Male rhesus macaques show more interest in videos with social content, such as another monkey displaying aggression, than in videos of landscapes or other animals, according to a study published 26 October in PLoS One.

Girls may have a higher threshold for the genetic abnormalities that lead to autism than boys do, according to a new study in the January issue of the American Journal of Medical Genetics Part B.  

Blood from individuals with autism could help researchers identify biomarkers to diagnose the disorder and learn more about related symptoms, such as gastrointestinal complaints, says molecular biologist Valerie Hu.

Intellectual disability is more likely to be associated with multiple, large or non-inherited duplications and deletions of DNA than is autism, according to a study published 7 November in PLoS Genetics.

Despite funders’ requirements to share mouse models after publication, many researchers hoard the animals for the good of their labs — and that could have an adverse effect on the field as a whole.

When twins differ in their diagnosis of autism, the twin with the lower birth weight is about three times more likely to develop the disorder than his or her sibling, according to a study published in the December issue of Psychological Medicine.

As the amount of genomics and other data rapidly grows, researchers are turning to cloud computing; commercial services for remote data storage and processing that allow even those with little infrastructure to handle big data.

Researchers have charted the expression of more than 15,000 brain genes across 15 stages of development, spanning from 4 weeks post-conception to more than 60 years of age, they reported 27 October in Nature.

Lowering the levels of a protein associated with Alzheimer’s disease can rescue symptoms of fragile X syndrome in mice, according to a study published 26 October in PLoS One.

A new study examining trends in autism research over the past 40 years found that the largest areas of growth have been in immune function, oxidative stress, toxin exposure, genetics and neuroimaging, while research on theory of mind and neuropathology has slowed.