Autism News

October 21, 2026

Top Headlines

Scientists Find a Way to Fight Alzheimer’s Brain Damage Without Removing Toxic Tau

Oct. 20, 2026 Scientists have found a promising way to protect the brain from Alzheimer’s-related damage by blocking immune cells that contribute to the destruction of neurons. In mice, the treatment preserved ...

Why Some People Escape Alzheimer’s Despite Carrying a High-risk Gene

Oct. 19, 2026 Scientists have discovered why some people with a high genetic risk of Alzheimer’s remain mentally sharp into their 80s, uncovering a rare mutation that protects the brain from harmful protein buildup. The findings reveal a potential new way to ...

Magic Mushroom Ingredient Takes the Fight Out of Aggressive Fish

Oct. 18, 2026 A psychedelic compound found in magic mushrooms appears to have an unexpected effect: calming highly aggressive fish. Researchers discovered that low doses of psilocybin significantly reduced aggressive attacks in mangrove rivulus fish without ...

Scientists Find a Youth Protein That Helps Aging Brain Cells Act Young Again

Oct. 17, 2026 Scientists have discovered that a protein linked to youth helps protect the brain’s immune cells from age-related decline. Restoring the protein in older mice improved the cells’ ability to clear ...

Rare Study Reveals a Striking Divide Inside an Alzheimer’s Patient’s Brain

Oct. 15, 2026 A rare examination of an Alzheimer’s patient’s brain revealed that regions cleared of amyloid plaques had remarkably little of the harmful tau buildup associated with memory loss, while ...

Alzheimer’s Risk Gene APOE4 May Have a Reversible Weakness

Oct. 1, 2026 The Alzheimer’s risk gene APOE4 may actively damage brain blood vessels and sabotage the cellular systems that remove harmful proteins. Researchers were able to reverse some of these effects in experiments, revealing promising new targets for ...

Brain Scans Reveal Which Disorders Are Linked to Faster Brain Aging

Sep. 29, 2026 A massive MRI study found that Alzheimer’s disease, mild cognitive impairment, psychiatric disorders, and addiction are associated with distinct patterns of accelerated brain aging. The strongest effects appeared in Alzheimer’s and mild ...

Scientists Found a Surprising Driver of Alzheimer’s Outside the Brain

Sep. 27, 2026 Scientists found that immune cells contributing to Alzheimer’s-related brain damage may be activated in lymph nodes outside the brain before traveling into the nervous system. Blocking this pathway in mice dramatically reduced neurodegeneration ...

Glucosamine, a Popular Joint Supplement, Linked to Faster Alzheimer’s Progression

Sep. 27, 2026 A large health-record analysis found that glucosamine use was associated with a 25% higher likelihood of mild cognitive impairment progressing to dementia. Lab experiments suggest the popular joint ...

This “Rare” Autism-linked Genetic Disorder May Be Far More Common Than Scientists Thought

Sep. 25, 2026 A major analysis suggests Phelan-McDermid syndrome, a genetic disorder closely linked to autism, may affect about 1 in 7,300 people and more than 45,000 Americans. Researchers warn that thousands of ...

Stanford Scientists Discover a Seafood That Can Reverse Signs of Aging

Sep. 4, 2026 A substance found in edible sea squirts appeared to reverse several signs of aging in older mice. Plasmalogen supplements improved memory and learning, strengthened connections between brain cells, reduced inflammation, and even helped the mice grow ...

Scientists Find a Human-only Gene That May Help Explain Our Brainpower

Aug. 31, 2026 Scientists discovered that human microglia, immune cells that help shape developing brain circuits, can take four to eight years to mature instead of just weeks as they do in mice. The unusually slow process may help explain how the human brain ...

Latest Headlines

updated 10:10am EDT

Human Brain Cells Are Far More Powerful Than Scientists Thought

Aug. 13, 2026 A single human brain cell may be far more powerful than scientists once realized. Researchers found that cortical neurons can perform remarkably complex computations, giving them capabilities more ...

New Autism Therapy Shows Surprising Benefits Even in Adult Mice

Aug. 7, 2026 Blocking the glycine transporter SLC6A20 restored important brain signaling and improved social, communication, and repetitive behaviors in autism-related mouse models. The treatment also worked in ...

Scientists Discover the Brain Cells That Keep You Motivated

Aug. 5, 2026 A group of brain cells called orexin neurons appears to help us keep working when reaching a reward becomes increasingly difficult. Blocking their activity weakened motivation in rats, pointing to a ...

A Hidden Alzheimer’s Tipping Point May Decide Who Gets Dementia

July 26, 2026 Scientists have identified a possible tipping point that helps determine whether Alzheimer’s-related brain changes lead to dementia. The key may lie in how the brain’s immune cells respond to ...

A Single Dose Reversed Autism-Like Symptoms in Adult Mice Within Hours

July 25, 2026 Even mild inflammation during pregnancy led mouse offspring to develop persistent brain overactivity, sensory sensitivity, repetitive behaviors, and increased seizure risk. Remarkably, one dose of ...

APOE2 May Protect the Brain from Alzheimer’s and Aging

July 24, 2026 The longevity-linked APOE2 gene appears to protect brain cells by reducing DNA damage and helping neurons recover from stress. The finding could open a new path toward treatments that mimic APOE2’s ...

Scientists Discover a Protein That Protects the Brain from Alzheimer’s Damage

July 20, 2026 A protein called SORLA may act as a powerful defense against the toxic tau tangles involved in Alzheimer’s disease. Mice with extra SORLA had less ...

