IMFAR 2010

Recent articles

Spectrum from The Transmitter.

Gene expression pattern could pinpoint autism

Researchers can reliably identify individuals with autism by looking at the expression pattern of a set of genes in cultured blood cells, according to a poster presented Friday at the IMFAR 2010 conference in Philadelphia.

By Virginia Hughes
25 May 2010 | 4 min read
Spectrum from The Transmitter.

Children with autism and siblings share brain ‘signature’

Children who have autism and their healthy siblings share patterns of brain activity that are different than those seen in children with no family history of the disorder, according to unpublished research presented at the IMFAR 2010 conference in Philadelphia.

By Virginia Hughes
24 May 2010 | 3 min read
Spectrum from The Transmitter.

Language specialization skewed in children with autism

Brain imaging reveals distinct signatures in the language circuits of young toddlers with autism while they sleep, according to unpublished data presented yesterday at the IMFAR 2010 meeting in Philadelphia.

By Virginia Hughes
21 May 2010 | 3 min read
Spectrum from The Transmitter.

People with autism misjudge quality of visual signals

Adolescents with autism can gauge the direction of moving objects just as well as healthy controls can, but their confidence in their visual ability is sometimes misplaced, according to unpublished data presented yesterday at the IMFAR 2010 conference in Philadelphia.

By Virginia Hughes
21 May 2010 | 2 min read
Spectrum from The Transmitter.

Blinking could detect autism, group says

How interested a child with autism is in a social scene can be determined in the blink of an eye, according to research presented yesterday at IMFAR 2010.

By Virginia Hughes
21 May 2010 | 3 min read
Spectrum from The Transmitter.

Geometric gaze

Some children with autism prefer to look at geometric patterns rather than at 'social' images of other children — and this tendency is obvious as early as 14 months of age, according to a poster presented today at IMFAR 2010 in Philadelphia.

By Apoorva Mandavilli
20 May 2010 | 2 min read

Explore more from The Transmitter

Illustration of an open journal featuring lines of text and small illustrations of eyes and mouths.

Autism-linked genes alter sleep behavior, and more

Here is a roundup of autism-related news and research spotted around the web for the week of 13 April.

By Jill Adams
14 April 2026 | 2 min read
Illustration of a monkey pushing a button.

This paper changed my life: Erin Calipari ponders the nuances of rewarding and aversive stimuli

A 1960s study by Kelleher and Morse found that lever pressing in squirrel monkeys depended not on whether they received a reward or shock, but on the rules of the task. This taught Calipari to think deeply about factors that influence how behavior is generated and maintained.

By Erin Calipari
14 April 2026 | 5 min read
Illustration of a sheet of paper with a topography map-like pattern on it.

Why neural foundation models work, and what they might—and might not—teach us about the brain

These models can partly generalize across species, brain regions and tasks, suggesting that a set of machine-learnable rules govern neural population activity. But will we be able to understand them?

By Juan Gallego
13 April 2026 | 8 min read