News Archive

The latest research, clinical and policy news from the Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders Institute (ANDI) and its affiliated faculty.

 

Mice reveal how top autism gene may disrupt brain structure

Mutations in an autism gene called ANK2 may alter brain wiring by causing the growth of excess neuronal connections.

Studies of autism treatments lack standard yardsticks

Clinical trials of autism treatments rarely use a consistent set of tools to measure efficacy, a new study suggests1. Instead...

Analysis finds no evidence for popular autism communication method

A comprehensive review has found no scientific basis for a controversial technique that supposedly helps autistic people...

Sensory overload in autism may stem from hypervigilant brain

The brains of some autistic children do not adapt to repeated touch or sound, even after several minutes, according to a new...

Majority of autism risk resides in genes, multinational study suggests

About 81 percent of autism risk comes from inherited genetic factors, according to an analysis of more than 2 million children...

Medical conditions may mark distinct autism subtypes

Young autistic children fall into three groups based on the number and type of co-occurring conditions they have, according to...

Autism mutation may disrupt brain structure by disabling mitochondria

Mice that lack a segment of chromosome 22 — a mutation associated with autism — have unusually sparse connections between...

Monkeys with autism mutation show condition’s key traits

Researchers have engineered two generations of monkeys with mutations in SHANK3, a top autism gene. The first generation shows...

Communication in brain shows sex difference in autism

Autistic women show unusually strong connections, and autistic men unusually weak ones, between two specific brain regions,...

Classification system based on co-occurring conditions may provide insight into autism

Creating a classification system for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) based on co-occurring conditions could provide useful...

Research confirms gut-brain connection in autism

Up to 90 percent of people with autism suffer from gut problems, but nobody has known why. New research reveals the same gene...

Nerves that control heart rate may be offbeat in autistic adults

Adults with autism have a resting heartbeat that rarely varies in frequency, a tendency that may explain some aspects of the...

Autism diagnosis may be possible as early as age 14 months

Clinicians can reliably diagnose autism in some toddlers roughly two years earlier than the typical age of diagnosis, a new...

Sex bias in autism virtually absent among those with epilepsy

There are roughly as many autistic boys who have epilepsy as there are girls, according to a new meta-analysis.

Inflammation may wield sex-specific effects on developing brain

Exposure to inflammation in the womb affects the brain and behavior of males and females differently, two new studies suggest...