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Simon Baron-Cohen

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Simon Baron-Cohen
Baron-Cohen in 2011
Born
Simon Philip Baron-Cohen

(1958-08-15) 15 August 1958 (age 66)
Hampstead, London, England
Education
Known forAutism research
Spouse
Bridget Lindley
(m. 1987; died 2016)
AwardsKanner-Asperger Medal (2013)
Scientific career
Fields
InstitutionsUniversity of Cambridge
ThesisSocial Cognition and Pretend-Play in Autism (1985)
Doctoral advisorUta Frith

Sir Simon Philip Baron-Cohen FBA FBPsS FMedSci (born 15 August 1958)[1] is a British clinical psychologist and professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge. He is the director of the university's Autism Research Centre and a Fellow of Trinity College.

In 1985, Baron-Cohen formulated the mindblindness theory of autism, the evidence for which he collated and published in 1995. In 1997, he formulated the prenatal sex steroid theory of autism, the key test of which was published in 2015. In 2003, he formulated the empathising-systemising (E-S) theory of autism and typical sex differences, the key test of which was published in 2018.

He has also made major contributions to research on autism prevalence and screening, autism genetics, autism neuroimaging, autism and vulnerability, autism intervention and synaesthesia. Baron-Cohen was knighted in the 2021 New Year Honours for services to people with autism.

Early life and education

[edit]

Baron-Cohen was born into a middle-class Jewish family in London, the second son of Judith and Hyman Vivian Baron-Cohen.[2][3][4]

He completed a BA in human sciences at New College, Oxford, and an MPhil in clinical psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London. He received a PhD in psychology at University College London;[5] his doctoral research was in collaboration with his supervisor Uta Frith.[6]

Career

[edit]

Baron-Cohen is professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.[5] He is the director of the university's Autism Research Centre[7] and a Fellow of Trinity College.[5]

He is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society (BPS),[8] the British Academy,[9] the Academy of Medical Sciences, and the Association for Psychological Science.[10] He is a BPS Chartered Psychologist[8] and a Senior Investigator at the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).[11]

He serves as vice-president of the National Autistic Society (UK),[12] and was the 2012 chairman of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) Guideline Development Group for adults with autism.[13] He has served as vice-president and president of the International Society for Autism Research (INSAR).[5] He was founding co-editor-in-chief of the journal Molecular Autism.[14][15]

He was the chair of the Psychology Section of the British Academy.[16] He is also a clinical psychologist who has created a diagnosis clinic in the UK for late autism diagnosis in adults.[17]

Baron-Cohen gave the keynote lecture on the topic of Autism and Human Rights at the United Nations on World Autism Awareness Day in 2017.[18]

In 2024, he was awarded an Honorary Fellowship to the Royal Society of Medicine for his contributions to the field of psychiatry.[19]

Research

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The mindblindness theory of autism

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Baron-Cohen has worked in autism research for over 40 years, starting in 1982. In 1985, while he was member of the MRC Cognitive Development Unit (CDU) in London, he and his colleagues Uta Frith and Alan Leslie formulated the "theory of mind" (ToM) hypothesis, to explain the social-communication difficulties in autism. ToM (also known as "cognitive empathy") is the brain's partially innate mechanism for rapidly making sense of social behavior by effortlessly attributing mental states to others, enabling behavioral prediction and social communication skills.[20][21] They confirmed this using the false belief test, showing that a typical four-year-old child can infer another person's belief that is different to their own, while autistic children on average are delayed in this ability.[21]

