British psychologist Uta Frith has singlehandedly transformed our understanding of autism. In partnership with her husband, neuroimaging expert Chris Frith, she helped launch the field of cognitive neuroscience and shaped a generation of scientists.
People with autism are highly adept at detecting symmetry in patterns, according to a study published 29 April in PLoS ONE.
Few scientists have a career that spans as wide a spectrum in autism research as Simon Baron-Cohen, professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge in the U.K. And fewer still garner effusive compliments from those who don’t agree with them.
Several new studies challenge the ‘broken mirror’ hypothesis of autism, which suggests that defects in specialized brain cells called mirror neurons explain why people with the disorder find social interaction difficult.