There Are Critical Differences in The Brains of Girls Diagnosed With Autism

From the moment you were born until about age 2, your brains' outer layer – the cortex – rapidly thickened in a frenzy of neuron creation. After all that excitement, that dense hedge of nerve cells was trimmed back in a process called 'cortical thinning'.

Now, a new study has found some key differences in how this process occurs in autistic children, depending on their birth sex.

Previous studies have found variations in the way autistic children's brains undergo cortical thinning, but so far the picture is hazy and inconsistent. This is partly because historically, studies into autism spectrum disorder under-represent the female sex, and that goes for research into cortical development. Read More