Baron-Cohen's 1995 book, Mindblindness summarized his subsequent experiments in ToM and the disability in ToM in autism. He went on to show that autistic children are blind to the mentalistic significance of the eyes and show difficulties in advanced ToM, measured by the "reading the mind in the eyes test" (or "eyes test") that he designed.[22] He conducted the first neuroimaging study of ToM in typical and autistic adults, and studied patients with acquired brain damage, demonstrating lesions in the orbito- and medial-prefrontal cortex and amygdala can impair ToM.[23] He also reported the first evidence of atypical amygdala function in autism during ToM.[24] In 2017, his team studied 80K genotyped individuals who took the eyes test. He found single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) partly contribute to individual differences on this dimensional trait measure on which autistic people show difficulties.[25] This was the evidence that cognitive empathy/ToM is partly heritable. The National Institutes of Health recommended Baron-Cohen's eyes test as a core measure that should be used as part of the Research Domain Criteria (RDOC) for assessing social cognition.[26]

Empathizing-systemizing (E-S) theory

[edit]

In 1997, Baron-Cohen developed the empathizing-systemizing (E-S) theory which proposes that humans can be classified on the basis of their scores along two dimensions (empathizing and systemizing). Empathizing includes both cognitive empathy (imagining what someone else is thinking or feeling) and affective empathy (responding with an appropriate emotion to what someone is thinking or feeling). Systemizing is the drive to analyse or construct rule-based systems to understand how things work. A system is defined as anything that follows if-and-then patterns or rules.

The E-S theory argues that typical females on average score higher on empathizing relative to systemizing (they are more likely to have a brain of type E), and typical males on average score higher on systemizing relative to empathizing (they are more likely to have a brain of type S). Autistic people are predicted to score as an extreme of the typical male (they are more likely to have a brain of type S or extreme type S).[27] These predictions were confirmed in a 2018 online study of 600,000 non-autistic people and 36,000 autistic people. This also confirmed that autistic people on average are “hyper-systemizers”.[28]

Working with the personal genomics company 23andMe, Baron-Cohen’s team studied 56K genotyped individuals who had taken the Systemizing Quotient. He and his colleagues found that the common genetic variants associated with systemizing overlapped with the common genetic variants associated with autism. He concluded that the genetics of autism not only includes genes associated with disability but also include genes associated with talent in pattern recognition and understanding how things work.[29]

Prenatal neuroendocrinology

[edit]

Baron-Cohen's work in E-S theory led him to investigate whether higher levels of prenatal testosterone explain the increased rate of autism among males.[27] His prenatal sex steroid theory of autism had preliminary support in 2009 in finding that prenatal testosterone was positively correlated with autistic traits in childhood and gained additional support in 2015 and 2019 in finding elevated prenatal androgens and estrogens in pregnancies that later were linked to a diagnosis of autism.[30][31]

In his 2004 book Prenatal Testosterone in Mind (MIT Press), Baron-Cohen put forward the prenatal sex steroid theory of autism.[32] He proposed this theory to understand why autism is more common in males. Using the Cambridge Child Development Project that he established in 1997, a longitudinal study studying children of 600 women who had undergone amniocentesis in pregnancy, he followed these children postnatally. This study demonstrated, for the first time in humans, how normative variation in amniotic prenatal testosterone levels correlates with individual differences in typical postnatal brain and behavioral development. His team discovered that in typical children, amount of eye contact, rate of vocabulary development, quality of social relationships, theory of mind performance, and scores on the empathy quotient are all inversely correlated with prenatal testosterone levels. In contrast, he found that scores on the embedded figures test (of attention to detail), on the systemizing quotient (SQ), measures of narrow interests, and number of autistic traits are positively correlated with prenatal testosterone levels.[33] Within this study his team conducted the first human neuroimaging studies of brain grey matter regional volumes and brain activity associated with prenatal testosterone.[34] Other clues for the theory came from Baron-Cohen's postnatal hormonal studies which found that autistic adults have elevated circulating androgens in serum[35] and that the autistic brain in women is ‘masculinized’ in both grey and white matter brain volume.[36] An independent animal model by Xu et al. (2015, Physiology and Behavior, 138, 13–20) showed that elevated prenatal testosterone during pregnancy leads to reduced social interest in the offspring.

