The ‘intense world theory’ says autism stems from hyper-sensitive reactions to the world, allowing the individual to zoom in on tiny details, but ignore the bigger picture.

Children with autism do not use efficient, systematic methods to search for an object, according to a study published in January in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Mice lacking one copy of a gene associated with Williams syndrome share the hyper-sociability of people with the disorder, according to a paper published online 3 December in Autism Research.

The parts of the brain that help us pay attention to some things and not others have specialized regions for different senses, such as sight and sound, according to a paper published online in November in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Children with autism have an imbalance of excitation and inhibition in the brain, according to the first study to measure synchrony between brain networks using magnetoencephalography (MEG). The findings were presented Wednesday at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in San Diego.

People with autism may belong to one of four distinct categories based on their medical history, according to a study published in the October Autism Research.

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

A decade ago, children with disabilities were almost always separated into their own rooms — or even buildings — with specialized teachers and lessons. But some research since then has shown that many of these children can learn well alongside healthy children, and vice versa.

The amygdala, a brain region that regulates fear and anxiety, shows abnormal neuronal signaling in a mouse model of fragile X syndrome, according to two studies published this summer. These are the first to explore cellular defects in the region in fragile X.

Children with fragile X syndrome show abnormal growth in several brain structures during the first few years of life, according to the first study to track how the disease unfolds in the brain during early development.