By Azeen Ghorayshi Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has overhauled a panel that helps the federal government set priorities for autism research and social services, installing several members who have said that vaccines can cause autism despite decades of research that has failed to establish such a link. The panel, the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, was established in 2000 and has historically included autistic people, parents, scientists and clinicians, as well as federal employees, who hold public meetings to debate how federal funds should best be allocated to support people with autism. The 21 new public members selected by Mr. Kennedy include many outspoken activists, among them a former employee of a super PAC that supported Mr. Kennedy’s presidential campaign, a doctor who has been sued over dangerous heavy metal treatments for a young child with autism, a political economist who has testified against vaccines before a congressional committee, and parents who have spoken publicly about their belief that their children’s autism was caused by vaccines. The group, which also includes 21 government members across many federal agencies, will advise the federal government on how to prioritize the $2 billion allocated by Congress toward autism research and services over the next five years. Though it’s not yet clear what the committee will do — or what it can do, given that it serves only an advisory function — many longtime autism advocates and researchers said they were alarmed by the fact that the committee seemed stacked to advance Mr. Kennedy’s priorities on vaccines. “The new committee does not represent the autism community,” said Alison Singer, who served on the committee from 2007 to 2019. Ms. Singer, whose 28-year-old daughter has profound autism, is the head of the Autism Science Foundation. “It disproportionately, excruciatingly so, represents an extremely small subset of families who believe vaccines cause autism.” © 2026 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory and Learning
Link ID: 30100 - Posted: 01.31.2026

Jon Hamilton At a press conference in late 2025, federal officials made some big claims about leucovorin, a prescription drug usually reserved for people on cancer chemotherapy. "We're going to change the label to make it available [to children with autism spectrum disorder]," said Dr. Marty Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. "Hundreds of thousands of kids, in my opinion, will benefit." The Trump administration has suggested that leucovorin, a drug used in cancer treatment, might have some benefit for children with autism. Many researchers and families aren't so sure. The FDA still hasn't made that label change. Since Makary's remarks, though, more than 25,000 people have joined a Facebook group called Leucovorin for Autism. Most members appear to be parents seeking the drug for their autistic children. Also since the press conference, some doctors have begun writing off-label prescriptions for autistic children, against the advice of medical groups including the American Academy of Pediatrics. The buzz about leucovorin has led to a shortage of the drug. In response, the FDA is temporarily allowing imports of tablets that are made in Spain and sold in Canada, but not approved in the U.S. All of this is part of a familiar cycle for Dr. Paul Offit, who directs the vaccine education center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Offit says he realized years ago that leucovorin's popularity was far ahead of the science. Jason Mazzola walks to work at The Residence at Natick South, an LCB Senior Living community in Natick, MA. August 22, 2024. © 2026 npr

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory and Learning
Link ID: 30095 - Posted: 01.28.2026

By Azeen Ghorayshi A scientific review of 43 studies on acetaminophen use during pregnancy concluded that there was no evidence that the painkiller increased the risk of autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders. “We found no clinically important increase in the risk of autism, A.D.H.D. or intellectual disability,” Dr. Asma Khalil, a professor of obstetrics and maternal fetal medicine at St. George’s Hospital, University of London, and the lead author of the report, said at a news briefing. The study was published on Friday in the British medical journal The Lancet. Acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, remains “the first-line treatment that we would recommend if the pregnant women have pain or fever in pregnancy,” Dr. Khalil said. Studies that have examined a possible link between acetaminophen in pregnancy and a risk of neurodevelopmental disorders have produced conflicting data, with some finding no connection and others finding small increases in risk. The new review comes after President Trump told pregnant women during a news conference in September to “tough it out” and “fight like hell” not to take Tylenol, because he said the painkiller could cause autism in children. The message was delivered as part of a broader campaign by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to try to identify the causes behind rising autism rates among children in the United States, zeroing in on the unproven risks of acetaminophen and long-discredited theories that vaccines cause autism. Medical groups worldwide, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, quickly disputed the president’s statements. They argued that doctors already advised their pregnant patients to use acetaminophen judiciously, and cautioned that untreated fevers during pregnancy could cause health problems for the mother and the baby © 2026 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory and Learning
Link ID: 30085 - Posted: 01.17.2026

