The year 2013 brought signs of a gratifying maturation in autism research. This went beyond the unmistakable increase in the sheer number of autism studies making headlines. Many of the year’s most important advances used new technologies and built on the foundation of knowledge established by years of investment in basic research.

Increasingly, we saw a shift toward research projects that delivered concrete advances in the prevention, diagnosis and personalized treatment of autism and its associated medical conditions. This progress also reflected the growing appreciation that, for some individuals, autism is a whole-body disorder.

As we do each year, we asked Autism Speaks’ science staff and scientific advisory committee to consider the hundreds of studies we’ve reported on this year. From these, they selected the ten advances in autism research they saw as the most significant.

“This year has offered us plenty of exciting and relevant science stories to discuss, making it incredibly difficult to narrow down to a top ten,” says Autism Speaks Chief Science Officer Rob Ring. “When it comes to scientific discovery in autism research, it just keeps getting better and better.”

Read more at Austism Speaks.

Scientists have found patterns of change in gene activity involved in autism in a study that shed light on how environmental factors can work to turn certain genes on or off and contribute to the development of the brain disorder.

In the largest study of its kind, researchers analysed data from 50 sets of twins to try to find out what might have caused some of them to develop autism while their genetically identical siblings did not.

Read more at The Irish Times.