Today's autism research draws on a variety of scientific disciplines, from genetics to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to neural development. At the 35th Carnegie Symposium on Cognition, "Development and Brain Systems in Autism," 16 of the world's most prominent autism researchers will present their latest groundbreaking findings on the disorder and discuss the direction of future study that will continue to improve scientists' understanding of autism.

Scientists at Yale School of Medicine have found that two-year-olds with autism looked significantly more at the mouths of others, and less at their eyes, than typically developing toddlers. This abnormality predicts the level of disability, according to study results published in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

A rare genetic disorder called tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) is yielding insight into a possible cause of some neurodevelopmental disorders: structural abnormalities in neurons, or brain cells.

The autistic disorder was first described, more than sixty years ago, by Dr. Leo Kanner of the Johns Hopkins Hospital (USA), who created the new label ´early infantile autism´.

Lee Scott MP recently visited South Woodford in East London in the United Kingdom to open the offices of a new autism charity for a new generation, the UK Autism Foundation.

Scientists have found novel patterns of ultrasonic vocalizations in a genetic mouse model of autism, adding a unique element to the available mouse behaviors that capture components of the human disease, and representing a new step towards identifying causes and better treatments.

Researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston have embarked on one of the first double-blind, clinical studies to determine whether gluten and dairy products play a role in autistic behavior as parents have anecdotally claimed.

Picking up on innuendo and social cues is a central component of engaging in conversation, but people with autism often struggle to determine another person's intentions in a social interaction.

(London, UK) A 16 year old British teenager,James Wilson who has autism, has been found by police having walked from Epping via Chelmsford to Colchester in Essex, after a massive hospital blunder. Mrs Lash Wilson, mother of James has called on the Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Secretary of State for Health Alan Johnson to launch an inquiry as how a vulnerable teenager with autism was allowed out of Goodmayes Hospital in Essex to go to the cornershop unsupervised.

Some parents of children with autism evaluate facial expressions differently than the rest of us – and in a way that is strikingly similar to autistic patients themselves, according to new research by psychiatrist Dr. Joe Piven of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and neuroscientist Ralph Adolphs, Ph.D., of the California Institute of Technology.

Some parents of children with autism evaluate facial expressions differently than the rest of us--and in a way that is strikingly similar to autistic patients themselves, according to new research by neuroscientist Ralph Adolphs of the California Institute of Technology and psychiatrist Joe Piven at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Research involving large Middle Eastern families, sophisticated genetic analysis and groundbreaking neuroscience has implicated a half-dozen new genes in autism.