There is surprisingly little research on the biological side of autism, i.e. what actually goes wrong with neural development to produce the psychological phenomena.

One person who has great ambitions to change this situation is Oxford's Tony Bailey, who has now received his brand new MEG scanner, with which he will be able to study brain function of people with autism with minimal discomfort to them (unlike the MRI scanners which require you to lie still in a claustrophobic environment with infernal noise!).

News release is here:

http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/po/news/2006-07/jan/15.shtml

In 2005, when Bailey was starting in Oxford, I wrote a feature about his research, which is here:

http://www.oxfordtoday.ox.ac.uk/2004-05/v17n3/04.shtml