Vanderbilt researchers have concluded that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) tend to have higher body mass index (BMI) percentiles when compared to youth with typical development.

Donna and Jeffrey Eskind, whose generous gifts have advanced Vanderbilt research that is improving lives, have made a new commitment of $2 million to endow a new chair in autism spectrum disorder research in the School of Medicine.

ACM Lifting Lives, the charitable arm of the Academy of Country Music, has made a generous gift to Vanderbilt University Medical Center for programs and research demonstrating the healing power of music to improve the lives of children with autism spectrum disorder.

Parents of children with autism spectrum disorders benefited from the addition of mindfulness-based stress reduction to parent-implemented behavioral interventions.

The prevalence of autism spectrum disorder among U.S. 8-year-olds rose 10% between 2014 and 2016, new data published today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicate.

Poorly functioning AMPARs have been linked to a wide range of neurological and psychiatric disorders including seizures, Alzheimer’s disease, major depression and autism spectrum disorder. Understanding how AMPARs are formed and operate is essential for the rational design of pharmacological compounds that, by tuning AMPAR activity up or down, could improve treatment of these conditions.

Vanderbilt researchers are studying how genes affect sleep and circadian disturbances in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with a goal of creating a genetic risk profile of insomnia in ASD.