A new interaction-based therapy delivered by parents may improve behavior and language skills in infants with autism symptoms, suggests a small pilot study.

The genetic and environmental factors that underlie difficulties with language differ from those that influence other autism traits, according to a new study of more than 3,000 twin pairs. The study, published 2 August in the American Journal of Medical Genetics Part B: Neuropsychiatric Genetics, suggests that difficulty with language is not a core symptom of autism.

To characterize people who carry deletions in 16p11.2 and 15q13.3, genetic regions linked to autism, two studies published this summer looked in detail at dozens of people with either deletion. The studies found that deletions in these regions lead to diverse symptoms that only sometimes include autism. 

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.