Signals that relay sensations from nerves to the brain are abnormally strong in people with autism, a finding that may explain why some people with the disorder are overly sensitive to light, sound and touch.

The thick bundle of nerve fibers that links the left and right hemispheres of the brain develops differently in children with autism, a nine-year study has found.

A new study may have solved a decade-old debate about whether the brains of people with autism are more or less connected than those of controls: They’re both, depending on where in the brain you look.

The colorful brain maps created with diffusion imaging — a technique that uses the flow of water as a proxy for nerve tracts — are unlikely to represent the brain’s anatomy with accuracy, says a new study.

Children with autism show different patterns of brain activity during everyday gestures and movements than controls do, suggest unpublished results presented today at the 2014 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

A method for measuring myelin, the protective sheath around neurons, indicates that there is less of it in the brains of people with autism than in those of controls.

A brain hub responsible for higher-order tasks may be overly connected in autism and thinly connected in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Researchers measure how brain networks work together by scanning volunteers’ brains either while they’re resting passively or while they’re engaged in a task. A study published 2 July in Neuron argues that the networks activated in these two scenarios are more similar than previously thought.

Two new maps of the brain — an atlas of fetal development and a wiring diagram in the mouse — debuted 2 April in Nature. The maps may open new avenues of investigation into the genetic and neurological basis of autism.