Data visualizations

Recent articles

Photograph of a doctor and nurse checking a patient’s temperature and taking notes.

Co-occurring conditions in autistic teens increase with age

The most prevalent conditions include obesity, neurological disorders, anxiety and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

By Calli McMurray
8 August 2023 | 1 min read
A young girl sits on the couch biting her thumb.

Children with autism and ADHD often have additional mental health conditions

The dual diagnosis frequently co-occurs with anxiety, depression and developmental and language delays.

By Maaisha Osman
10 February 2023 | 2 min read

Spectrum Index: Self-harm hospitalizations, everolimus flops in phase 2 trial

This month’s newsletter also highlights deflated autism prevalence estimates from Shanghai, China.

By Niko McCarty
30 May 2022 | 3 min read
A playful chart is made from bars in lively patterns and red and blue.

By the Numbers: Suspensions, unemployment, health checks

This edition plots school suspensions and the unemployment gap for autistic people, and charts outcomes for those who attend regular health checks.

By Niko McCarty
20 May 2022 | 2 min read

Spectrum Index: Dip in autism screening, null cancer risk, therapist surge

This month’s newsletter looks at a decline in well-child visits during the coronavirus pandemic, the autism-cancer connection and the sizeable fraction of autistic children who live in poverty.

By Niko McCarty
28 April 2022 | 2 min read

Access to Medicaid waivers varies with race, age, region

Black and Hispanic people with autism in North Carolina are 15 and 37 percent less likely, respectively, to receive a Medicaid waiver than their white counterparts are.

By Rebecca Sohn
22 April 2022 | 2 min read
Colorful illustration in red and bright aqua blue, of a pizza / pie chart with researcher's hand taking a slice.

By the Numbers: Services cliff, hospital costs, co-occurring ADHD

This edition of By the Numbers maps where the autism services cliff is steepest, plots hospital costs for autistic youth and charts the overlap of ADHD and autism.

By Niko McCarty
14 April 2022 | 1 min read

Spectrum Index: Rare genetic diagnoses, obesity odds, violence against children

This month’s newsletter looks at the minority of autistic people who have an identifiable genetic cause for their condition, and at the fraction of autistic children who are obese.

By Niko McCarty
31 March 2022 | 3 min read
A playful chart is made from bars in lively patterns and red and blue.

By the Numbers: Mental health diagnoses, melatonin-tied polypharmacy, journal gender gap

This edition of By the Numbers plots the rising rates of mental health conditions over the past 50 years, prescribing patterns in New Zealand and the gender gap among neuroscience journal editors.

By Niko McCarty
16 March 2022 | 1 min read

Health-care barriers prevent many autistic people from seeking medical treatment

In an online survey, autistic people reported that they often have trouble using the telephone to make medical appointments and experience sensory overload in waiting rooms, among other health care barriers.

By Niko McCarty
10 March 2022 | 2 min read

Explore more from The Transmitter

A cortical neuron glows orange and red.

START method assembles brain’s wiring diagram by cell type

The new technique mapped the interactions of about 50 kinds of inhibitory neurons in the mouse visual cortex in finer detail than previous approaches.

By Holly Barker
31 October 2024 | 5 min read
Research image of fMRI scans on a black background.

Timing tweak turns trashed fMRI scans into treasure

Leveraging start-up “dummy scans,” which are typically discarded in imaging analyses, can shorten an experiment’s length and make data collection more efficient, a new study reveals.

By Angie Voyles Askham
30 October 2024 | 6 min listen
Research image of mouse brain scans.

Widely distributed brain areas sync to orchestrate decisions in rodents

Multiple brain areas synchronize their activity to help a rodent accumulate the evidence it needs to make a choice, two new studies suggest.

By Claudia López Lloreda
29 October 2024 | 7 min read