Deep within the brain's reward circuitry, researchers have found that social behavior in autism may not be simply absent, but actively suppressed — held in check by a specific population of neurons working against another. A study using genetically engineered mice lacking the autism-linked CNTNAP2 gene reveals that two neuron types in the nucleus accumbens pull sociability in opposite directions, and that quieting the inhibitory population can restore what the mutation had dampened. The finding does not promise a cure, but it offers something science rarely delivers cleanly: a precise mechanis