As babies are learning to talk, they shift their focus from speakers’ eyes to their lips, according to a new study that could inform efforts to find an early predictor of autism.

A brain response that discriminates familiar faces from unfamiliar ones develops more slowly in children with autism than in controls, according to a study published in the November/December issue of Child Development.

A subset of neurons in the amygdala, a small brain region responsible for processing emotions, recognize whole faces rather than individual features, according to a study published 11 October in Current Biology.

Social cognition tests using videos of actors performing emotional expressions and scenes can measure subtle impairments characteristic of high-functioning people with autism, according to unpublished research presented at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

Over the past 30 years, autism research pioneer Fred Volkmar says he has learned that researchers should be humble when assigning meaning to autism behavior, and seek to translate their findings into useful applications.  

A $10 million grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation is funding a five-year project to develop new technologies that can help clinicians diagnose and treat autism.

A new study suggests that the key to social development lies in motor development, and in an infant’s early interactions with non-social objects.

Boys who have autism-like social deficits at 2 years of age retain about the same level of social impairment when they reach age 20.

A variant of the FGF14 gene may decrease the volume of the amygdala, a brain structure needed to interpret emotions in facial expressions, according to results presented on Sunday at the World Congress of Psychiatric Genetics in Washington, D.C.

Impairments in vision, even if they don’t cause autism, are likely to be manifestations of underlying neural abnormalities, says Pawan Sinha, professor of vision and founder of the humanitarian organization Project Prakash.