Autistic children can have differing preferences for social stimuli such as faces compared to non-social stimuli, and research suggests that differences in brain activity could underlie this and be predictive of later autism. A team of researchers including Dr Anna Gui and Prof Emily Jones at the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development (CBCD, Birkbeck College, University of London) and King’s College London, carried out research to understand how individual differences in brain activity in...

New AIMS-2-TRIALS research finds that autistic people with more social communication difficulties have different brain connectivity compared to autistic people with an equal mix of social traits and repetitive behaviours. A diagnosis of autism includes the presence of specific social-communicative and restrictive-repetitive behaviours. There is, however, notable variability in how autistic people are affected across the two domains and some may have more traits in one domain relative to the...

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 reproduce this article from their website. Published in the journal Science Advances, the study investigated the role of the immune system very early in brain development and results suggest that immune signals are not only involved in...

Around three times as many males are diagnosed with autism than females, which suggests that sex-related biological factors play a key role in its development. However, little is known about the ways that autistic males and females differ in terms of brain structure and function. One factor that has particularly hindered researchers to date is that very limited data exists relating to autistic females. Existing research on sex differences has been contradictory It is widely accepted that the...

'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, autistic individuals experience a lower quality of life than those without autism. However, it is unclear how much of this might be explained by anxiety or depression symptoms, which affect at least 20-50% of autistic people....

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 a group of people who take a placebo with a group who take a new medication, to really understand whether the medication is having a helpful effect. There is still no approved medication for the core symptoms of autism,and all...