Scientists May Have Finally Found How Alzheimer's Spreads Through the Brain

June 30, 2026 A common brain protein may be giving Alzheimer’s disease an unexpected way to spread, carrying toxic Tau proteins from damaged neurons into healthy ones. By blocking these harmful protein packages ...

Brain Scans Reveal Two Distinct Types of Autism

June 3, 2026 Scientists have uncovered evidence that autism may include at least two biologically distinct subtypes, each marked by a different pattern of brain communication. By combining brain scans from nearly ...

Scientists Discover Gut Bacteria That May Help Protect Against Autism and ADHD

June 2, 2026 A major study suggests that some of the groundwork for brain development may be shaped before birth through a surprising partnership between a ...

Your Brain Starts Making Social Decisions Before You Do

June 2, 2026 Researchers found that social behavior begins in the brain before it becomes visible as movement. In zebrafish, a coordinated pattern of activity spread across the brain several seconds before the ...

Scientists Discover a Hidden Brain “cleaning” Effect Triggered by Movement

May 1, 2026 Scientists have uncovered a surprising link between simple body movement and brain health: every time you tighten your abdominal muscles—even slightly—your brain may gently sway inside your ...

Artificial Neurons Successfully Communicate With Living Brain Cells

Apr. 18, 2026 Engineers at Northwestern University have taken a striking leap toward merging machines with the human brain by printing artificial neurons that can actually communicate with real ones. These ...

Scientists Map the Brain’s Hidden Wiring Using RNA Barcodes in Major Breakthrough

Apr. 7, 2026 Researchers have developed a cutting-edge technique that uses RNA “barcodes” to map how neurons connect, capturing thousands of links with single-synapse precision. The method transforms brain ...

Your Brain Could Help Solve Autism and Most People Don’t Know It

Apr. 8, 2026 A new survey reveals a striking disconnect in how Americans think about autism research. While nearly everyone agrees that studying the autistic brain is essential, most people are unaware that brain ...

Scientists Discover a Brain Signal That May Trigger Autism’s Domino Effect

Mar. 7, 2026 Researchers have uncovered a surprising molecular chain reaction in the brain that may play a role in some forms of autism. The study suggests that nitric oxide, a tiny signaling molecule normally ...

Boosting a Key Brain Protein Could Help Treat Rett Syndrome

Mar. 6, 2026 Researchers have discovered a new way to increase a key brain protein damaged in Rett syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that affects thousands of children worldwide. Early studies in mice and ...

New Drug Cuts Seizures by Up to 91% in Children With Rare Epilepsy

Mar. 4, 2026 A new experimental drug is showing remarkable promise for children with Dravet syndrome, a severe genetic form of epilepsy. In clinical trials, the treatment zorevunersen cut seizures by as much as ...

Everyone Thought Autism Mostly Affected Boys. This Study Says Otherwise

Feb. 10, 2026 Autism has long been thought of as a condition that mostly affects boys, but a massive study from Sweden suggests that idea may be misleading. Tracking nearly 3 million people over decades, ...

The Hidden Health Impact of Growing Up With ADHD Traits

Jan. 24, 2026 A large, decades-long study suggests that signs of ADHD in childhood may have consequences that extend well beyond school and behavior. Researchers followed nearly 11,000 people from childhood into ...

New Research Shows Emotional Expressions Work Differently in Autism

Jan. 19, 2026 Researchers found that autistic and non-autistic people move their faces differently when expressing emotions like anger, happiness, and sadness. Autistic participants tended to rely on different ...

Scientists Found Hidden Synapse Hotspots in the Teen Brain

Jan. 16, 2026 Scientists have discovered that the adolescent brain does more than prune old connections. During the teen years, it actively builds dense new clusters of synapses in specific parts of neurons. These ...

Scientists Find ‘master Regulator’ That Could Reverse Brain Aging

Jan. 16, 2026 Researchers have identified OTULIN, an immune-regulating enzyme, as a key trigger of tau buildup in the brain. When OTULIN was disabled, tau vanished from neurons and brain cells remained healthy. ...

Scientists Just Solved a Major Mystery About How Your Brain Stores Memories

Mar. 24, 2026 Scientists have found that your brain separates memories into “what” and “where/when” using two different groups of neurons. One set responds to specific objects or people, while another ...

A Massive Gene Hunt Reveals How Brain Cells Are Made

Jan. 11, 2026 A large genetic screen has revealed how stem cells transform into brain cells, exposing hundreds of genes that make this process possible. Among the discoveries is PEDS1, a gene now linked to a ...

The Brain Has a Hidden Language and Scientists Just Found It

Dec. 29, 2025 Researchers have created a protein that can detect the faint chemical signals neurons receive from other brain cells. By tracking glutamate in real time, scientists can finally see how neurons ...

Japanese Scientists Just Built Human Brain Circuits in the Lab

Jan. 7, 2026 Researchers in Japan built a miniature human brain circuit using fused stem-cell–derived organoids, allowing them to watch the thalamus and cortex interact in real time. They found that the ...

Scientists Discover Why Mental Disorders So Often Overlap

Jan. 3, 2026 A massive global genetics study is reshaping how we understand mental illness—and why diagnoses so often pile up. By analyzing genetic data from more than six million people, researchers uncovered ...

Scientists Find Hidden Layers in Brain’s Memory Center

Dec. 6, 2025 Scientists uncovered a surprising four-layer structure hidden inside the hippocampal CA1 region, one of the brain’s major centers for memory, navigation, and emotion. Using advanced RNA imaging ...

Scientists Find Hidden Brain Nutrient Deficit That May Fuel Anxiety

May 16, 2026 A major analysis of brain scans found that people with anxiety disorders have noticeably lower levels of choline, a nutrient crucial for healthy brain function. The strongest evidence appeared in the ...