Baron-Cohen's group also studied the rate of autism in offspring of mothers with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a medical condition caused by elevated prenatal testosterone. He found that in women with PCOS, the odds of having a child with autism are significantly increased.[37] This has been replicated in three other countries (Sweden, Finland, and Israel) and is in line with the finding that mothers of autistic children themselves have elevated sex steroid hormones.[38][39] But to really test the theory, Baron-Cohen needed a much larger sample than his Cambridge Child Development Project, since autism only occurs in 1% of the population. So, in 2015, he set up a collaboration with the Danish Biobank which has stored over 20 thousand amniotic fluid samples which he linked to later diagnosis of autism via the Danish Psychiatric Register. He tested the prenatal androgens and found that children later diagnosed as autistic were exposed to elevated levels of prenatal testosterone, and the Δ4 sex steroid precursors to prenatal testosterone.[31] In 2019 he tested the same cohort's levels of exposure to prenatal estrogens and again found these were elevated in pregnancies that resulted in autism.[30] These novel studies provide evidence of the role of prenatal hormones, interacting with genetic predisposition, in the cause of autism.

Controversies

[edit]

Baron-Cohen's work in autism research has been subject to controversy, particularly regarding his theories and methodology. One of the most contentious aspects of his research is the "Theory of Mind" hypothesis, which posits that autistic individuals lack the ability to understand the mental states of others. Critics argue that this theory has contributed to harmful stereotypes, portraying autistic people as unempathic or disconnected from society. Other studies have suggested that autistic people may experience a delay in developing this understanding rather than carrying an inherent deficit, raising concerns about the generalization of Baron-Cohen's conclusions from a small sample size.[40]

Baron-Cohen has also been criticized for his "extreme male brain" theory, which hypothesizes that autism represents an exaggerated form of typically male cognitive traits. This theory has been controversial for reinforcing gender stereotypes and contributing to the underdiagnosis of autistic women and girls, as it frames autism through a predominantly male lens.[41]

More recently, Baron-Cohen's leadership of the Spectrum 10K project, which aimed to study the genetic basis of autism, sparked significant backlash within the autistic community. Critics of the project expressed concerns that the genetic data collected could be misused for eugenics or to reduce the number of autistic births, despite assurances from Baron-Cohen and his team that they opposed eugenics and were not seeking to "cure" autism. The project was paused in response to the controversy, with many in the community criticizing the lack of meaningful collaboration with autistic individuals during the study's planning and implementation.[42]

While Baron-Cohen has made efforts to address these concerns, many in the neurodiversity movement continue to challenge his approach to autism research, arguing that it focuses too heavily on deficits and risks promoting harmful narratives.[43]

Other contributions

[edit]

In 2006, Baron-Cohen proposed the assortative mating theory which states that if individuals with a systemizing or "type S" brain type have a child, the child is more likely to be autistic.[27][44] One piece of evidence for this theory came from his population study in Eindhoven, where autism rates are twice as high in that city which is an IT hub, compared to other Dutch cities.[45] In addition, he found both mothers and fathers of autistic children score above average on tests of attention to detail, a prerequisite for strong systemizing.[46]

In 2001, he developed the autism-spectrum quotient (AQ), a set of fifty questions that measures how many autistic traits a person has.[47] This was one of the first measures to show that autistic traits run right through the general population and that autistic people on average simply score higher than non-autistic people. Baron-Cohen has replied to this by saying there are no questions in the AQ that ask about mathematical interest, and that the finding that AQ is associated with scientific and mathematical talent has been found in multiple studies, suggesting these may have shared mechanism such as strong systemizing. The AQ has subsequently been used in hundreds of studies including one study of half a million people, showing robust sex differences and higher scores in those who work in STEM.[28][48] Multiple studies have also shown that both psychological and biological variables correlate with the number of autistic traits a person has.[49]

