2012

Late this summer, a paper from Yale University researchers led by Jo Handelsman delivered some sobering news: There is still a clear bias against female scientists. The findings confirm the impression of many women in science, at all career levels, who feel undervalued.

We are on the verge of a seismic shift in the definition of autism spectrum disorders, says David Skuse. Under proposed guidelines for autism diagnosis, the canard that most people with the disorder cannot speak, or have such disordered language that they cannot sustain a conversation, has been abandoned.

Lessons learned from postmortem studies of schizophrenia are applicable to research on autism, a disorder for which brain tissue has not been as well studied, say Allison Curley and David Lewis.

Sharing data and tools is universally efficient, but the study of autism in particular presents challenges that can benefit from an open-science framework, says Randy Buckner.

As the central organ regulating maternal-fetal interactions, the placenta is perfectly positioned to mediate environmental and genetic risk factors during prenatal development. It may also relay risk factors for autism to the fetus, says Paul Patterson.