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A new study published in Environmental Health Perspectives looked at the combined exposure to folate and lead during pregnancy and autistic-like behaviors among Canadian children from the Maternal-Infant Research on Environmental Chemicals (MIREC) Pregnancy and Birth Cohort. “Our study assessed whether the relationship between blood-lead concentrations during pregnancy and childhood autistic behaviours could be mitigated by folate concentrations or folic acid supplementation,” study author Joshua D. Alampi told us. “We hypothesized that the relationship between lead and autistic behaviours would be stronger among study participants with low folic acid supplementation and lower plasma-folate concentrations.” [More]

autistic children in the aftermath of events on October 7th, 2023 in Israel. “Following the unprecedented attacks by Hamas on October 7th, we sought to understand the psychological experience of autistic and non autistic children and their parents,” Dr. Judah Koller of the School of Education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem told us. [More]

A new study published in the Lancet looked at autism in England with regard to assessing under-diagnosis in a population-based cohort study of prospectively collected primary care data. “People often think of autism as a childhood condition, and historically, autism has mostly been diagnosed in children,” study author Elizabeth O’Nions told us. “Many autistic adults were not diagnosed when they were children, either because autism didn’t exist as a diagnosis when they were young, or the criteria were narrower, meaning that only a very small number of people were considered to be autistic at the time.” [More]

A new study published in the Journal of Molecular Psychiatry looked at an autism-associated mutation in human neurons. “In this study, we are trying to understand the mechanism underlying a genetic mutation linked to autism,” Dr. Le Wang, lead author, told us. “Since the gene is involved in the information flow in the brain, we wanted to find out if the genetic mutation leads to abnormal information flow in humans using a human neural model.” [More]

A new study published in Nature Communications delved more into autism by growing brain-like organoids. “The human brain is unique, and certain aspects of human brain development, and brain diseases, are notoriously difficult to study using animal models,” study author Alex Shcheglovitov, PhD told us. “We wanted to develop a new method to model early aspects of human telencephalic brain development in health and disease. Our approach was to make human brain organoids in a robust and reproducible manner.” [More]

A significant number of people who die by suicide may have undiagnosed autism. Researchers from the University of Cambridge’s Autism Research Centre and the University of Nottingham found in a study that a notable number of people who die by suicide have evidence of autistic traits at elevated levels. [More]

Psychologists in the UK have developed the first ever mind reading questionnaire designed to assess how well people understand what others are truly thinking. The researchers from the University of Bath, Cardiff and London developed the new questionnaire and in doing so determined that women are much better at understanding what others may be thinking. [More]

A new study published in the Journal of Nature Communications looked at social cues and the b [More]

A new study published in the Journal of Biological Psychiatric looked at the association between early neural activity and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). “We wanted to characterize early brain differences that can be detected before the behavioral signs of autism emerge,” study author Dr. Abigail Dickinson told us. [More]

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately one in 54 children in the United States has been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Thirty million people in the U.S. suffer from an eating disorder and this number includes all ages and genders. Is there a connection between the two? [More]