Featured series 
Tag: Autism
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Science & Tech
Cellular atlas guides new understanding of brain
New technology gives voice to pathologic changes in neurodegenerative illnesses like Alzheimer’s and epilepsy.
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Science & Tech
Human brain seems impossible to map. What if we started with mice?
Harvard-led project seeks to create the first comprehensive diagram of every neural connection.
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Science & Tech
A tour of the brain’s life span, complete with upside-down vision
A new book illustrates how one cell develops into the complex operational centers that not only make us human, but also individuals.
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Health
Study explores possible autism link in young adults treated for addiction
One in five youths with substance-use disorders may have undiagnosed autistic traits, say researchers.
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Science & Tech
CAPTURE-ing movement in freely behaving animals
Harvard researchers develop a new motion-tracking system that delivers an unprecedented look at how animals move and behave naturally.
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Science & Tech
The neurons that hold our hidden thoughts
For the first time, neuroscientists were able to observe how individual neurons paint a rich and detailed representation of others’ beliefs, including whether they were true or not.
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Science & Tech
New hope for sensory calm
Harvard professors David Ginty and Lauren Orefice describe how their innovations present a novel approach to treating tactile hypersensitivity in patients with autism-spectrum disorders.
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Health
Harvard to launch center for autism research
Created with $20 million gift, the Hock E. Tan and K. Lisa Yang Center for Autism Research at Harvard Medical School will aim to unravel the basic biology of autism and related disorders.
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Campus & Community
$9 million donation earmarked for cannabis research
Alumnus gives $9 million in largest donation to date to support independent research on the science of cannabinoids at Harvard and MIT. “Our desire is to fill the research void that currently exists in the science of cannabis,” said donor Charles R. “Bob” Broderick.
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Science & Tech
More than a courier
Now research suggests that a nerve cells’ axons may be making decisions on their own, challenging the dogma that the nucleus and cell body are the control centers of the neuron.
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Health
Rewinding the brain
Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology Paola Arlotta is seeking to develop a new tool to understanding brain function and dysfunction: self-generating brain organoids.
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Health
A brain link to autism
Using a visual test that is known to prompt different reactions in autistic and normal brains, Harvard researchers have shown that those differences were associated with a breakdown in the signaling pathway used by one of the brain’s chief inhibitory neurotransmitters.
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Health
Sick with measles, again
Dyann Wirth, chair of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, discusses what’s behind the resurgence of measles in the United States.
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Health
Help for halting autism symptoms
A new study shows that boosting inhibitory neurotransmission early in brain development can help reverse deficits in inhibitory circuit maturation that are associated with autism.
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Health
Researchers shed new light on schizophrenia
Harvard-affiliated researchers joined an international team to identify more than 100 locations in the human genome associated with the risk of developing schizophrenia in what is the largest genomic study published on any psychiatric disorder to date.
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Arts & Culture
Family ties with a Disney twist
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Harvard fellow Ron Suskind talks about connecting with his autistic son through Disney films.
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Nation & World
Autism as a facet of experience, not a limit
Temple Grandin, a professor of animal science at Colorado State, brought her experience as an advocate for autistics to a talk at the Ed School.
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Health
Toxic chemicals linked to brain disorders in children
Toxic chemicals may be triggering recent increases in neurodevelopmental disabilities among children — such as autism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and dyslexia — according to a new study. The researchers say a new global prevention strategy to control the use of these substances is urgently needed.
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Campus & Community
Researchers awarded NARSAD grants
The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation announced $11.9 million in new research grants, strengthening its investment in the most promising ideas to lead to breakthroughs in understanding and treating mental illness, including 19 grants to Harvard researchers.
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Health
Detecting autism in matter of minutes
Researchers at Harvard Medical School have significantly reduced from hours to minutes the time it takes to accurately detect autism in young children.
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Health
Rebuilding the brain’s circuitry
Harvard scientists have rebuilt genetically diseased circuitry in a section of the mouse hypothalamus, an area controlling obesity and energy balance, demonstrating that complex and intricately wired circuitry of the brain long considered incapable of cellular repair can be rewired with the right type of neuronal “replacement parts.”
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Science & Tech
Neurons in youth
A group of researchers is working to map how the brain is wired in an effort to pinpoint the causes of — and potential treatments for — schizophrenia, autism, and a host of other disorders.
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Campus & Community
HMS fellowship open for applicants
Harvard Medical School and the Nancy Lurie Marks Foundation are accepting applications for the Nancy Lurie Marks Junior Faculty Merit Scholarship.
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Campus & Community
Leon Eisenberg
Leon Eisenberg was a professor of psychiatry and chief of the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital.
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Health
Beyond DNA
On a day when Harvard celebrated the accomplishments of the Human Genome Project, the Radcliffe Institute hosted a scientist whose work focuses not just on DNA, but on the mechanisms that control its expression.
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Health
Major step in autism testing
Researchers at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital and the University of Utah have developed the best biologically based test for autism to date. The test was able to detect the disorder in individuals with high-functioning autism with 94 percent accuracy.
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Campus & Community
Call for applications for postdoctoral fellowship in autism
Harvard Medical School and the Nancy Lurie Marks Family Foundation are accepting applications for the Nancy Lurie Marks Postdoctoral Fellowship in Autism. Two fellowships will be awarded, effective January 2011.
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Campus & Community
Panel finds no digestion problem specific to autism
An advisory panel says there is no rigorous evidence that digestive problems are more common in children with autism compared with other children or that special diets work, contrary to claims by celebrities and vaccine opponents…
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Campus & Community
Autism’s genetic roots examined in new government-funded study
Researchers at Harvard University and Children’s Hospital Boston will sequence the genomes of at least 85 people diagnosed with autism in a bid to tease out the genetic basis for some cases of the neuropsychiatric disorder.
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Health
How brain cells make good connections
Harvard neuroscientist Venkatesh N. Murthy has a sunny second-floor office on Divinity Avenue, where he is a professor in Harvard’s Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology. In one corner is a set of weights and a soccer ball — both untouched in over a year, he said, because of an intensely busy schedule.