Autism, schizophrenia and intellectual disability share underlying deficits in pathways that regulate how the brain encodes new experiences, says Jason Shepherd.

In the past few years, several studies have implicated fathers’ age more strongly than mothers’ in increasing autism risk. Although older fathers have more spontaneous mutations in their sperm than younger fathers do, no one has shown that these accumulating mutations contribute to autism risk in their children, argues Daniel Weinberger.

Children born to fathers older than 45 years have a heightened risk of developing a range of conditions, from autism to addiction, according to a large Swedish study published 1 April in JAMA Psychiatry.

Certain DNA repeats that increased exponentially during human evolution are directly related to the severity of autism symptoms, according to a preliminary study published 20 March in PLoS Genetics.

People with autism show diminished language activity in the left halves of their brains but otherwise show typical specialization between hemispheres, according to a study published 6 February in Molecular Autism.

Spontaneous and rare mutations, particularly in genes related to networks that regulate neuronal connections, contribute a small but significant proportion of the risk for schizophrenia, report two large studies published online 22 January in Nature.

Mutations in FAN1, a gene in the 15q13.3 chromosomal region, raise the risk of neuropsychiatric disorders including autism and schizophrenia, according to a new study published 7 January in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Men who have an extra X chromosome have an elevated risk of developing autism, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, according to a study in the January issue of the Journal of Psychiatric Research.

Carrying a duplication of the 22q11.2 chromosomal region may protect against schizophrenia, suggests a study published 12 November in Molecular Psychiatry. This is the first evidence of a genetic region that lowers the risk of a disorder rather than increases it.

Individuals with autism may carry genetic variants in a pathway important for brain development, according to a study published in September in Translational Psychiatry.