Background Understanding individual differences in early brain development can help predict long-term outcomes in children who are later found to be autistic. Because children’s brains develop rapidly, measurements need to focus on factors that are relatively stable,...

Professor Emily Jones of Birkbeck University, London was featured on an episode of the Association for Child & Adolescent Mental Health (ACAMH) Podcast discussing the brain, early development, and autism.

Placebos, such as sugar pills or saline injections, are designed to have no direct effects, yet treatment with placebo can substantially improve symptoms across many conditions. This is called a placebo response or placebo effect. Researchers often compare results for...

Research partners of AIMS-2-TRIALS from Birkbeck University, London have published a paper exploring how a process called DNA methylation plays a role in autism. DNA methylation is a naturally occurring process that happens in all people to different degrees. During...

'Quality of life’ is the satisfaction or general wellbeing that each individual experiences in different aspects of their everyday life, such as their health, education, employment and social relationships. Past research studies have suggested that, on average,...

AIMS-2-TRIALS partner and Autism Champion Dr. Joaquin Fuentes, and colleagues Dr. Amaia Hervás and Dr. Patricia Howlin have released a new open-access publication: "ESCAP practice guidance for autism: a summary of evidence-based recommendations for diagnosis and...

New research led by King’s College London has provided insight into why exposure to inflammation caused by a viral infection during pregnancy may increase the likelihood of altered brain development later on in childhood.Many thanks to KCL for their permission to...

The Early Career Researcher Autism Network (ECRAN) hosted their first workshop in July 2020. The workshop brought together 25 postdocs, 10 PhD students and 6 members of the autism community who are researchers themselves or who have a research interest in autism from...

Prof. Peter Scheiffele’s team at the Biozentrum, University of Basel, has discovered a new connection between a genetic modification and social difficulties related to autism: A mutation in the neuroligin-3 gene reduces the effect of the “feel good hormone” oxytocin....

The A-Reps are a group of autistic people, parents and carers from across Europe who have agreed to bring their perspectives on being autistic or caring for an autistic loved one to the AIMS-2-TRIALS research programme. They are coordinated by a team at the University...

Adaptive functioning refers to the ability to manage the demands of day-to-day life. It can include areas such as self-care, travel, shopping, cooking, fine motor skills and communication. It is understood that autistic people may learn some of these skills at a...

We are all very shocked and saddened by the effect that COVID-19 is having globally. We hope you are keeping safe and well during these uncertain and difficult times. We understand that some of you will be more affected than others either by being ill yourself, having...

An article in Molecular Autism by AIMS-2-TRIALS researchers will report that - contrary to predictions made by previous research – in an analysis of one of the largest data sets of its kind, no group differences were found in the brain activity of autistic and...

The Early Career Researcher Autism Network was launched earlier this year at the AIMS-2-TRIALS general assembly - an event that saw over thirty researchers share ideas about their training needs. To promote training opportunities for researchers in an early stage of...

Development of medicines is a key priority within the AIMS-2-TRIALS research programme and this will be achieved primarily via two clinical trials. A clinical trial is a specific type of research study that evaluates an intervention; in this case a medicine. The main...

AIMS-2-TRIALS researcher Sven Bölte and PhD student Pei-Yin Pan are part of a team using a new approach to explore the relationship between autism and physical health. Autistic people are known to be at particular risk for physical health issues such as digestive...

AIMS-2-TRIALS is celebrating prestigious awards received by two consortium members, both based at Kings College London. Oscar Marín, Director of the Centre for Developmental Neurobiology, was unanimously selected by an international jury to receive the Remedios Caro...

Congratulations to EU-AIMS, precursor to AIMS-2-TRIALS, which published more research than any other project in the Innovative Medicine Initiatives Joint Undertaking project call 3, with 255 papers by the end of 2017. This finding was reported in an IMI report – a...

Declan Murphy and Gráinne McAlonan of Kings College London were recently featured on BBC Radio 4's 'D for Diagnosis' with Claudia Hammond, discussing the diagnosis of autism and co-occurring conditions. https://twitter.com/Aims2Trials/status/1158370309495578625

Ten month old infants later diagnosed with autism use their gaze to attract other’s attention less often than those who are not autistic, shows research led by Terje Falck-Ytter at Uppsala University in Sweden, as part of AIMS-2-TRIALS. “Joint attention is extremely...

Computer algorithms that can spot patterns in vast amounts of data will drive the future of autism research and help scientists to understand autism’s true complexity and diversity, say AIMS-2-TRIALS researchers in a recent review article. The algorithms’ power comes...

AIMS-2-TRIALS researchers met with autistic people at events across Europe about the future of autism research. At Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, team members from the rare genetic conditions study led an event in February to foster two-way dialogue about the future...