The Brain

Two imaging techniques together reveal architectural features of the brains of preterm infants.

The brains of people with autism have unusually strong connections in some regions and weak ones in others.

The brains of autistic children show few differences from those of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or even of controls.

Autism BrainNet, a repository of postmortem brains, has new tissue from more than 150 brains, including 59 from people with confirmed or possible autism.

Problems with the minute ‘factories’ that yield energy for cells — the mitochondria — may contribute to learning problems and other traits of fragile X syndrome.

The brain’s emotion center, the amygdala, undergoes dramatic changes during the first year of life; these shifts may hold hints about its role in autism.