By Gretchen McIntire In the last couple of days, I have been reflecting on the ways I have worked hard to be brave this year. A lot of my work has been emotional but some of it has involved a lot of unexpected changes. This year there were times when I worried I might run out of ways to be brave onl…

Adding folic acid to foods such as cereal and bread — long considered one of the most successful public health interventions to prevent birth defects — may be a less effective strategy than once thought, according to a provocative new study from Stanford University. In 1998, the U.S. Food and Drug A…

Meeting of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) Please join us for an IACC Full Committee meeting that will take place on Wednesday, January 17, 2018 from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. ET at the Bethesda Marriott Hotel, 5151 Pooks Hill Road, Bethesda, MD 20814. Onsite registr…

Autism is a chameleon: What it looks like changes from one person to the next. Individual differences crop up both in its core features and in the conditions that often accompany it: depression, epilepsy, anxiety and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Autism also travels with a number of rare…

About the map: This map was created by the team at Spectrum, the leading source of news and expert opinion on autism research. (Subscribe to our newsletters.) The map features a collection of studies on autism prevalence around the world. It highlights places where information is available — and pla…

By Megan Amodeo Who has the biggest house? The best car? The most intelligent children? The most athletic children? Sometimes it seems that we spend the majority of our days comparing ourselves with other people and their children. I’m sure we’ve all been compared with others at least once in our li…

Autistic women show unusually strong connections, and autistic men unusually weak ones, between two specific brain regions, according to a new study1. The connections stretch from two regions within the cerebellum, which governs movement, emotion and language, to parts of the cerebral cortex. The la…

Autistic people may find eye contact uncomfortable. They may rock back and forth or flap their hands, particularly when they feel anxious. And they sometimes have trouble answering questions — all traits that can confuse and alarm law-enforcement officers, firefighters and ambulance crews who aren’t…

Those on the spectrum are at a high risk for this. Is your child one of them? If so, here are some ways to help.Source: The Autism Site

I love a good tongue-twister!Source: The Autism Site

The sad truth is that women, particularly undiagnosed, on the spectrum are at risk for various comorbidities like major depressive disorder, eating disorders, sexual assault, among others. By Amber Sayer I’ve been diagnosed and labeled with all sorts of things in my life, spanning the full gamut of…

When will the need for autism awareness end? Never! Even as the public moves towards acceptance and inclusion for those on the spectrum…we will need to continue awareness education. Yes, what we will talk about will change because people will evolve in their understanding. But it’s impor…

A software suite charts individual neurons and their connections across the mouse brain via a web-based platform1. The maps could help scientists study neuronal connections in mouse models of autism. Several large-scale efforts have mapped mouse brain-cell types and the connections among them. But e…

Hyperbaric chambers. Dietary supplements. Special diets. Dorinda Weeks’ son Aaron had tried them all. Ever since Aaron was diagnosed with autism at age 4, Weeks had resisted medication and behavioral therapies supported by science in favor of alternative approaches. Aaron had repetitive behaviors su…