CommentaryAutism: Searching for Coherence
Section snippets
Head Size
Large heads and atypical head growth trajectory (e.g., 8) have been observed in ASD in several studies. Nearly half of the children originally described by Leo Kanner had large heads (9), and macrocephaly, defined as head circumference (HC) greater than the 97th percentile is observed in about 20% of autistic children. Recent studies have also shown that macrocephaly is familial in ASD and thus likely inherited in this subset of approximately 20% of ASD cases (Spence and Geschwind, unpublished
Neurophysiological Phenotypes and Local Versus Global Processing
Although the core deficits of autism involve higher cognitive functions, such as social cognition, language, and repetitive and restrictive behaviors, alterations in the function of primary sensory systems have also been observed, consistent with decades of patient and parent reports of abnormal sensitivity to sensory stimuli (review, 10). Children with ASD may perform better at detection of local details relative to global properties of a stimulus, supporting the notion that integration of
Some Conclusions
From a neurobiological perspective, autism research is in its fetal stage. The studies in this issue add to rapidly growing literature showing that the tools are in hand to understand the relationships between different levels of analysis, from molecular and physiological to behavioral and different levels of the nervous system, from pathways to regions to circuits, to demystify the neural bases of the autisms.
It is now critical to distinguish the factors in autism that differentiate it from
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