Shelby Grebbin was Spectrum’s editorial assistant. Before joining Spectrum, she was staff assistant at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism. As a freelance journalist, she has covered stories related to public health, data transparency and prison health care. Shelby has a B.A. in journalism from Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts.

Shelby Grebbin
Editorial Assistant
From this contributor
Researchers publish new dataset on minimally verbal autistic people
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published the first repository of vocalizations from minimally verbal autistic people. Those with few or no spoken words still produce a range of phonemes, or units of sound, that may serve as developmental markers or intervention targets.

Researchers publish new dataset on minimally verbal autistic people
Autism and menopause: Q&A with Rachel Moseley and Julie Turner-Cobb
Menopause poses significant challenges for autistic people, according to a small survey published in 2020 — the first to explore the transition among people with autism traits.

Autism and menopause: Q&A with Rachel Moseley and Julie Turner-Cobb
Web-based autism screening service raises a host of concerns
Neurona Health, a company in San Francisco, California, backed away from part of its newly launched services after Spectrum started reporting about them.

Web-based autism screening service raises a host of concerns
Explore more from The Transmitter
The visual system’s lingering mystery: Connecting neural activity and perception
Figuring out how the brain uses information from visual neurons may require new tools. I asked 10 neuroscientists what experimental and conceptual methods they think we’re missing.

The visual system’s lingering mystery: Connecting neural activity and perception
Figuring out how the brain uses information from visual neurons may require new tools. I asked 10 neuroscientists what experimental and conceptual methods they think we’re missing.
New questions around motor neurons and plasticity
A researcher’s theory hangs muscle degeneration on a broken neural circuit.

New questions around motor neurons and plasticity
A researcher’s theory hangs muscle degeneration on a broken neural circuit.
Boosting SCN2A expression reduces seizures in mice
A modified form of CRISPR amps up expression of the gene—a strategy that could apply to other gene variations linked to autism.

Boosting SCN2A expression reduces seizures in mice
A modified form of CRISPR amps up expression of the gene—a strategy that could apply to other gene variations linked to autism.