Rare or common, inherited or spontaneous, mutations form the core of autism risk.
On 20 September 2017, Hurricane Maria passed over Puerto Rico’s Cayo Santiago Island, home to more than 1,500 non-native rhesus macaques. After the storm, the monkeys formed new, unexpected relationships in ways that could offer clues about autism.
Mice missing a copy of chromosomal region 16p11.2 are slow to learn motor tasks and have dysfunction in a brain circuit associated with stress and movement, according to a new study. Normalizing this circuit’s activity corrects the learning deficit.
Genes influence how autistic people react to sights, sounds and other sensory cues, whereas environmental factors shape their tendency to notice and seek out such stimuli, a new study in twins suggests.
An expanding collection of websites compiles up-to-date information on the characteristics of people with mutations in genes linked to autism and other conditions.
Treating mice missing the autism-linked gene CNTNAP2 with a strain of gut bacteria makes them more social but no less hyperactive.
Mutations in CHD8 lead to brain overgrowth or undergrowth in mice, depending on how they affect the gene’s expression.
There is not yet a single example of a gene that, when mutated, increases the likelihood of autism but not of other neurodevelopmental conditions, including intellectual disability.
A typically protective stress response could help to explain the connection between maternal illness and neurodevelopmental conditions.
A growing body of evidence shows that brain cells called oligodendrocytes may play a larger role in autism than previously thought.
Researchers have devised a way to use fluorescent sensors to detect many different signaling molecules in a cell at once.