By Azeen Ghorayshi Academic research labs across the country are working to find biological markers that can predict whether a child is at risk of developing autism. And companies are rushing to turn the findings into commercial tests, despite limited evidence to back their validity, raising concerns that their results could mislead desperate parents. They include one test that examines a strand of hair to rule out an autism diagnosis in babies as young as one month old. Two other tests just entered the market. One promises to predict autism risk based on skin cells collected as early as days after birth. Another looks for the presence of certain antibodies in a mother’s blood to determine whether her children, or babies that she might have in the future, are at risk of developing autism. For decades, clinicians and parents have hoped for a biological test that could help determine if a child has autism. The push to commercialize investigators’ early research has accelerated as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has elevated the neurodevelopmental disorder into a national political priority, creating new funding for autism research and reviving long-discredited theories about autism and vaccines. But the new tests, largely aimed as a screening tool for the general population, are not yet reliable enough to be offered commercially, outside scientists familiar with the tests say, especially in a landscape where families are already inundated with incorrect or unverified information about autism. None of the tests has gone through large experimental trials or had its validity evaluated by a regulatory agency. “All of these tests are interesting hypotheses,” said Joseph Buxbaum, a neuroscientist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai who studies the genetics of autism. But they are “absolutely not at a point for any kind of clinical use,” he said. © 2026 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory and Learning
Link ID: 30076 - Posted: 01.10.2026

On 19 November 2025, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed language on a “vaccine safety” page on its website to assert that the statement “vaccines do not cause autism” is not evidence based. The updated CDC page now incorrectly suggests that a link between infant vaccination and autism exists, and it casts doubt on a wealth of research that has produced evidence to the contrary. The updated language contradicts decades of research findings that show vaccines do not cause autism. The move has also prompted backlash from multiple groups, including the Coalition of Autism Scientists and the Autism Science Foundation. “These sort of claims have been repeatedly debunked by good science and multiple independent replications of negative studies, and for years no scientist has opined that more research is needed,” Eric Fombonne, professor emeritus of psychiatry at Oregon Health & Science University, told The Transmitter. He noted several problems with the arguments presented on the CDC website, including the citation of “fringe studies executed by uncredentialed authors with poor methodologies and published in low-quality journals.” Fombonne described the authors of the page as having “cherry pick[ed data] … in support of their preconceived beliefs” and mischaracterizing well-conducted and replicated research. Experts The Transmitter spoke with raised many concerns about the agency’s statements, including how those statements could confuse families and whether they indicate shifts in priorities that threaten solid scientific research. “Families deserve honest answers,” says David Mandell, professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Penn Center for Mental Health. © 2025 Simons Foundation

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior; Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory and Learning; Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Link ID: 30020 - Posted: 11.22.2025

By Lauren Schenkman The purported autism-microbiome connection is having a moment. It’s the focus of a new $50-million call for proposals from Wellcome Leap—a research initiative of the Wellcome Trust—and a 2024 Netflix documentary portrays fecal microbiota transplants as a promising treatment for autism-related traits. “It seems to have captured the public’s imagination,” says Kevin Mitchell, associate professor of genetics and neuroscience at Trinity College in Dublin. But Mitchell says he has long been skeptical. Eventually, he and some colleagues “collectively got exasperated enough by this that we felt that we had to say something about it,” Mitchell says. Today, they published a comprehensive review in Neuron of more than 30 studies on the autism-microbiome connection, including preclinical experiments in mice, human observational studies and clinical trials. After accounting for statistical, technical and conceptual flaws, the team reached a clear conclusion: “There’s nothing there,” Mitchell says. Research projects that include the keywords “autism” and “microbiome” have netted about $20 million to $25 million in U.S. federal funding annually since 2018, Mitchell’s team found using the funding database NIH RePORTER. It’s worrying that funders assume “there’s a solid foundation of work,” Mitchell says. “It’s just this huge amount of scientific effort and funding going into exploring these ideas.” Mitchell spoke with The Transmitter about the problems he sees with studies that claim to show a microbiome-autism link, and how neuroscientists can read them with an analytical eye. © 2025 Simons Foundation

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior; Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory and Learning; Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment
Link ID: 30015 - Posted: 11.19.2025

