Diagnosis

An analysis of brain scans correctly distinguishes between people with autism and controls more than 90 percent of the time, according to a study published today in Autism Research.

Deletion of the chromosomal region 17q12 dramatically increases the risk for autism and schizophrenia, according to a large study published last week in the American Journal of Human Genetics. Individuals missing this sizeable region are about 14 times more likely to develop one of those disorders, the study reports.

Ricardo Dolmetsch is making neurons from induced pluripotent stem cells derived from people with Timothy syndrome, a rare single-gene disorder that causes heart arrhythmias and autism. On Wednesday morning at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in San Diego, Dolmetsch talked to SFARI about how this approach could help autism research.

In families with more than one child diagnosed with autism, younger siblings appear to be more severely affected by the disorder, according to new data presented Tuesday at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in San Diego.

Better performance on intelligence tests that measure spatial rather than verbal ability is inherited in people with autism, according to a paper published online in October in Human Genetics.

New research shows that behavioral intervention at a young age can improve language and social skills in some children with autism — and that parents may be the best therapists.

Three themes — heterogeneity, phenotype, and trajectory — are beginning to emerge in diverse lines of inquiry into autism, according to speakers at a satellite symposium of the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in San Diego.

Researchers have narrowed down a genetic region associated with autism to one protein, cadherin 8, that helps bind cells together, according to a study published online in October in the Journal of Medical Genetics. This is the first time CDH8, the gene that encodes this protein, has been associated with autism.