A BBC report of new study suggests that autism is caused by a weak link between the areas of the brain dealing with faces and the rest of the brain.
“Dr Geoff Bird, at the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, who led the research, said: ‘The standard view of social problems in ASD is that there is a problem in the part of the brain that processes faces. Our research suggests that this is not the real problem – it seems to be that paying attention to faces doesn’t lead to the normal increase in brain activity. This is because the face-processing areas of the brain are not well connected to those parts of the brain that control attention – such as the frontal and parietal regions. We all know that it is harder to pick a face out of a busy crowd, for instance, but when we do find the right face and pay attention to it, we are easily able to tune-out all the other distractions and focus on that one face.’
‘It seems that, for people with ASD, paying attention to a face is much harder to do and doesn’t have the same effect.’“
Weak brain links ‘explain autism’
I can’t find the original study online so take the BBC report with a pinch of salt.