By Giorgia Guglielmi Male and female human fetuses show distinct patterns of gene activity and DNA regulation in the cerebral cortex, according to a new analysis of thousands of individual brain cells. The study offers one of the most detailed maps to date of how such activity differs between boys and girls’ brains during the second trimester. It also compares sex differences in gene activity in fetuses with spontaneous genetic changes in autistic people, revealing clues as to how these de novo changes affect boys and girls. “As the field evolves, this [work] will be a helpful reference” for exploring sex-related molecular differences in early brain development, says Matthew Oetjens, assistant professor of human genetics at Geisinger Medical Center, who was not involved in the study. Understanding these differences may help explain why certain neurodevelopmental conditions are more common in one sex than the other, he says. Autism, for example, is diagnosed about four times more often in boys than in girls, but scientists are still trying to understand why. Theories include the possibility that boys are more vulnerable, girls are sometimes protected, or a combination of both. “We know that autism … has a very strong genetic component. What is not known is how the genetic risk architecture intersects with any differences at the molecular level that might exist between male and female human brains,” says study investigator Tomasz Nowakowski, associate professor of neurological surgery, anatomy and psychiatry, and behavioral sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. More than 940 genes are expressed differently between the sexes, according to the new analysis of more than 38,000 brain cells from 21 female and 27 male mid-gestation fetuses. Most of these differentially expressed genes are more active in females. © 2025 Simons Foundation

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 13: Memory and Learning
Link ID: 29977 - Posted: 10.22.2025

By Azeen Ghorayshi As a child, Jodie Singer barely spoke. She could repeat words that people said to her or recite the book “Madeline” from beginning to end, but she could not answer yes or no when her mother asked if she wanted juice. Sometimes she hurt herself, compulsively tearing at the skin and hair on the nape of her neck. She threw tantrums, thrashing and refusing to be comforted. When she was almost 3, Jodie was given a diagnosis of autism. Now 28, she still speaks only in short, repetitive phrases and requires round-the-clock care, including help eating, getting dressed and using the toilet. At the time Jodie’s diagnosis was first made, the definition of autism was expanding, as it would continue to do over the next 25 years. Once primarily limited to severely disabled people, autism began to be viewed as a spectrum that included far less impaired children and adults. Along the way, it also became an identity, embraced by college graduates and even by some of the world’s most successful people, like Elon Musk and Bill Gates. That broadening of the diagnosis, autism experts believe, along with the increasing awareness of the disorder, is largely responsible for the steep rise in autism cases that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called “an epidemic” and has attributed to theories of causality that mainstream scientists reject, like vaccines and, more recently, Tylenol. And the diagnostic expansion has now become a flashpoint in a long-running debate over how autism should defined, one that has divided parents and activists, ignited social media battles and grown fiercer with Mr. Kennedy’s laser focus on autism. Speaking of autistic children in the spring, Mr. Kennedy said, “These are kids who will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go out on a date.” His words drew a swift backlash from many autistic adults, who called his characterization of their lives false and dehumanizing. But Jodie’s mother, Alison Singer, said that, though she disagrees with Mr. Kennedy’s views on the causes of autism, his words about the harsh realities of living with the disorder spoke to families like her own. © 2025 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory and Learning
Link ID: 29947 - Posted: 10.01.2025

Jon Hamilton In a White House press conference Monday, President Trump and several deputies said the Food and Drug Administration would be updating drug labeling to discourage the use of acetaminophen by pregnant women, suggesting a link between the common painkiller and autism. Federal officials also said they would be changing the label for leucovorin, a form of vitamin B typically used in conjunction with cancer treatment, to enable its use as a treatment for autism. And they added that state Medicaid programs, in partnership with the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, would cover this use. The suite of changes was announced despite a notable lack of clear scientific evidence to support these moves. The changes were presented as part of what the administration said was its commitment to identify the root causes of autism, diagnoses of which have increased in recent years. Flanked by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid head Dr. Mehmet Oz, President Trump pinned substantial blame for rising autism rates on the common painkiller, which is also known by its brand name, Tylenol. "Taking Tylenol is not good — I'll say it: It's not good," he said, suggesting without evidence that communities without access to the medicine have "no autism," while in others, autism now affects 1 in 12 boys. (An estimated 1 in 31 children in the U.S. are diagnosed with autism.) Trump discouraged giving acetaminophen to babies, as well. (He also suggested that vaccines and their frequency may be a culprit in causing autism, an oft-repeated claim that has been debunked by decades of research.) © 2025 npr

