Cognition

Quantifying and exploring camouflaging in men and women with autism

Autobiographical descriptions and clinician observations suggest that some individuals with autism, particularly females, 'camouflage' their social communication difficulties, which may require considerable cognitive effort and lead to increased …

The EU-AIMS Longitudinal European Autism Project (LEAP): design and methodologies to identify and validate stratification biomarkers for autism spectrum disorders

BACKGROUND: The tremendous clinical and aetiological diversity among individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been a major obstacle to the development of new treatments, as many may only be effective in particular subgroups. Precision …

Unsupervised data-driven stratification of mentalizing heterogeneity in autism

Individuals affected by autism spectrum conditions (ASC) are considerably heterogeneous. Novel approaches are needed to parse this heterogeneity to enhance precision in clinical and translational research. Applying a clustering approach taken from …

The neuropsychology of male adults with high-functioning autism or asperger syndrome

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is diagnosed on the basis of behavioral symptoms, but cognitive abilities may also be useful in characterizing individuals with ASD. One hundred seventy-eight high-functioning male adults, half with ASD and half …

Prenatal and postnatal hormone effects on the human brain and cognition

This review examines the role of hormones in the development of social and nonsocial cognition and the brain. Research findings from human studies designed to elucidate the effects of both prenatal and postnatal exposure to hormones in children and …

Individual differences in brain structure underpin empathizing-systemizing cognitive styles in male adults

Individual differences in cognitive style can be characterized along two dimensions: 'systemizing' (S, the drive to analyze or build 'rule-based' systems) and 'empathizing' (E, the drive to identify another's mental state and respond to this with an …

Cognition in males and females with autism: similarities and differences

The male bias in autism spectrum conditions (ASC) has led to females with ASC being under-researched. This lack of attention to females could hide variability due to sex that may explain some of the heterogeneity within ASC. In this study we …

A behavioral comparison of male and female adults with high functioning autism spectrum conditions

Autism spectrum conditions (ASC) affect more males than females in the general population. However, within ASC it is unclear if there are phenotypic sex differences. Testing for similarities and differences between the sexes is important not only for …

Shared neural circuits for mentalizing about the self and others

Although many examples exist for shared neural representations of self and other, it is unknown how such shared representations interact with the rest of the brain. Furthermore, do high-level inference-based shared mentalizing representations …

Self-referential cognition and empathy in autism

BACKGROUND: Individuals with autism spectrum conditions (ASC) have profound impairments in the interpersonal social domain, but it is unclear if individuals with ASC also have impairments in the intrapersonal self-referential domain. We aimed to …