DNA sequences called enhancers — which boost the expression of genes from within or outside them — are enriched for genetic variants linked to autism, suggests a new study. The finding may help researchers understand how variants outside genes contribute to autism.

Among babies who go on to receive a diagnosis of autism at age 2, alterations in brain structures forecast the severity of repetitive behaviors. The preliminary results were presented Saturday at the 2015 International Meeting for Autism Research in Salt Lake City, Utah.  
 

Researchers home in on the cerebellum’s role, and an app helps children with autism make eye contact.

Researchers can coax human stem cells to grow into layered structures that mimic the brain’s center for motor control, the cerebellum.

The autism-linked gene AUTS2 activates a group of genes that may be important for early brain development. The findings, published 18 December in Nature, hint at AUTS2’s potential role in autism and other developmental disorders.

An overabundance of neuronal connections in the brains of people with autism may contribute to the motor impairments associated with the disorder.
 

It’s no easy feat to whittle down the list of the most influential autism papers to a mere 10. So please consider this but a taste of the burgeoning field, presented in chronological order and based on suggestions from many researchers.

Several brain regions in people with autism become enlarged earlier than usual during childhood and shrink too soon during adulthood, finds an eight-year imaging study.

Children with autism tend to rely more on their bodies when learning new motor skills, while controls rely more on their eyes, suggests unpublished research presented Wednesday at the 2014 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

People with autism have trouble moving in response to something they see, a process tuned by the cerebellum. Researchers presented the unpublished study today at the 2014 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Washington, D.C. Another study presented today links defects in a section of the cerebellum to language problems in autism, underscoring the region’s importance in the disorder.