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory and Learning
Link ID: 29941 - Posted: 09.24.2025

By Christina Caron Dr. Marty Makary, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, announced on Monday that the agency would be modifying the label of a relatively obscure medicine so that “it can be available for children with autism.” He was referring to leucovorin, or folinic acid, a modified version of vitamin B9, also known as folate — which is naturally found in beans, leafy greens, eggs, beets and citrus. Folate helps the body make red blood cells and is important for cell growth. It’s especially crucial during early pregnancy to lower the risk of major birth defects in a baby’s brain or spine. Studies suggest that folate levels can affect our health in various ways, and scientists are researching what role folate plays in depression, dementia, heart disease and autism. Some people have antibodies that interfere with how folate is transported within the body, and small studies suggest that a number of people with autism — in some cases up to 75 percent — may have these antibodies. In a Federal Register notice filed on Monday, the F.D.A. said it was approving leucovorin tablets for people with “cerebral folate deficiency,” based on a review of studies from 2009 to 2024 that found that they “improve certain symptoms.” The agency, noting that more studies were needed, cited one study that compared 40 people on the medication and 40 on a placebo; those who took the medication showed “substantial improvement” of the deficiency symptoms. The medicine has been used off-label to treat people diagnosed with cerebral folate deficiency for about two decades. Symptoms of cerebral folate deficiency usually begin to show up around the age of 2 when children start to experience speech difficulties, intellectual disabilities and, in some cases, seizures. They may also have tremors and difficulty controlling their muscle movements. © 2025 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory and Learning
Link ID: 29940 - Posted: 09.24.2025

Rachel Fieldhouse Last week, a study involving more than nine million pregnancies reported that children whose mothers had gestational diabetes during pregnancy had a higher chance of developing attention deficit–hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism than did children whose mothers didn’t have the condition. The study, presented at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes in Vienna, is under review at a peer-reviewed journal. It is not the first to link gestational diabetes to neurodevelopmental disorders in children, but it is one of the largest. Researchers pooled results from 48 studies across 20 countries, finding that children born to people with gestational diabetes had lower IQ scores, a 36% higher risk of ADHD and a 56% higher risk of autism spectrum disorders. Estimates suggest the prevalence of autism in the general population is one in 127 people1 and between 3-10%2 of children and teenagers have ADHD. The latest results mirror those of another meta-analysis3 published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal in June, which included 56 million mother–child pairs and found that all types of diabetes in pregnancy, including type 1, type 2 and gestational diabetes, increase the risk of the baby developing ADHD and autism. But none of these studies have been able to show that diabetes during pregnancy causes these conditions. “There’s no doubt that there is a signal here, but certainly further research is required,” says Alex Polyakov, an obstetrician and researcher at the University of Melbourne in Australia. Long a topic of research, the causes of autism have been thrust into the spotlight by the administration of US President Donald Trump. On Sunday, while speaking at the memorial for conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Trump said: “I think we found an answer to autism. How about that?” © 2025 Springer Nature Limited

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory and Learning
Link ID: 29939 - Posted: 09.24.2025

Helen Pearson On 16 April, Robert F. Kennedy Jr held a press conference about rising diagnoses of autism. The US Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary pointed to new data showing that autism prevalence in the United States had risen steeply from one in 150 eight-year-olds in 2000 to one in 31 in 2022. He called it an “epidemic” caused by “an environmental toxin” — and said he would soon be announcing a study to find the responsible agent. The next month, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), part of the department that Kennedy leads, announced the Autism Data Science Initiative (ADSI). The initiative offered up to US$50 million to fund studies on the causes of autism. The winning applications are expected to be announced in September. Usually, big investments in research are welcomed by scientists — but not this time. Many were dismayed that these developments seemed to ignore decades of work on the well-documented rise in autism diagnoses and on causes of the developmental condition. Although Kennedy said that environmental factors are the main cause of autism, research has shown that genetics plays a bigger part. Population studies1 have linked a handful of environmental factors — mostly encountered during pregnancy — to increased chances of autism, but their precise role has been hard to pin down. More than anything, research has shown that the drivers of autism are fiendishly complicated. “There will never be a sound-bite answer to what causes autism,” says Helen Tager-Flusberg, a psychologist who studies neurodevelopmental conditions at Boston University, Massachusetts. The rise in prevalence, many researchers say, is predominantly caused by an increase in diagnoses rather than a true rise in the underlying symptoms and traits. “We don’t see an epidemic of autism, but we see an ‘epidemic’ of diagnoses,” says Sven Bölte, a specialist in child and adolescent psychiatric science at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. Researchers are concerned that Kennedy, an anti-vaccine advocate, will use the ADSI to promote the disproven idea that vaccines are linked to autism. © 2025 Springer Nature Limited

