I will never stop listening. By Marisa Leon After 20 years of serving autistic children, teenagers, and adults, I know one thing for sure: Autism is a mystery that requires us to change. My journey into the world of autism began as a speech therapist. The expectations I had when I embarked on thi…

Research from Ad Council found that 66% of parents with kids under the age of 6 don’t have their children screened at all. Source: The Autism Site

If you have ever walked into a restaurant and looked at a menu of food options, you more than likely understand what it is like to be presented with a choice of food reinforcers such as the burger with cheese and pickles vs. the burger with no cheese or the burger with no pickles or cheese. The…

Adults with autism are nearly 50 percent more likely to die in the hospital than their neurotypical peers, according to the first analysis of these patterns, based on discharge records from hospitals in the United States1. The risk is even greater for autistic women; they are more than three times a…

Decades of research have shown that intensive early intervention can improve autistic children’s cognitive, communicative and social abilities. This research is far from perfect. The sample sizes in these studies tend to be small, and the data are often collected at least partially from parents, whi…

by Alex Nichols When my mom’s best friend’s mother died, I created a weaving using her antique jewelry and favorite colors. She has a small antique shop and that was a way for the daughter to have a daily reminder of her mom and a piece of art for her wall. Alex Nichols Fishing I decided to call the…

Jenni 'JWoww' Farley says her son Greyson has made a ton of progress since his initial autism diagnosis.Source: The Autism Site

Led Bradshaw is using his talent as an artist to collaborate with his autistic son, Jacob, on bringing his comic book heroes to life. Together, they have created “Jetpulse Comics,” a collection of stories set in a neurodiverse world. Their companion workbooks help children practice and learn skills …

Brain tissues from people with autism of unknown cause and from people with either of two genetic forms of the condition all show similar patterns of chemical tags on DNA, according to two new studies1,2. The work suggests that a shared biological mechanism underlies different forms of autism. The s…

About 81 percent of autism risk comes from inherited genetic factors, according to an analysis of more than 2 million children from five countries, published today in JAMA Psychiatry1. The study is the largest yet to estimate the heritability of autism risk in a multinational population. The finding…

Mice with extra copies of UBE3A, a gene linked to autism and related conditions, tend to die from seizures more often than controls. The finding comes from a new set of mice that could enable researchers to study how extra copies of UBE3A contribute to these conditions. Researchers presented the res…

A blood test can accurately detect whether a fetus carries large mutations of the kind linked to autism, according to findings from a pilot study. The researchers also plan to extend the technique to detect mutations that affect a single DNA base. They presented the findings yesterday at the 2019 Du…

Two new resources may aid the study of synapses, the junctions between neurons. Synapses are the nodes of the brain circuits that underlie behavior, movement and various other functions. Alterations in synaptic proteins may be involved in autism. A new online platform called SynGO provides informati…

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