subset of neurons that mediate inhibitory signals recapitulates many of the symptoms of Rett syndrome in mice. Conversely, expressing the gene only in that subset, but not in the rest of the brain, protects the mice from some of those same symptoms. The results were published last week in Nature Neuroscience.

A new algorithm allows researchers to search among hundreds of genes and identify those involved in building synapses, the junctions that transmit signals between neurons, according to a report published 14 March in PLoS One.

The equivalent of one-tenth of a single pill of the anxiety drug clonazepam alleviates many autism-like behaviors in a mouse model of the disorder, according to a study published 19 March in Neuron.

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.