Africa IMFAR 2017

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An Ethiopian family sitting for a portrait.

Studies highlight need to adapt autism tests for African cultures

Some of the items on a common diagnostic test for autism do not translate well to African cultures.

By Nicholette Zeliadt
11 September 2017 | 6 min read
Children in pre-school sitting around a learning circle.

South African children with autism may lack access to schools

Only about 0.1 percent of children in the Western Cape province of South Africa have autism, according to a review of school records.

By Nicholette Zeliadt
8 September 2017 | 3 min read

Explore more from The Transmitter

Clockwise: lab mouse, zebrafish, octopus, rat pushing a cube, nematodes, fruit fly.

The term ‘model organism’ should be reserved for biological systems

By referring to artificial neural networks as model organisms, we run the risk of distorting funding priorities and disregard the explanatory power of a shared evolutionary history across biological organisms.

By Marc Coutanche
13 November 2026 | 6 min read

New phase of BRAIN Initiative spawns basal ganglia ‘parts list’

With a standardized cell naming system and infrastructure for data collection and analysis, the basal ganglia project sets the stage for a whole-brain primate atlas.

By Claudia López Lloreda
12 November 2026 | 1 min watch
Research image showing genes containing microexons in mice.

Machine-learning model spots autism-linked variants that scramble splicing

The model provides a way to investigate genetic variation in regions of the genome whose functions have been difficult to interpret.

By Giorgia Guglielmi
12 November 2026 | 4 min read