Children with autism tend to miss the facial cues that make yawning contagious, suggests a study published 22 July in Autism Research and Treatment.

The same genetic region that is missing in people with Williams syndrome is likely to be duplicated in some people with schizophrenia, according to a study published 17 July in Biological Psychiatry.

Duplications and deletions of large chromosomal regions are associated with intellectual disability, cognitive deficits and a low likelihood of having children, according to a population-wide study in Iceland. The results were presented Monday at a conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

A new study fans the flames of a link between autism and schizophrenia, finding that children with autism are at a three-fold greater risk of psychotic episodes in their teen years than their typically developing peers.

Chromosomal abnormalities may be more prevalent in individuals with a rare form of childhood-onset schizophrenia than in those with the classic presentation of the disorder, according to a study published 21 May in Molecular Psychiatry.

A new software tool detects chromosomal alterations present in only a subset of cells in the body. This method, described 31 May in BMC Genomics, may help reveal mosaicism’s contribution to neurological disorders.

A new technique to transform human stem cells into neurons is faster, more efficient and more reliable than existing methods, according to a study published 5 June in Neuron.

Males, but not females, with neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism are more likely to have deletions or duplications in the 16p13.11 chromosomal region than controls are, according to a study published 18 April in PLoS One.

The discovery of microRNAs that regulate gene expression has changed our view of cellular biochemistry. It may also change our perception of neuropsychiatric disorders such as autism, says Peng Jin.

Conversations with researchers at the 2013 International Meeting for Autism Research in San Sebastián, Spain, raised provocative questions about the nature of autism. How do we make sense of its staggering heterogeneity, multiple genetic causes and widespread overlap with other disorders?