TL;DR: A 2026 preprint in medRxiv found that 26 autistic children and 25 typically developing peers performed similarly on iPad-based navigation tasks, but the autistic group rated its own sense of direction lower. Key Findings Objective navigation performance did not differ between autistic and typically developing children across path integration, egocentric pointing, mapping, or perspective …
TL;DR: A 2026 preprint registry-family study in medRxiv found that some maternal diagnosis-autism associations fit shared direct genetic effects, while other diagnoses showed stronger parallel-cousin associations, suggesting indirect genetic effects through the prenatal environment. Key Findings Study type: a three-generation Danish register study comparing full maternal parallel and cross cousin pairs. People studied: 1,131,899 children …
TL;DR: A 2026 cohort study in BJPsych Open found that childhood attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) difficulties predicted poorer young-adult outcomes, but rare copy number variants (CNVs), which are deleted or duplicated DNA segments, did not clearly sharpen that prognosis. Key Findings 8,414 young people had CNV data: Researchers analyzed genetic and …
TL;DR: A 2026 study in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry found unexpected bilingualism in 38.7% of autistic children aged 2-6, about 4.4 times the rate in typically developing peers, with caregivers reporting screen media as the usual source. Key Findings 38.7% of autistic children showed unexpected bilingualism: Using a language absent from the …
TL;DR: A 2026 preprint electrophysiology study in medRxiv found that the Hurst exponent and gamma oscillations tracked different aspects of excitation-inhibition balance, while human EEG data suggested two autism neurosubtypes with opposing Hurst-gamma profiles. Key Findings Study type: an in-silico, animal-validation, and human EEG study of excitation-inhibition balance in autism. Human EEG dataset: human electroencephalography …
TL;DR: A 2026 Mendelian randomization study in Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology & Biological Psychiatry used genetic data to test direction of effect between brain structure and neurodevelopmental conditions, and found that increased surface area in the superior frontal gyrus raised ADHD risk while increased surface area in the orbital frontal gyrus protected against autism — with …
TL;DR: A 2026 Communications Biology transcriptomic analysis identified three molecular subtypes of autism spectrum disorder, each linked to a distinct phenotypic profile and biological pathway pattern. Key Findings Three molecular subtypes emerged from transcriptomic analysis: Researchers identified three distinct molecular subtypes of autism spectrum disorder using transcriptomic data, each with its own gene expression signature. …
TL;DR: A 2025 Molecular Psychiatry study of more than 36,000 people found that higher autism polygenic risk was associated with lower MRI-derived neurite density, a measure of neural-fiber packing, across cortex and white matter in both children and adults. Key Findings Higher autism polygenic score predicted lower neurite density: Across over 36,000 individuals, a robust …
TL;DR: A 2026 study in Science of the Total Environment followed nearly 295,000 Southern California births and linked extreme nighttime heat in early and late pregnancy to higher autism diagnosis by age 5, while daytime heat was not associated. Key Findings A large Southern California cohort anchored the estimate: The retrospective Kaiser Permanente Southern California …
Autism Severity Showed Up in a Shared ADHD Connectome TL;DR: In 166 verbal children diagnosed with either autism or ADHD without autism, stronger resting-state coupling between the left middle frontal gyrus and posterior cingulate cortex tracked clinician-rated autism severity across both diagnoses, while ADHD symptom ratings showed no comparable brain-wide signal. Key Findings 166 low-motion …
