Masculinized features help define children with autism, online autism-parent forums spread pseudoscience, and the United States has more older fathers than ever.

Paternal age drives ‘geek index’ scores, GWAS may have a big weakness, serotonin boosts mouse social behaviors, and what is science Tinder?

Children born to parents who are unusually young or old stand an increased chance of having features of autism or other psychiatric conditions.

Children born to parents who are 35 or older are at an increased risk of autism; for schizophrenia, the increased risk is limited to those born to mothers in their teens or early 20s.

The mutations that men accumulate in their sperm as they age don’t account for most of their increased risk of having a child with autism.

Older women and men are at high risk of having a child with autism — and so are teenage girls and parents whose age differs by at least a decade, according to a multinational study of more than 5 million children.

Autism is undoubtedly on the rise, but we may never be able to fully explain why, says Maureen Durkin.
 

Increasing parental age accounted for just 2.7 percent of the rise in autism prevalence between 1994 and 2001, according to a study of New York City families published 17 March in Maternal and Child Health Journal.

Mice born to older males with mutations in PAX6 — a gene involved in brain development — vocalize less than those with younger dads. The unpublished findings, presented today at the 2014 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Washington, D.C., suggest how genes and paternal age can work together to trigger symptoms.

The configuration of methyl groups that modify DNA in sperm change as men get older. These alterations may help explain why children of older fathers are at increased risk for neuropsychiatric disorders such as autism.