Spectrum: Autism Research News

Autism is not a developmental disorder, but rather the brain’s adaptive response to early genetic or environmental disturbances, says Mark Johnson.

Among siblings of children with autism, those with better prefrontal cortex functioning — observable as relatively strong executive functions for their age — are better able to compensate for atypicalities in other brain systems early in life, and are therefore less likely to receive a diagnosis of autism later in their development, argues Mark H. Johnson.