Rare or common, inherited or spontaneous, mutations form the core of autism risk.
An autism-associated variant in a gene that regulates the chemical messenger serotonin leads to abnormal serotonin regulation and autism-like behaviors in mice. The results were published 3 April in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Parents searching for a genetic diagnosis for their child with autism now have a new option: a test that analyzes 62 different genes linked to syndromic autism, meaning cases of the disorder caused by mutation of a single gene.
A ten-year initiative announced last month by the Allen Institute for Brain Science aims to catalog the development, structure and function of neural circuits in the brain at an unprecedented level of detail.
A new study, published in the journal Pediatrics, made headlines this week by suggesting that motherhood obesity may increase the risk of autism in children.
Children with autism don’t follow certain grammatical rules, according to one of the few studies of the disorder from the field of linguistics.
A computerized video analysis tool can simultaneously track two mice and catalog their social interactions. The results were published 4 March Nature Methods.
FOXP2, a protein linked to language development that regulates the expression of some autism-associated genes, also dampens expression of DISC1, mutations in which have been linked to both schizophrenia and autism. The results were published 20 March in Human Molecular Genetics.
Neurons lacking PTEN, an autism-associated gene also involved in cancer, are hyperconnected to both near and distant brain cells, according to a study published 1 February in The Journal of Neuroscience.
Researchers have identified a noncoding RNA, a genetic message that is not translated into a protein, that may be involved in autism. The discovery, published 4 April in Science Translational Medicine, came from examining a region on chromosome 5 that has been previously linked to the disorder.
Both premature and post-term babies develop more severe symptoms of autism than those born close to their due dates, according to a study published 16 March in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.
