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Study results show that approximately 50 percent of friends and family members reported that they had suspected a child to have a serious condition before they were aware that either parent was concerned. Maternal grandmothers and teachers were the two most common relationship categories to first raise concerns. "About half of the family and friends who reported being concerned about a child were reluctant to share their concerns," says Joseph D. Buxbaum , PhD, Director of The Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment at Mount Sinai and co-author of the paper. "Our work shows the important role that family members and friends can play in the timing of a child's initial diagnosis of autism. Since early detection of ASD is critical to effective treatment interventions, we hope the study will serve as a call-to-action to encourage family and friends to share concerns early on." Study researchers conducted an online survey of 477 parents of children wit...

Autism spectrum disorder affects about 1.5 percent of all children, but its exact cause remains unknown, and diagnosis requires a multidisciplinary team of doctors. Previous research has revealed certain differences in metabolic processes between children on the autism spectrum and neurotypical children. However, researchers have struggled to translate these differences into new diagnostic tools. In the new study, Juergen Hahn and Daniel Howsmon of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York, and colleagues present a method to identify a child as being on the autism spectrum based on concentrations of specific substances found in a blood sample. These substances are produced by metabolic processes known as the folate-dependent one-carbon (FOCM) metabolism and transulfuration (TS) pathways, both of which are altered in children with autism. The scientists used blood sample data, collected at Arkansas Children's Hospital, from 83 children with autism and 76 neurotypical children...

The discovery provides further evidence of the crucial role vitamin D plays in brain development, said lead researcher Professor Darryl Eyles, from UQ's Queensland Brain Institute. "Our study used the most widely accepted developmental model of autism in which affected mice behave abnormally and show deficits in social interaction, basic learning and stereotyped behaviours," Professor Eyles said. "We found that pregnant females treated with active vitamin D in the equivalent of the first trimester of pregnancy produced offspring that did not develop these deficits." In human studies, QBI researchers recently found a link between pregnant women with low Vitamin D levels and the increased likelihood of having a child with autistic traits. Autism -- or autism spectrum disorder -- describes lifelong developmental disabilities including difficulty or inability to communicate with others and interact socially. Sun exposure is the major source of vitamin D...

This new information could become valuable as therapeutic treatments for Fragile X syndrome -- the most common autism-related disorder which results in intellectual disabilities and impacts one in every 4,000 males and one in every 8,000 females -- are still being developed in clinical trials. Michael Akins, PhD, an assistant professor in Drexel's College of Arts and Sciences, led a team that found structures called Fragile X granules in the part of the brain that controls memory, the hippocampus, well into maturity in both rat and human specimens. The granules , which Akins helped discover in 2009, are thought to contribute to Fragile X syndrome when they become decoupled from a gene called FMRP (Fragile X mental retardation protein) that is mutated in Fragile X patients. While Fragile X granules were found in the brains of adult rats and humans, they seemed to disappear in mice when they reached maturity. "It's intriguing that this disease-related gene has differ...

A new study by Waisman Center researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison looks at the daily experiences of these parents to provide a more detailed picture of the strengths and vulnerabilities of couples raising a child with ASD. "I think we can use these findings to develop more effective therapies and strategies to address potential challenges in couple relationships for parents of children with ASD," says Sigan Hartley, lead author of the new study, published this month in the  Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders . Previous findings have shown that, on average, couples with a child with ASD have higher risks of divorce and lower satisfaction with their marriages when compared to couples with a typically developing child. "What has been missing is research that really gets at the details of what is actually happening in the day-to-day lives of these couples," says Hartley, a Waisman Center researcher and 100 Women Chair in Human Ecology a...

In a study published in the journal  Molecular Psychiatry , researchers at the University of Cyprus, University of Cambridge, University of California, San Diego, and Stanford University used rats and mice to help map the complex biological cascade caused by the mother's immune response, which may lead to important consequences. Maternal infections during pregnancy are a known risk factor for abnormal fetal development. Most strikingly, this has been seen during the recent emergence of Zika virus, which led to babies being born with an abnormally small head and brain (known as ' microcephaly '). In the case of Zika, the virus has its impact by directly attacking fetal brain tissue. However, for most other infections, such as influenza, the infectious agent typically has a more indirect impact on fetal development. Large population-based studies have previously shown that a variety of maternal infections during pregnancy are associated with small increases in the risk...

For a mouse, that ability can make the difference between life and death. Neither a faint screech nor a tiny black speck in the sky might trigger any worry, but the two together strongly suggest a hawk is in the air. It matters in daily human life, too. An incoming call on a cell phone can be more noticeable when it is signaled visually and with sound, for example. "It's really important to understand how all of our senses interact to give us a whole picture of the world," said study lead author Torrey Truszkowski, a neuroscience doctoral student at Brown University. "If something is super salient in the visual system -- a bright flash of light -- you don't need the multisensory mechanism. If there is only a small change in light levels, you might ignore it -- but if in the same area of visual space you also have a piece of auditory information coming in, then you are more likely to notice that and decide if you need to do something about that." To und...

"This is very exciting because the identification of these gene-to-behavior relationships opens up new research avenues for testing the role of these genes in specific aspects of memory function and dysfunction," says Genevieve Konopka of UT Southwestern, who is presenting this new work in San Francisco today at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS) annual conference. "It means we are closer to understanding the molecular mechanisms supporting human memory and thus will be able to use this information someday to assist with all kinds of memory issues." The study is part of the nascent but growing field of "imaging genetics ," which aims to relate genetic variation to variation in brain anatomy and function. "Genes shape the anatomy and functional organization of the brain, and these structural and functional characteristics of the brain give rise to the observable behaviors," says Evelina Fedorenko of Harvard Medical School and Massachuset...

"Prudence," "impatience" or "laziness" are typically thought of as entrenched personality traits that guide how people weigh the cost of risk, delay and effort (respectively). However, new research shows that people's attitudes towards effort, delay, or risk drift towards those of others. Jean Daunizeau and Marie Devaine, from INSERM, Paris, combined mathematical modelling and cognitive psychology to explore the laws that govern such attitude alignment. The authors asked 56 participants to make a series of decisions involving risks, delays or efforts, both before and after having observed the decisions of fictitious participants (in fact: artificial intelligence algorithms) whose prudent, patient and lazy attitudes were sensibly calibrated . The study results show that participants are bound to a "false-consensus" bias, i.e. they believe without evidence that the attitudes of others resemble their own. It also shows that people exhibit ...

A team from Bristol's School of Experimental Psychology aimed to find out whether six basic facial expressions differing in intensity are challenging for young people with autism to recognise. Researchers gave 63 children and adolescents with an ASC diagnosis and 64 without a diagnosis , an internet-based test of emotion recognition. The two groups, aged between 6 -- 16 years-old, were presented with 'happy', 'sad', 'surprised', 'disgusted', 'scared' and 'angry' facial expressions and asked to select a label that matched the expression. Some faces had exaggerated 'high-intensity' expressions -- which were easier to identify, while others had subtle 'low-intensity' expressions -- which were more difficult but considered more relevant to real world interactions. The team also measured language skills and non-verbal reasoning skills in order to see if differences in these skills explained any differences in ability to...