Some types of restricted and repetitive behaviors become more prevalent among autistic children and teenagers over time, depending on their age and intellectual ability, whereas others decrease.
Researchers can roughly project what autistic children’s lives will look like years down the road. But how good is their crystal ball — and what are its benefits?
Cross-species comparisons can help make sense of subtle genetic variants in people with autism and identify hundreds of new genes that may contribute to the condition.
A new protocol aims to help researchers include more autistic people — especially those who are minimally verbal or have intellectual disability — in imaging studies.
There is not yet a single example of a gene that, when mutated, increases the likelihood of autism but not of other neurodevelopmental conditions, including intellectual disability.
People with mutations in distant chromosomal regions often share a range of autism traits, even if they do not meet the diagnostic threshold for autism.
The Spectrum team highlights five topics that distinguished autism research in 2020: diversity in data, gene therapies, subtyping, social circuitry and the ‘autism gene’ debate.
Autistic children’s traits track with subtle, autism-like behaviors in their mothers; women with these traits may also carry a genetic predisposition to the condition.
Conversations between an autistic and a typical person involve less smiling and more mismatched facial expressions than do interactions between two typical people.
About 0.7 percent of children in China aged 6 to 12 — and 1.15 percent of 10- and 11-year-olds in Greece — have autism, figures that are consistent with prevalence estimates elsewhere.