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The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is now in the process of developing and finalizing the new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) Version 5.

autism spectrum disorders as we know them will change radically, and many people who are now considered to be "autistic" may find themselves with a brand new diagnosis.

Unless something changes between now and then, as of 2013, Asperger syndrome will no longer exist as a diagnosis.

"With a facilitator guiding her arm, the child who had never been taught to read was suddenly writing poetry and English essays, taking history exams and doing algebra. The middle-schooler who couldn't put on her coat without help was typing about her plans to become a college professor,"

But the technique, in which the aide's hand is supposedly guided by the child to type what she wants to say, has been proved ineffective. It has been shown to rely on the aide's projections rather than to reflect the child's thoughts. Although some autistic children can learn to communicate genuinely via a keyboard with only initial guidance, facilitated communication, in which an aide always does the typing has repeatedly failed to demonstrate that the words are written or thought by the child. For example, when the facilitator is not allowed to hear the questions being asked of the child, the resulting answers are wrong or nonsensical.

When the Wendrow's daughter's aide typed allegations of sexual abuse against the girl's father and brother — and claimed that the child's mother had been ignoring her complaints — a prosecution of the family was set into motion that became nearly unstoppable. The aide refused to believe she was not typing her own ideas, even though the child was clearly not capable of the complex language being attributed to her. Once prosecutors and the aide became convinced of the truth of the allegations, even overwhelming evidence of their falsehood was ignored.

The study’s major finding was that children with ASD have significantly more CNVs affecting their genes than children without ASD. Children with ASD have 20 percent more CNVs in general, and 70 percent more CNVs impacting genes known to be associated with ASD or cognitive problems. Significantly, many of the genes that are affected control important functions such as cell proliferation and cell-to-cell communication.

Some of the newly discovered genetic variants are inherited, and are found in parents or siblings of children with them. Others, however, seem to have originated spontaneously in the affected child, and do not appear in other family members.

While these findings add significantly to the scientific understanding of the genetic and biological underpinnings of ASD, the immediate usefulness is limited. That’s because there are a very large number of CNVs, and each child shows a different pattern of genetic changes. Each of these changes is rare; no CNV showed up in more than one percent of the children studied.

Developmental abnormalities in the mirror neuron system may contribute to social deficits in autism.

Now, a new study published in Biological Psychiatry reports that the mirror system in individuals with autism is not actually broken, but simply delayed.

While most of us have their strongest mirror activity while they are young, autistic individuals seem to have a weak mirror system in their youth, but their mirror activity increases with age, is normal by about age 30 and unusually high thereafter.