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory and Learning
Link ID: 29905 - Posted: 08.27.2025

Welcome to Entanglements. In this episode, hosts Brooke Borel and Anna Rothschild ask: Should we try to prevent autism? It’s a question that has divided the autistic community, and the answer has significant implications on how to focus scientific research and funding. Their guests this week are Jill Escher, a philanthropist, president of the National Council on Severe Autism, and parent of two young adults with severe nonverbal autism, and Eric García, the Washington bureau chief at The Independent and the author of “We’re Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation,” who is himself autistic. Robert F. Kennedy Jr: These are kids who will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted. And we have to recognize we are doing this to our children. Anna Rothschild: That was Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., talking about autism back in April of 2025. And he promised to find some answers about the cause of the condition, which he called an epidemic. Robert F. Kennedy Jr: This is a preventable disease. We know it’s an environmental exposure. It has to be. Genes do not cause epidemics. Anna Rothschild: On that note, welcome to Entanglements, the show where we wade into the murkiest scientific controversies and search for common ground. I’m science journalist Anna Rothschild. Brooke Borel: And I’m Brooke Borel, articles editor at Undark Magazine. And that was a dramatic cold open. Anna, what’s happening here? Are you about to do an episode on whether vaccines cause autism? Anna Rothschild: No, that is not a murky controversy. That has been rigorously disproven. Brooke Borel: Yeah. Anna Rothschild: No, today we are asking the question: Should we try to prevent autism?

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory and Learning
Link ID: 29904 - Posted: 08.27.2025

By Ellen Barry Thirty-six hours after dropping his date off at her apartment, Bradley Goldman was on a video call with his dating coach, breaking down the events of the evening. Listen to this article with reporter commentary For one thing, he told the coach, he had chosen the wrong venue for someone on the autism spectrum — a bar of the Sunset Strip hipster variety, so loud and overstimulating that he could almost feel himself beginning to dissociate. Mr. Goldman, a tall, rangy 42-year-old who works as an office manager, hadn’t decided in advance of the date whether to mention that he had been diagnosed with autism, or that he was working with a coach. So he deflected, and they found themselves, briefly, in a conversational blind alley. “I struggle with how to disclose,” he said. “Do I say I am ‘neuro-spicy’? Or ‘neurodiverse’? Or do I disclose at all?” His coach, Disa Jean-Pierre, was sympathetic. “You could just wait for it to come up naturally after a few dates,” she suggested. Mr. Goldman thought this over. “I’m still figuring this out,” he said. Nevertheless, it was a solidly enjoyable date, something he credited to the coaching he had received from a team of psychologists at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles. He had avoided “info dumping” or making too many Jeffrey Dahmer jokes, and he had carefully observed his date’s body language to detect whether she was signaling openness to a good night kiss. (She was.) “She was like, ‘I really want you to let me know you got home,’” he said. “So, that © 2025 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory and Learning
Link ID: 29826 - Posted: 06.14.2025

By Lina Zeldovich When Catherine Lord was a psychology student a half century ago, she took part in a pioneering effort to move kids with autism from psychiatric institutions into the community. Lord was inspired by positive changes in the kids and devoted her life to developing therapies for people with autism and understanding the biology of the condition. Today, Lord is a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles, and renowned worldwide for developing tools to diagnose autism, which have become clinical standards, and for her efforts to improve the lives of people with autism and their families. Along with her research, Lord maintains a clinical practice where she works with people with autism, from toddlers to adults. So I couldn’t think of a better scientist to address the views of autism espoused by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Since being appointed as the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kennedy has continued to spread misinformation about the condition, a pattern that began two decades ago when he claimed childhood vaccines cause autism, a charge long ago proven to be false. Earlier this year, Kennedy announced the National Institutes of Health would launch a new study to investigate the causes of autism. To conduct its study, he said, the NIH would gather medical records of Americans with autism from federal and commercial databases. In conversation, Lord spoke with authority and concern as she pointed out the mendacity and danger of Kennedy’s comments, and clarified the state of autism research and science. He has made a variety of statements about autism that suggests he doesn’t really know what he’s talking about. © 2025 NautilusNext Inc.,

