SHANK1 — a member of a family of proteins linked to autism — does not cause autism-like social deficits when mutated in mice, according to a study published online in September in Brain Research.

Individuals with autism have trouble perceiving the passage of time, and pairing sights and sounds that happen simultaneously, according to two new studies.

People with autism are asserting their right to be different. They say so-called ‘neurotypicals’ are the ones with communication problems, relying on the ‘animalistic means’ of body language, and they don’t understand why their focused, repetitive behaviors are thought to be problematic when neurotypicals indulge in obsessions such as sports and soap operas.

You’ll never hear Jacqueline Crawley talk about an ‘autistic mouse’. In fact, in her keynote address at IMFAR in May, she implored the audience to never use those two words in the same sentence.

The biology of obsessive-compulsive disorder becomes even more baffling with the release of two new mouse models, each implicating a different type of brain cell.

A region of the brain that controls language is more extensively curved in children with autism than in those with Asperger syndrome, according to a study published in the Journal of Child Neurology. The findings offer preliminary biological evidence that Asperger syndrome, a disorder on the autism spectrum, is distinct from high-functioning autism.

A decade of research on the biology of autism, combined with a steady rise in diagnoses, has finally piqued the pharmaceutical industry’s interest in developing drugs for the disorder. Preliminary data from one small clinical trial already show positive results, and results from several others are expected early this summer.

Researchers are tinkering with mouse models to investigate the function of a protein that helps wire neurons together and that has repeatedly been linked to autism. Three such reports of the protein, neuroligin-1, have appeared this year.

Scientists have been unable to replicate work showing an association between oxytocin receptor genes and autism.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism may have more in common than childhood onset and a few similar symptoms. New research suggests the conditions share genetic roots.