Jesse Snedeker and her colleagues at Harvard University conducted a series of studies on language comprehension in autism. The participants were 40 children with autism, aged 6 to 9 years, who had strong verbal skills, and 40 typically developing children who were matched for age, gender, language ability and nonverbal intelligence.

Charles Nelson and his colleagues at Boston Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School investigated early brain development in infants at high familial risk for autism. Risk is defined as having an older sibling with the disorder. The researchers used electrophysiological (electroencephalogram or event-related potential) and metabolic (functional near-infrared spectroscopy) measures of neural responses to social stimuli such as faces, speech and language.

A major challenge facing autism research is the lack of objective measures to characterize the disorder’s various phenotypes. More quantitative phenotypic measures, derived objectively from biological measurements, would facilitate genetic association studies by allowing biologically heterogeneous populations to be categorized into subgroups. They could also help refine diagnostic procedures.

The unusually high incidence of cranial and facial anomalies among people with autism may provide insight into the underlying biology of the disorder. Curtis Deutsch of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Center at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and his colleagues are evaluating these anomalies using new, state-of-the-art imaging technology.

Recent studies have implicated a growing number of genes in the development of autism, but the candidates form a motley collection. Understanding what these genes have in common and how they relate to clinical findings in children with autism will shed light on the biological mechanisms underlying the disorder.

Individuals with autism find it difficult to regulate their emotions and interact with others. There is some evidence that the severity of these difficulties is influenced by higher serotonin levels in the brain. Kevin Pelphrey and his colleagues at Yale University plan to use a specialized brain imaging technique to examine the relationship between variants in the serotonin transporter gene and behavioral difficulties in individuals with autism.

Michael Ullman and his colleagues at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., are examining language learning and processing in autism, with a focus on grammar acquisition. Based on previous work examining grammar and its neural underpinnings, they predicted that children with autism would show abnormalities in grammar learning.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism are both neurodevelopmental disorders that emerge early in life and persist. Up to half of children with an autism spectrum disorder also show marked symptoms of ADHD, and there is considerable genetic and neurobiological overlap between the two diagnoses.

Appropriate social behavior requires a fine-tuned ability to perceive other people’s actions. Human movement is a rich source of social information. The ways in which people move tell us volumes about their intentions and emotions. Maggie Shiffrar and her colleagues at Rutgers University in New Jersey set out to determine how, and how well, people with autism perceive human movement.

Individuals with autism often experience difficulties with day-to-day interaction and communication, such as interpreting body language, reading facial expressions and understanding others’ thoughts and desires. Although they vary in severity and manifestation, these problems may reflect a fundamental deficit in “theory of mind” — the ability to deduce other people’s beliefs and intentions.