Nicole Rust describes her career-changing literary journey of joy, free will and the evolution of a field.

Few institutions have mechanisms for the type of long-term positions that would best benefit the science.

Old heuristics to acknowledge contributors—calling out first and last authors, with everyone else in between—don’t work well for large collaborative and interdisciplinary projects, yet they remain the default.

Methodological choices and study-site artifacts confounded an attempt to replicate findings in support of an autism brain-imaging biomarker, according to new unpublished work.

The map diagrams more than half a million neuronal connections in the first complete connectome of Drosophila and holds clues about which brain architectures best support learning.

The new tool may pose challenges for the scientific community, but used wisely, it can help researchers save time and resources.

The two journals, although differing in initial support, both realized the need for a publication focused exclusively on the neurodiverse experience.

The proteins are part of a newly discovered complex that mends genetic damage exclusively in neurons.

After a year of intense growth, funding for biotech is in decline. The result is layoffs and program cuts — and maybe some innovation.

The finding calls into question differences between autistic and non-autistic people on a decades-old theory-of-mind test involving interacting geometric shapes.

Early treatment with nutritional supplements and a high-protein diet forestalls some neurodevelopmental problems for children with BCKDK deficiency.

FMR1 loss impairs sodium channels, hindering mouse neurons from generating the electrical signals needed to transmit information.

The approach removes methyl tags from the gene and shields it from other silencing factors without changing the gene itself, raising hopes for a new treatment.

Emerging methods make it possible to combine the two tactics from opposite ends of the analytic spectrum, enabling scientists to have their cake and eat it too.

Both human and mouse progenitor cells with the alterations struggle to become neurons and instead express genes that are typically active only in muscle or the heart.

Five autism-linked genes widely known as chromatin regulators appear to also shape the cell’s internal skeleton.

Exposing neurons to valproic acid, a well-known environmental risk factor for autism, disrupts their ability to generate different proteins from the same gene.

Connections between 13 autism-linked proteins and their binding partners in excitatory neurons implicate a new molecular pathway.

The findings put genetic background forward to help explain autism’s heterogeneity.

Elsevier’s retractions focus on peer review and conflicts of interest.

A new measure shows how greatly movement influences associations between traits and brain activity, revealing abundant false positives and false negatives.

CRISPR-edited prairie voles that lack receptors for the so-called “social hormone” still bond with their mate and pups, raising questions about the molecule’s role.

Serious differences in autism identification persist, according to an analysis of autistic children in New Jersey over 16 years.

The power struggle between researchers, autistic self-advocates and parents is threatening progress across the field.

As a new professor, I was caught off guard by one part of the job: my role as an evaluator.

To include more autistic people in research, here’s what scientists need to know about informed consent procedures for study participants who have impaired decision-making capacity.

The questionnaire, designed to screen children for autism, isn’t ready for clinical use without further validation, contrary to what some overblown newspaper headlines reported.

Inactivating TAOK1 prompts tentacle-like protrusions to form all over a neuron’s surface, revealing the gene’s role in molding the membrane.

This edition takes aim at the autism-intervention evidence base with a slew of null results, plus findings that challenge a prevailing autism brain theory.

Memories from Diering’s life trace the rising star’s scientific path from raising lizards as a child and later exploring home brewing to heading a lab that investigates memory, sleep disturbances and early development in animals with autism-linked mutations.

’Tis the season for grad school meet and greets. But what are interviewers looking for, and how can early-career researchers bring their best?

Shortly after the study’s publication, experts critiqued it on PubPeer and other online platforms.

Postmortem brain samples from people with one of six conditions, including autism, show distinct signatures of over- and underexpression of immune genes.

Most people with the X-linked syndrome have autism traits, and about one-quarter meet diagnostic criteria for the condition.

Many autism-linked genes are somehow tied to cilia, the tiny hair-like sensors that stud a cell’s surface. But the question remains whether, and how, cilia differences contribute to the condition.

Her advocacy work aided the discovery of a rare inherited form of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease and helped connect affected people with researchers.

This year saw the debut of ever-more complex techniques to grow and analyze brain organoids and other 3D tissue cultures, among other advances.

Brazil could learn from the challenges and successes of other nations to become a leader in planning for the needs of autistic people.

Common diagnostic and research practices may be adding to autism’s sex bias, but there are some simple steps scientists can take to counteract it.

Rumbaugh, who studies how the autism-linked gene SYNGAP1 shapes brain development, describes how he has embraced coastal living and which aspects of his career he wouldn’t do over.

Having an infection during pregnancy is tied to a small increase in the chances of having an autistic child, but the connection may not be causal.

The approach could help test hypotheses about how atypical function of the brain’s immune cells contributes to autism.

Early-career researchers talk about the challenges around taking time off, and a new study shows that young scientists tend to be more innovative than their older colleagues.

The in-depth approach shows mutations in the autism-linked gene disrupt neuronal growth and communication, as well as mitochondrial gene expression.

Faulty mTOR signaling, implicated in syndromic forms of autism, also hinders cells grown from people with idiopathic autism or autism-linked deletions on chromosome 16.

The method yields complex organoids that more closely mimic embryonic brain development than do those cultured in other ways.

Follow these four tips to avoid using the information in problematic ways, including as a proxy for environmental variables.

The model enables the study of autism-linked genes at the earliest stages of neural development.

The signal, called CD47, is disrupted in autistic people who have a larger-than-average head.

The function of microglia and astrocytes in the brain may mediate the intersection of sex-differential biology and autism biology.