Sex Differences in the Brain: Implications for Explaining Autism

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) - Tập 310 Số 5749 - Trang 819-823 - 2005
Simon Baron‐Cohen1, Rebecca Knickmeyer1, Matthew K. Belmonte1
1Autism Research Centre, Cambridge University, Department of Psychiatry, Douglas House, 18b Trumpington Road, Cambridge CB2 2AH, UK.

Tóm tắt

Empathizing is the capacity to predict and to respond to the behavior of agents (usually people) by inferring their mental states and responding to these with an appropriate emotion. Systemizing is the capacity to predict and to respond to the behavior of nonagentive deterministic systems by analyzing input-operation-output relations and inferring the rules that govern such systems. At a population level, females are stronger empathizers and males are stronger systemizers. The “extreme male brain” theory posits that autism represents an extreme of the male pattern (impaired empathizing and enhanced systemizing). Here we suggest that specific aspects of autistic neuroanatomy may also be extremes of typical male neuroanatomy.

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S.B.C. and R.C.K. were funded by the Medical Research Council and the Nancy Lurie Marks Family Foundation during the period of this work. We are grateful to J. Lawson for his help in producing Fig. 1 and to N. Goldenfeld and S. Wheelwright our collaborators on the research behind Figs. 1 to 3.

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American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Tập 310 Số 5749

819-823

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