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 Leigh syndrome study combined a cell-type-specific deep-learning screen with a 2,250-drug yeast survival screen and found the same drug family from both directions: azoles, with talarozole and sertaconazole lowering lactate release by 20% in SURF1-mutant midbrain organoids.1 The finding is preclinical, but it is stronger than a single in silico hit because the …
A 2026 developing Human Connectome Project analysis of 438 full-term neonates found that the newborn cortex already had an adult-like folding hierarchy: gyri connected most strongly to other gyri, sulci connected most weakly to other sulci, and structure-function coupling shifted near 41 to 42 weeks postmenstrual age.1 Research Highlights Gyri were already high-connectivity hubs: across …
A 2026 Human Connectome Project MRI study linked asymmetric anterior cingulate cortex sulcal pattern to lower delay discounting in 390 healthy young adults: asymmetric ACC morphology predicted a higher delay-discounting area under the curve, meaning delayed rewards lost less value.1 The finding is not a diagnostic scan for impulsivity, but it puts an early-formed cortical-folding …
A 166-child resting-state fMRI study found that clinician-observed autism severity, not ADHD severity, tracked connectivity strength between a left middle frontal gyrus node and the posterior cingulate/default mode network across children diagnosed with autism or ADHD without autism. The result is transdiagnostic, but asymmetrical: autism traits carried the connectome signal after ADHD ratings were controlled.1 …
A 2026 Nature Communications study found that Mecp2 overexpression deregulated approximately 5,000 genes in mouse neural progenitor cells but only approximately 500 mostly small-change genes in mature neurons, with the same progenitor-vs-neuron split reproduced in human iPSC-derived cells.1 For Rett syndrome gene therapy, that is the useful calibration: extra MeCP2 is most dangerous when it …