The duplication of a chromosomal region missing in people with Williams syndrome is associated with separation anxiety, according to a study published 8 June in The American Journal of Human Genetics.

A detailed brain imaging study of people with Williams syndrome, a developmental disorder characterized by a highly sociable personality, has found a series of structural, functional and connectivity deficits that converge on a part of the brain called the insula. The findings were published online 12 March in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Mouse pups with a duplication of GTF2I, a gene linked to Williams syndrome and autism, show extreme separation anxiety when separated from their mothers, according to unpublished findings presented Thursday at the International Congress of Human Genetics in Montreal, Canada.

Three new studies analyzing genetic data from families in which just one child has autism have found the strongest evidence yet that rare new mutations contribute to the disorder.

A new technique can pinpoint the precise location of individual proteins at a synapse — the junction between neurons — at high resolution in brain tissue, according to a study published 9 December in Neuron.

Mice lacking one copy of a gene associated with Williams syndrome share the hyper-sociability of people with the disorder, according to a paper published online 3 December in Autism Research.

Mice missing a large protein at the junction between neurons show motor impairments, anxiety and increased social behaviors, according to a study in the American Journal of Psychiatry. The protein, postsynaptic density-95 or PSD-95, is part of a key molecular bridge connecting other proteins linked to autism.

Children with Williams syndrome are chatty, have rich vocabularies and love to tell stories. Yet they have trouble learning certain complex rules of grammar, according to a study published in the Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research.

“I don’t know anything about Williams syndrome”: That isn’t exactly how you’d expect a talk at a meeting on the syndrome to begin, but it happened more than once at a symposium on the disorder last week. Could scientific interchange between Williams syndrome and autism researchers benefit people with either condition?

A mouse model of Williams syndrome pinpoints a genetic region associated with the social behavior seen in the disorder, and may also yield insights into autism, says researcher Uta Francke, professor emeritus of genetics at Stanford University.