A tool designed to detect psychiatric disorders in people with autism may produce more accurate estimates of co-occurring conditions.

Two studies published over the past month followed individuals with autism at various ages and showed that they gain developmental skills differently than controls do.

A new rat study shows that the precise timing of early valproate exposure, an autism risk factor, can have a big influence on behavior later in development.

Immune cells called microglia may play a central role in trimming synapses, the connections between neurons, according to research published 24 May in Neuron. These modifications are part of a normal developmental process by which excess synapses in the brain are destroyed.

Preliminary research shows that in people with autism, oxytocin enhances activity in brain areas that process social information.

Knocking out an autism-linked gene called PTEN only in neural stem cells of the hippocampus, a brain region central to learning and memory, throws the development of new neurons off course in adult mice, according to research published last month in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Two reviews sketch a road map for understanding and treating autism in low- and middle-income countries.

A new initiative launched by the National Institute of Mental Health aims to redefine clinical trials for autism by funding short, biomarker-based studies that will allow investigators to quickly rule out ineffective compounds. 

Researchers typically use only one ‘cohort,’ a group of about three dozen mice, for a given set of experiments. When others repeat the experiments with a different set of animals, sometimes the results hold up, and sometimes they don’t.

A $38.7 million project in the European Union — the largest single grant for autism research in the world — aims to bring together academic labs and pharmaceutical companies to speed the move from basic to clinical research.