Neurodevelopment

Neurodevelopmental conditions such as autism and schizophrenia are often discussed years after symptoms emerge, when children struggle in school or adults experience changes in perception, thinking, or social connection. But a growing body of research is shifting that timeline dramatically earlier, back to the earliest weeks of life in the womb. A large new study …

Science has a long history of being confidently wrong. For most of the 20th century, the medical establishment held a view of autism that was not just incorrect but actively harmful to the families it affected. Overturning that view took decades of careful research, two landmark studies, and a gradual shift in how geneticists understood …