Children with autism understand the basic idea of fairness. But in nuanced scenarios, they tend to put their own interests first as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else, suggests a study published 12 February in Autism.
A small fragment of RNA may regulate the expression of RORA, a gene implicated in many autism-related pathways, according to a study published 6 February in Scientific Reports.
A widely used screen for autism identifies only one-third of children at 18 months who are later diagnosed with the disorder, reports a large Norwegian study published 18 February in Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology.
The ‘rich club,’ a higher-order brain network, is anatomically similar but functionally richer in adults compared with children, according to a study published 5 February in PLoS One.
The symptoms of autism in boys who have fragile X syndrome differ from those in boys who have autism alone, according to a study published 11 January in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.
Children who show several repetitive behaviors — such as flapping their hands or spinning their toys — at their first birthday have nearly four times the risk of autism of children who don’t show repetitive behaviors. That’s the conclusion from a study published in the March issue of the Journal of Child Psychiatry and Psychology.
Researchers have developed a method to isolate a single mutant cell from thousands of others, they reported in the March issue of Nature Methods.
Self-administered questionnaires for adults in the general population may not distinguish between traits of autism and other conditions, suggests a provocative study published 17 December in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.
Sequencing studies over the past few years have made a dramatic and unexpected discovery: Many of the mutations in individuals with autism are in genes that regulate chromatin, which helps package DNA in the cell nucleus, say Gerald Crabtree and Aryaman Shalizi.
Brains from people with autism have more support cells called glia and fewer neurons than do control brains, suggests a study published 10 January in Molecular Autism.