People with autism harbor more copy number variants (CNVs) — deletions or duplications of large chunks of DNA — compared with controls, but only in the protein-coding regions of the genome, researchers reported Wednesday in Nature. The study also pinpointed more than 100 new risk genes for autism.

In between setting world records, carrying out vision experiments on his infant son, and launching a campaign to build a large eye hospital in New Delhi, Pawan Sinha is illuminating new facets of autism.

The challenge of finding jobs for adults with autism is the focus of a special issue of the Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation. With the right training and tools, the articles suggest, it’s possible for many people with the disorder to be gainfully employed.

FMRP, the protein missing in fragile X syndrome, is needed for the birth of new neurons, for regulating the translation of RNA into protein, and for maintaining the structural integrity of spiny neuronal projections, according to several new studies.

Charles Darwin performed what may be the world’s first study of how people interpret and understand the emotions of others, according to a paper published in the Journal of the History of the Neurosciences.

Researchers can reliably identify individuals with autism by looking at the expression pattern of a set of genes in cultured blood cells, according to a poster presented Friday at the IMFAR 2010 conference in Philadelphia.

Children who have autism and their healthy siblings share patterns of brain activity that are different than those seen in children with no family history of the disorder, according to unpublished research presented at the IMFAR 2010 conference in Philadelphia.

Brain imaging reveals distinct signatures in the language circuits of young toddlers with autism while they sleep, according to unpublished data presented yesterday at the IMFAR 2010 meeting in Philadelphia.

Adolescents with autism can gauge the direction of moving objects just as well as healthy controls can, but their confidence in their visual ability is sometimes misplaced, according to unpublished data presented yesterday at the IMFAR 2010 conference in Philadelphia.

How interested a child with autism is in a social scene can be determined in the blink of an eye, according to research presented yesterday at IMFAR 2010.