This month’s newsletter looks at a decline in well-child visits during the coronavirus pandemic, the autism-cancer connection and the sizeable fraction of autistic children who live in poverty.

By coupling the tool — called SLEAP — with optogenetics, researchers can determine the neural circuits underlying social behaviors.

Previous Spectrum reporting called out this paper and several others — all on unrelated subjects — that mysteriously cite autism papers.

This week’s newsletter looks at new paper alerts about neocortical development, double empathy and predicting ‘super responders,’ plus queries for the science Twitterverse.

Here is a roundup of news and research for the week of 18 April.

Black and Hispanic people with autism in North Carolina are 15 and 37 percent less likely, respectively, to receive a Medicaid waiver than their white counterparts are.

Among the millions displaced by the war in Ukraine are children and adults with autism. Many autism professionals are doing what they can to help.

Twitter toasts two new papers on reprogramming stem cells and searching for autism biomarkers in the brain, as well as incorporating autistic voices to set research and health-care agendas.

Here is a roundup of news and research for the week of 11 April.

This edition of By the Numbers maps where the autism services cliff is steepest, plots hospital costs for autistic youth and charts the overlap of ADHD and autism.