In retrospect, it’s so obvious that I was autistic when I was a kid. But because I was a little girl in the ’70s and ’80s, no one picked up on the fact; they just called me “weird” and “intense” and “emotional” and “too sensitive,” among other unpleasant things. I was diagnosed autistic four years […]
Male and female human fetuses show distinct patterns of gene activity and DNA regulation in the cerebral cortex, according to a new analysis of thousands of individual brain cells. The study offers one of the most detailed maps to date of how such activity differs between boys and girls’ brains during the second trimester. It […]
The communication and language difficulties seen in people with autism are difficult to study in animals for obvious reasons. However, scientists have found parallels between human speech and the song of some birds. Young male zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) learn to sing by listening to and mimicking adults, much like children learn to speak. In […]
