ReviewMolecular psychiatry2020
Autism spectrum heterogeneity: fact or artifact?
Review in Molecular psychiatry, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 150 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
150 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- The diagnosis of ASD with MRI: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Translational psychiatry · 2024Pooled it
- A systematic review of non-coding RNA genes with differential expression profiles associated with autism spectrum disorders.PloS one · 2023Pooled it
- Overlapping and specific neural correlates for empathizing, affective mentalizing, and cognitive mentalizing: A coordinate-based meta-analytic study.Human brain mapping · 2021Pooled it
- Differential GABA dynamics across brain functional networks in autism.Communications biology · 2026Trial
- Clinical Utility of Trio Exome Sequencing in Rwandan Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder.Molecular genetics & genomic medicine · 2026Article
- Heterogeneous functional state dynamics and its structural substrates in male individuals with autism spectrum disorder.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Development and Initial Validation of the Japanese Version of the Movie for the Assessment of Social Cognition in Adults With Autism Spectrum Disorder.CNS neuroscience & therapeutics · 2026Article
- Using eye tracking to explore the relationship between autism traits, joint attention, cognition and adaptive functioning in preschool children.Journal of neurodevelopmental disorders · 2026Article
- Developmental Trajectories of Autistic Traits in Infants With Autism and/or ADHD Family History: Predictors and Mid-Childhood Outcomes.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2026Article
- Task-Related Aperiodic EEG (1/f) Activity in Autism.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2026Article
- Reduced Context Effect on Lexical Tone Normalization in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Speech-Specific Mechanism.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2026Article
- From heterogeneity to translation: data‑driven subtyping of autism in a multilevel framework.Translational psychiatry · 2026Review
- RankVar: machine learning-based variant ranking and reinterpretation for rare genetic diseases.Genome medicine · 2026Article
- Does Ongoing Task Load Influence Prospective Remembering in Autism Spectrum Disorders?Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2026Article
- Informational and Normative Influence on Conformity in Autism.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2026Article
- Role of soluble alpha-klotho as a novel biomarker for characterizing children with autism spectrum disorder in Kurdistan, Iraq.World journal of clinical pediatrics · 2026Article
- Event- and Time-Based Prospective Memory and Time Perception in Autistic Adults With and Without Intellectual Disabilities.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2026Article
- The relationship between autism and gender dysphoria, and their co-occurrence with transgender identity: research conditions and implications.Postepy psychiatrii neurologii · 2026Review
- Remote Sensory-Cognitive Assessment in Children with Autism: Evaluating Feasibility and Performance Outcomes.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Advantages of combining multiple eye-tracking paradigms for distinguishing young autistic from non-autistic children.Molecular autism · 2026Article
90 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The current diagnostic practices are linked to a 20-fold increase in the reported prevalence of ASD over the last 30 years. Fragmenting the autism phenotype into dimensional "autistic traits" results in the alleged recognition of autism-like symptoms in any psychiatric or neurodevelopemental condition and in individuals decreasingly distant from the typical population, and prematurely dismisses the relevance of a diagnostic threshold. Non-specific socio-communicative and repetitive DSM 5 criteria, combined with four quantitative specifiers as well as all their possible combinations, render limitless variety of presentations consistent with the categorical diagnosis of ASD. We propose several remedies to this problem: maintain a line of research on prototypical autism; limit the heterogeneity compatible with a categorical diagnosis to situations with a phenotypic overlap and a validated etiological link with prototypical autism; reintroduce the qualitative properties of autism presentations and of current dimensional specifiers, language, intelligence, comorbidity, and severity in the criteria used to diagnose autism in replacement of quantitative "social" and "repetitive" criteria; use these qualitative features combined with the clinical intuition of experts and machine-learning algorithms to differentiate coherent subgroups in today's autism spectrum; study these subgroups separately, and then compare them; and question the autistic nature of "autistic traits".
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.