Yes, a spoonful of sugar does help the medicine go down, but there is a fine line between medicine and a sugar pill. By Anton Spivack When I saw this video on Youtube about how to choose a high school musical, one commenter listed a set of guidelines. One of which rang particularly true: “it has t…

The amygdala — which is involved in fear and emotion processing and comprises a small region in each brain hemisphere — develops differently in autistic children with anxiety than in either those without anxiety or non-autistic children, according to a new study. But the exact differences in how the…

By: Stephanny Freeman, PhD and Kristen Hayashida, MEd, BCBA. Their new book: “Executive Function in the Early Childhood Classroom” can be purchased HERE When kindergarten teachers are asked what skills they would like their students to have the beginning of the year, their answers might be surp…

Welcome to Spectrum Index, a monthly newsletter that distills data from noteworthy autism studies into a series of quick statistics. Let us know what you think at niko@spectrumnews.org, and thanks for reading. 25.75: The average standard deviation in intelligence quotient (IQ) for 671 autistic child…

About 48 percent of editors of autism-specific journals are women, according to a Spectrum analysis. That fraction is far higher than for neuroscience journals, for which just 30 percent of editors are women, according to a study published Monday in Nature Neuroscience. The new study looked at edito…

When Zachary Williams joined the Autistic Researchers Committee of the International Society for Autism Research (INSAR), he that knew one of the group’s priorities would be to promote participatory research — an approach in which scientists work with autistic people and other members of the autism …

My name is Katrina and I am the casting associate of a 20th for ABC Pilot called NOT DEAD YET and got your details from my colleague. For the role of EDWARD, we are open to an actor who is neurodiverse or on the autism spectrum and we want to make sure we’ve auditioned anyone that might be ri…

Some genomic areas that help determine cerebellar size are associated with autism, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, according to a new study. But heritable genetic variants across the genome that also influence cerebellar size are not. The cerebellum sits at the base of the skull, below and behin…

This blog post originated from a second reply sent to Myranda Uselton to her Art of Autism post about being a self-diagnosed Autistic. In my first reply to her, I was proud to be self-diagnosed, and in the second, I described why I changed my mind. Debra Muzikar (editor of the Art of Autism blog) as…

Twitter can feel like an echo chamber — but sometimes the reverberations amplify important calls to action. This week, Andrew Whitehouse, Angela Wright Bennett Professor of Autism Research at the Telethon Kids Institute and the University of Western Australia in Perth, tweeted a thread that turned u…

Matricelf, an Israeli biotechnology company, recently performed a new type of test with 3D printed human spinal cord tissue on paralyzed mice that enabled them to walk again, paving a way for what could possibly be a remarkable way of treating humans with spinal cord injuries in the future. This 3D …

The post Spotted around the web: Ultrasound, microbial metabolites, profound autism appeared first on Spectrum | Autism Research News. Source: Spectrum News

Researchers have identified a new protein complex that shapes the function of the MECP2 protein, encoded by the gene mutated in most cases of Rett syndrome. The complex reveals a novel pathway underpinning the syndrome’s traits and a potential target for treatment, the researchers say. Children with…

Compiled by Art of Autism Board member Keri Bowers “I created this digital piece of Amy Sherald to honor her boldly compelling persona, vision and art. Sherald famously painted Michelle Obama, The Bathers, and Breonna Taylor, among other critical portraits of everyday black identity. I am drawn to h…