Adults with autism are at an increased risk for diabetes, depression and a number of other health problems, suggests a large survey of electronic health records.

What does ‘autism’ mean? And who owns this term? A keynote talk at the 2015 International Meeting for Autism Research dove headlong into this rabbit hole of words and their many meanings.

Researchers are using social media and an online ‘brain-training’ program to study people with rare chromosomal abnormalities linked to autism.

An online catalog helps clarify the roles of thousands of spontaneous mutations in four neuropsychiatric disorders, including autism.

Monkeys whose mothers are infected with a mock virus while pregnant show abnormal branching of certain brain cells. The findings may help explain why infection during a woman’s pregnancy ups the risk of autism in her children.

Sergiu Pasca was among the first to model autism with neurons from affected individuals, a feat that could reveal the biochemical roots of some forms of autism.

Names such as autism, schizophrenia and intellectual disability are ‘umbrella’ terms that muddy the search for the true cause of an individual’s symptoms, says Eric London. He plans to come up with an alternative diagnostic scheme for developmental disabilities over the next two years.

It’s no easy feat to whittle down the list of the most influential autism papers to a mere 10. So please consider this but a taste of the burgeoning field, presented in chronological order and based on suggestions from many researchers.

Researchers have for the first time isolated and characterized protein complexes found at the points of connection between neurons. Mutations in some of these proteins are linked to autism.

Monkeys exposed in utero to their mother’s immune response to a mock infection show inflammation in their brains four years later. Researchers presented the unpublished work today at the 2014 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Washington, D.C.