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory and Learning
Link ID: 29818 - Posted: 06.04.2025

By Sara Talpos It’s been more than 30 years since the award-winning film “Rain Man,” starring Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise, put a spotlight on autism — or, more specifically, on a specific type of autism characterized by social awkwardness and isolation and typically affecting males. Yet as far back as the 1980s, at least one prominent autism researcher wondered whether autism’s male skew might simply reflect the fact that autistic females were, for some reason, going undiagnosed. Over the past decade, spurred by the personal testimonies of late-diagnosed women, autism researchers have increasingly examined this question. As it turns out, many autistic women and girls are driven by a powerful desire to avoid social rejection, so powerful, in fact, that they may adopt two broad strategies — camouflaging and masking — to hide their condition in an attempt to better fit in with neurotypical peers and family members. Such behavior is “at odds with the traditional picture of autism,” writes Gina Rippon, an emeritus professor of cognitive neuroimaging at Aston University in Birmingham, England, in her new book “Off the Spectrum: Why the Science of Autism Has Failed Women and Girls.” And while the ability to blend in might seem like a positive, it can ultimately take a heavy toll. Rippon points, for example, to surveys showing that by age 25, about 20 percent of autistic women have been hospitalized for a psychiatric condition, more than twice the rate of autistic men. In the U.S., the rate of autism has been increasing since at least 2000, and many autism researchers, including Rippon, believe more inclusive diagnostic criteria, coupled with increased awareness, have contributed to the rise. Last week, however, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dismissed this idea and insisted that the condition is caused by environmental factors. The National Institutes of Health has begun work on a research initiative that aims to look into this further.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior; Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory and Learning; Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 29758 - Posted: 04.26.2025

By Azeen Ghorayshi The percentage of American children estimated to have autism spectrum disorder increased in 2022, continuing a long-running trend, according to data released on Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Among 8-year-olds, one in 31 were found to have autism in 2022, compared with 1 in 36 in 2020. That rate is nearly five times as high as the figure in 2000, when the agency first began collecting data. The health agency noted that the increase was most likely being driven by better awareness and screening, not necessarily because autism itself was becoming more common. That diverged sharply from the rhetoric of the nation’s health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who on Tuesday said, “The autism epidemic is running rampant.” Mr. Kennedy has repeatedly tried to connect rising autism rates with vaccines, despite dozens of studies over decades that failed to establish such a link. The health secretary nonetheless has initiated a federal study that will revisit the possibility and has hired a well-known vaccine skeptic to oversee the effort. Mr. Kennedy recently announced an effort by the Department of Health and Human Services to pinpoint the “origins of the epidemic” by September, an initiative that was greeted with skepticism by many autism experts. “It seems very unlikely that it is an epidemic, in the way that people define epidemics,” said Catherine Lord, a psychologist and autism researcher at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. A significant part of the increase instead can be attributed to the expansion of the diagnosis over the years to capture milder cases, Dr. Lord said, as well as decreased stigma and greater awareness of support services. Still, she left open the possibility that other factors are contributing to more children developing autism. “We can account for a lot of the increase but perhaps not all of it,” Dr. Lord said. “But whatever it is, it’s not vaccines,” she added. © 2025 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory and Learning
Link ID: 29744 - Posted: 04.16.2025

