The Gender Self-Report could help autism researchers include more gender-diverse people across a range of ages and neurotypes in their work. SourceSource: Spectrum News

A study published last week in JAMA Pediatrics suggests that autism is more common among people born in areas with high levels of lithium in drinking water, but it is too soon to say whether prenatal lithium exposure is truly a concern. SourceSource: Spectrum News

The mutation prevents certain amino acids from entering neurons, causing the cells to die early in development. SourceSource: Spectrum News

Social-media attention this week centered on two new studies of the brain’s memory hub: One employed virtual reality to probe how people use and update their cognitive maps, and the other tracked individual hippocampal neurons in mice as they learned. SourceSource: Spectrum News

Here is a roundup of news and research for the week of 3 April. SourceSource: Spectrum News

The result raises hopes for an ongoing clinical trial in people — and offers fresh insight into the biology of imprinting and the UBE3A antisense transcript. SourceSource: Spectrum News

Most early-career researchers have to foot the bill for academic conferences and get reimbursed once they return. But not everyone can afford to wait for that payment. SourceSource: Spectrum News

The work identifies new varieties and may help researchers develop tools to genetically target specific classes of cells. SourceSource: Spectrum News

Reposted with permission from Ashleigh Evans, MS, BCBA, www.evansbehavioralservices.com/. My article on red flags in ABA providers generated a great deal of interest from caregivers and clinicians in the ABA field. Those red flags include potentially harmful practices that parents, caregivers, an…

The changes may help explain the link between maternal infection and autism, though more research is needed. SourceSource: Spectrum News

By revealing differences between autistic and non-autistic children, it could help identify autism in babies. SourceSource: Spectrum News

A pair of neuroimaging-related studies — one about a framework for brain-wide association studies and another about a standardized tool to image rat brains — held researchers’ attention on social media this week. SourceSource: Spectrum News

by Nils Skudra Recently I had the opportunity to watch A Man Called Otto, a heartwarming comedy-drama starring Tom Hanks as Otto, a grumpy and bitter retiree who routinely insults his neighbors and enforces the traffic rules of his condominium neighborhood until he is befriended by an immigrant fami…

Explore the people, the science and the challenges in autism research. SourceSource: Spectrum News