Where an infant fixes their gaze 'could be an early indicator of autism' - Daily Mail

Researchers at the Kennedy Krieger institute and University of Delaware studied 25 six-month-old infants in this 'high-risk' group along with 25 of their peers.

The youngsters were placed in a chair with a simple joystick. When they moved it the musical toy was activated and they were given more attention by their caregiver. When actively engaged the children in both groups spent a similar amount of time looking at the person as they did at the toy.

However, the team found that when the babies were not being engaged, those in the high risk group spent far more time gazing at the toy than the caregiver.

Autism Gives Woman An 'Alien View' Of Social Brains - NPR

It takes a smart brain to invent a spaceship. But putting one in orbit takes a brain with extraordinary social skills.

That's because getting from concept to launchpad takes more than technology — it takes thousands of people agreeing on a common goal and working together to accomplish it.

Humans have succeeded in part because we evolved a brain with a remarkable capacity for this type of complex social interaction. We automatically respond to social cues and facial expressions. We can look at the world from another person's point of view. We are predisposed to cooperate.

But all these things are so much a part of us, they're easy to take for granted.
Unless you have autism, like Lisa Daxer.

Daxer, 27, is a biomedical engineering major at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. And for her, things like reading faces and understanding what's on another person's mind are a struggle.

Autism and Mental Retardation Connected With APC Protein - Science Daily

A clue to the causes of autism and mental retardation lies in the synapse, the tiny intercellular junction that rapidly transfers information from one neuron to the next. According to neuroscientists at Tufts University School of Medicine, with students from the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at Tufts, a protein called APC (adenomatous polyposis coli) plays a key role in synapse maturation, and APC dysfunction prevents the synapse function required for typical learning and memory.

The findings are published in the August 18 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.

"Both sides of the synapse are finely tuned for efficient transmission; an imbalance on either side can negatively impact function, resulting in cognitive deficits. Our study reveals that APC forms a key protein complex in the postsynaptic neuron that also provides signals to direct synapse maturation in the presynaptic neuron, ensuring that the two sides of the synapse mature in concert to provide optimal function," said senior author Michele H. Jacob, PhD, professor in the department of neuroscience at Tufts University School of Medicine. Jacob is also a member of the cell, molecular and developmental biology; cellular and molecular physiology; and neuroscience program faculties at the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at Tufts.

Autism Might Slow Brain's Ability to Integrate Input From Multiple Senses - Scientific American
Children with autism often focus intently on a single activity or feature of their environment. New research might help to explain this behavioral trend, providing evidence that the brains of young people with autism are slower to integrate input coming from more than one sense at the same time.

During study of the disorder decades ago, research into these basic tendencies was common. But in subsequent years, scientists have tended to focus more on complex issues, ranging from communication troubles to underlying genetic patterns.

Recently, however, more studies have set their sights back on some of the simple processes that most people take for granted, such as sensory intake, as a way to better understand more high-level manifestations, such as social interaction issues. "We believe that these things interact in very significant ways," says Sophie Molholm, an associate professor of neuroscience at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and co-author of a new study about multi-sensory processing.

Autism explosion half explained, half still a mystery - New Scientist

Why have the numbers of autism diagnoses ballooned in recent decades? Researchers have long claimed that changes to the way the condition is diagnosed are the main cause. But now a series of a studies have shown that diagnostic changes alone cannot account for the increase. They suggest that other causes, perhaps environmental factors, are also contributing to the rise in cases.

"These studies give me the feeling that there must be a true increase in the number of children affected," says Tom Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health in Rockville, Maryland.

The studies are the work of sociologist Peter Bearman at Columbia University in New York and colleagues. They have spent three years trying to disentangle the causes of the roughly sevenfold increase in autism rates seen in many developed nations over the past 20 years. They have identified three factors that are driving up autism rates, but found that these account for only half of the observed increase.

Relatives of Those with Autism Show Eye-Movement Deficits - Scientific American

Large-scale genetic studies have turned up nuanced and conflicting results about the genetic basis of autism and its myriad symptoms. Other research has discovered that many people with an autistic relative or child might themselves have some subtle behavior variant as well, such as obsessive-compulsive tendencies or communication problems.

Eye movement is easier to study neurologically than complex social and behavioral patterns—in large part because "we know a lot about what parts of the brain are involved," says Matthew Mosconi, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the U.I.C. and lead author of the new study. And the new findings examine basic deficits unclouded by social tendencies, such as the aversion many people with autism spectrum disorder have to looking at faces.