A Kaiser Permanente Southern California cohort involving 294,937 children linked extreme prenatal nighttime heat to autism diagnosis by age 5, with stronger associations at the 99th percentile than the 90th percentile.1 Compared with nighttime minimum temperature, daytime maximum temperature did not show the same confirmed whole-pregnancy pattern. Research Highlights Nighttime heat carried the main signal: …
A 2026 Spanish Rett Syndrome Behavior Questionnaire validation preprint found strong test-retest reliability across 51 caregivers, including an intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.907 and a 31-person short-interval subset with Pearson r2 = 0.8663.1 The result supports Spanish-language research access, but it is linguistic validation rather than proof that the scale diagnoses Rett syndrome or measures …
A 2026 NF1 mouse-model study found a gut-brain signal that was strongest in males: Nf1 +/- mice had altered gut microbiome composition, higher relative brain mass in 2 cohorts, reduced sociability, and combined autism-like phenotype shifts, with male microbiome beta diversity differing from controls at p = 0.0120.1 The result is a preclinical mechanism lead, …
A matched case-control study of 50 children with autism spectrum disorder and 50 controls found that newborn amino acid metabolism overlapped with both later autism diagnosis and prenatal air-pollution exposure.1 The central pathway, aspartate and asparagine metabolism, was associated with autism (p = 0.01), pregnancy PM2.5 (p < 0.001), first-trimester PM2.5 (p < 0.001), and …
A 2026 medRxiv preprint using parent-cocreated sensory-related outcome measures found that 83% of children and teens improved on at least 1 PROMIS domain during 6 months of bumetanide treatment.1 The result is interesting, but the unmasked single-case design means the strongest claim is about sensitive outcome tracking, not definitive bumetanide efficacy. Research Highlights Most participants …
A 2026 juvenile rat study found that inactivating the ventral pallidum or stimulating nucleus accumbens GABA terminals in the ventral pallidum reduced social play behavior in both sexes, pointing to a specific reward-circuit pathway required for normal play expression.1 Research Highlights VP inactivation reduced play: bilateral muscimol infusion into the ventral pallidum reduced juvenile social …
A 2026 medRxiv preprint found that 26 autistic children performed similarly to 25 typically developing children on objective SPACE navigation tasks, contrary to the prediction, while autistic children rated their own navigation ability lower on the Santa Barbara Sense of Direction scale.1 Research Highlights Objective performance did not separate groups: 26 autistic children and 25 …