The National Institutes of Health just awarded $50million to 13 different research sites to better understand genetic and environmental contributions to an autism diagnosis, or increase in prevalence in autism, as well as environmental factors which improve the quality of life for children and adults with ASD.

You can read about them here or listen to this 30 minute podcast which summarizes them.

https://dpcpsi.nih.gov/autism-data-science-initiative/funded-research

This week’s podcast includes summaries from two new scientific studies (with comments from one of the studies’ authors @SimonsFoundation and @princetonPPH) about that tackle grouping and labeling the differences across the spectrum into meaningful subtypes. Both provide scientific evidence, including behavioral and biological data, that support the use of different labels. This is more evidence that lumping everyone into one unitary “autism” diagnosis is not meaningful or biologically accurate, and that using computer-driven approaches, different behavioral subtypes map onto behavioral features. This supports approaches that more clearly describe different types of autism for better supports.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40651720

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-025-02224-z

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2451902224003793?via%3Dihub

This week, more on genetics as an influence to an autism diagnosis with a twist: can genetics lead to a specific treatment for core symptoms – across the board? How do you measure such broad symptoms? Our Rett Syndrome family friends and colleagues developed a novel outcome measure to capture what was most important to them, and the FDA approved it for use in a clinical trial. Years later, a new drug was approved that led to a reduction in behaviors associated with Rett Syndrome. Autism can take a lesson from this. In addition, can the genetics of autism be explained by parents with similar phenotypes? This is called assortative mating. The answer is complex.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10450502/pdf/fped-11-1229553.pdf

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02398-1

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmid/38877467

You heard it in the news this week, and we discuss it on this week’s ASF podcast. Can you make little brains in a dish then make them better by providing them a real structured live neural environment? Can these organoids integrate with a live brain and be functional in vivo? The answers are: yes! Learn more from a new study published this week. Also, what the h**l is genetic confounding and how can it address many of the controversies of genetic vs. the environment? Sometimes genes that predispose to a disorder also predispose to environmental factors leading to that disorder. There is always room for both. Here are the links I promised:

https://www.fhi.no/en/studies/moba/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35793100/

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05277-w