siblings – ASF Weekly Science Podcasts

This week, Drs. Casey Burrows from @UMN and Shuting Zheng from @UTexas discuss a new paper looking at sex differences in autism features from 20-40 months of age. A new analysis done with data from the Baby Siblings Research Consortium concludes that, early in life, girls with autism show differences in some autism features (like … Continue reading "This one’s for the girls"

Are you the grandparent, cousin, aunt, uncle, sibling, or half-sibling of someone with autism and wondered “what is the likelihood of autism in families, and the likelihood of comorbid conditions if I have a family member with autism?” Researchers at the AJ Drexel Autism Research Institute and Aarhus University in Denmark collaborated to calculate probabilities … Continue reading...

What is the probability of having a future child with autism if you already have one or more? Families want to know. It helps preparation, planning, will hopefully improve early screening and supports. The Baby Siblings Research Consortium analyzed a bigger group of siblings compared to their 2011 numbers and found the recurrence pretty stable … Continue reading "Recurrence rates for familie...

Just three days before 2024, ASF provides a summary of the the highlights of scientific discoveries and how they have translated into tools families can use. They include ways to speed up diagnosis and reduce waitlists, study of the brains in females and clinical recommendations for helping autistic females at birth, evidence of better practices … Continue reading "The ASF Year End Review of...

Everyone needed support during the pandemic, but families affected by autismneeded special support. This included siblings. Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital tried out an intervention around stress and anxiety reduction in siblings in 2020. Not only was it liked, it worked. It didn’t completely eliminate stress and anxiety, nothing would, but it did help siblings … Continue...

What do anxiety, prevalence, ketamine, other neurodevelopmental disorders, siblings, genetics, brain imaging and the autistic researcher committee at INSAR all have in common? They were all topics at the last Day of Learning. You can hear a 20 minute summary of the talks on this week’s #ASFpodcast.

The amygdala has been shown to be differently sized in autistic people – at first it is too big then it becomes smaller than typically developing people. But how early are these differences seen and does it relate to a diagnosis? The Infant Brain Imaging Study tackled this question in a recent study which compared … Continue reading "How that little amygdala makes a big difference in a...

Siblings of people on the spectrum, including autistic adults, are amazing. They support, advocate, fundraise, and now we know they actually have a direct influence on the outcome of their affected brother or sister. What’s that effect? When is it most obvious? Does gender or race matter? All of these questions will be answered by … Continue reading "Super, Superb and Sensational Sibli...

Times have changed. Once, parents of a child with autism were concerned about autism in younger siblings. Now those parents are grandparents, and worried about autism in their children’s children. Siblings of autistic adults are considering having children of their own and wondering what they should be prepared for when they have kids of their … Continue reading "ASD in the “next...

This week a 5 country collaboration including the largest number of people EVER revealed 80% of the causes of autism are heritable. This is incredibly important to understand autism and move forward with research that matters to families.  What it did not do was calculate the role of gene x environment interactions which seems to … Continue reading "Genes, environment and heritability: why d...