By Catherine Offord In scientists’ search to understand the causes of autism, a spotlight has fallen on maternal health during pregnancy. Based partly on association studies, researchers have proposed that conditions including obesity and depression during pregnancy could lead to autism in a child by affecting fetal neurodevelopment. But a study of more than 1 million Danish children and their families, published today in Nature Medicine, pushes back against this view. Researchers analyzed more than 200 health conditions that occurred in these children’s mothers before or during pregnancy. They conclude that many of the supposed links to a child’s autism diagnosis may not be causal, and instead reflect inherited genetic variants or environmental factors shared within families. “It’s a very comprehensive and well-done study,” says Håkan Karlsson, a neuroscientist at the Karolinska Institute who was not involved in the work. It suggests “conditions [pregnant people] suffered from during pregnancy are probably not the cause of autism in their kid.” The findings dovetail with a growing view in the field that shared genetics could explain a lot of the apparent connections between maternal health and autism, adds Drexel University epidemiologist Brian Lee. However, he and others caution the study doesn’t rule out that some conditions during pregnancy could have a causative role, nor does it identify factors that do influence the likelihood of autism. Previous research has linked conditions such as maternal obesity, psychiatric disorders, and pregnancy or birth complications to an increased likelihood of autism diagnoses in children. Such findings can lead some pregnant people to feel that “if they get this or that condition, their [child’s] chance of autism may increase,” says Magdalena Janecka, an epidemiologist at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine and a co-author on the new paper. © 2025 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory and Learning
Link ID: 29652 - Posted: 02.01.2025

By Holly Barker Previously unrecognized genetic changes on the X chromosome of autistic people could explain the higher prevalence of the condition among men and boys than among women and girls, according to two new studies. About 60 variants are more common in people with autism than in those without the condition, an analysis of roughly 15,000 X chromosomes revealed. Several of the variants are in Xp22.11, a region of the X chromosome linked to autism in boys and men. In the second study, the team pinpointed 27 autism-linked variants in DDX53, one of the genes in the vulnerable region that had not been tied to the condition in past research. Those findings could help explain why autism is diagnosed three to four times more often in boys than girls, according to the study investigators, led by Stephen Scherer, chief of research at SickKids Research Institute. Although that disparity is likely influenced by social factors—male-only studies could lead to autism being less recognizable in women and girls, and girls may be conditioned to mask their autism traits—there is also a clear biological component. The X chromosome plays an outsized role in brain development, and many genes on the chromosome are strongly linked to autism, previous studies have found. Still, the sex chromosomes have been mostly ignored in genetic searches of autism variants, says Aaron Besterman, associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved in the work. “It’s been a dirty little secret that for a long time the X chromosome has not been well interrogated from a genetics perspective,” he says. Sex chromosomes are often sidelined because of difficulties interpreting data, given that men possess half the number of X-linked genes as women. What’s more, random inactivation of X chromosomes makes it hard to tell how a single variant is expressed in female tissues. And the existence of pseudoautosomal regions—stretches of DNA that behave like regular chromosomes and escape inactivation—complicates matters further. © 2025 Simons Foundation

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior; Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory and Learning; Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 29638 - Posted: 01.22.2025

By Emily Baumgaertner When President-elect Donald J. Trump mused in a recent television interview about whether vaccines cause autism — a theory that has been discredited by dozens of scientific studies — autism researchers across the country collectively sighed in frustration. But during the interview, on NBC’s “Meet The Press,” Mr. Trump made one passing comment with which they could agree: “I mean, something is going on,” he said, referring to skyrocketing rates of autism. “I think somebody has to find out.” What is going on? Autism diagnoses are undeniably on the rise in the United States — about 1 in 36 children have one, according to data the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention collected from 11 states, compared with 1 in 150 children in 2000 — and researchers have not yet arrived at a clear explanation. They attribute most of the surge to increased awareness of the disorder and changes in how it is classified by medical professionals. But scientists say there are other factors, genetic and environmental, that could be playing a role too. Autism spectrum disorder, as it is officially called, is inherently wide-ranging, marked by a blend of social and communication issues, repetitive behaviors and thinking patterns that vary in severity. A mildly autistic child could simply struggle with social cues, while a child with a severe case could be nonverbal. There is no blood test or brain scan to determine who has autism, just a clinician’s observations. Because there is no singular cause of autism, scientists say there is therefore no singular driver behind the rise in cases. But at the heart of the question is an important distinction: Are more people exhibiting the traits of autism, or are more people with such traits now being identified? It seems to be both, but researchers really aren’t sure of the math. More than 100 genes have been associated with autism, but the disorder appears to result from a complex combination of genetic susceptibilities and environmental triggers. The C.D.C. has a large-scale study on the risk factors that can contribute to autism, and researchers have examined dozens of potential triggers, including pollution, exposure to toxic chemicals and viral infections during pregnancy. © 2024 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory and Learning
Link ID: 29609 - Posted: 12.28.2024