Baron-Cohen also developed Mindreading, for use in special education.[50] His team also developed The Transporters, an animation series aimed at teaching emotion recognition to preschool age autistic children,[51] and conducted the first clinical trial of lego therapy in the UK, finding that autistic children improve in social skills following this.[52]

Baron-Cohen has also contributed to applied autism research. He found that autistic people are being failed by the criminal justice system,[53] and have higher rates of suicidality,[54] higher rates of postnatal depression,[55] and higher rates of mental[56] and physical health conditions.[57]

Reception

[edit]

Spectrum News had described the work of Baron-Cohen on theory of mind as “a landmark study”.[58] The Lancet described him as “a man with extraordinary knowledge, but his passionate advocacy for a more tolerant, diverse society, where difference is respected and cultivated, reveals a very human side to his science”.[59]

Baron-Cohen’s book, The Essential Difference was described by The Guardian as “compelling and inspiring” while his book,[60] The Pattern Seekers was selected as the Editor’s Choice by the New York Times.[61] A book review published in Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences characterized The Essential Difference as "very disappointing".[62] According to Time magazine, his views on systemizing traits had "earned him the ire of some parents of autistic children, who complain that he underestimates their families' suffering".[44] Baron-Cohen has replied in an op-ed in Scientific American acknowledging the challenges families face. He has also commented that the huge body of scientific evidence supporting predictions from the mindblindness and E-S theories cannot be ignored.[63]

Baron-Cohen and his book The Science of Evil were described by The New York Times “an award-winning psychologist” who had “unveiled a simple but persuasive hypothesis for a new way to think about evil.”[64]

Baron-Cohen's "empathizing-systemizing theory" was published in Science, and states that humans may be classified on the basis of their scores along two dimensions (empathizing and systemizing); and that females tend to score higher on the empathizing dimension and males tend to score higher on the systemizing dimension. Feminist scientists, including Cordelia Fine, neuroscientist Gina Rippon, and Lise Eliot have questioned his extreme male brain theory of autism.[65][66][67][68][69] Baron-Cohen has defended the study of sex differences against their charges of neurosexism, clarifying that gender differences only apply to differences on average between groups of males and females, and agrees that it would be sexist and unacceptable to prejudge an individual based on their gender since a person’s mind may not be typical of their gender.[70] Multiple data sets have now confirmed the E-S and extreme male brain theories.[71]

Time magazine has also criticized the assortative mating theory proposed by Baron-Cohen, claiming that it is largely speculative and based on anecdotal evidence. The theory claims that autism rates are increasing because "systemizers", individuals with more autistic traits, are more likely to marry each other and are more likely to have autistic offspring due to relatively recent societal changes.[72] James McGrath has criticized the autism-spectrum quotient, writing that the score increases if one indicates interest in mathematics, and decreases if one indicates interest in literature or art. He claims that this leads to the false notion that most autistic people are strong in math.[73]

Critics also argue that Baron-Cohen’s focus on autistic people without intellectual or learning disability limits how far his findings can be generalised. Baron-Cohen has acknowledged that a disproportionate amount of autism research globally is conducted with autistic people without learning (intellectual) disabilities and has called for more research with autistic people who have learning disabilities, to ensure that autism research serves the whole autism community. But he challenges this criticism in pointing out that even among those with learning disability, strong systemizing is observed.[74][75]

The mindblindness hypothesis has faced criticism from some people in the autism community.[76][77][78] Baron-Cohen has commented that the vast majority of studies have replicated the findings, despite the heterogeneity of autism and that huge body of scientific evidence supporting predictions from the mindblindness and E-S theories cannot be ignored.[79]

Baron-Cohen's theories about mindblindness are also questioned by autistic philosophers, in part on the basis that non-autistic people are as blind to the internal states of autistic people as autistic people are to those of non-autistic people.[80] Baron-Cohen agrees that the “double-empathy” problem is an important contribution to this field. There is also criticism of Baron-Cohen's concept of theory of mind on the grounds that it implies he is classifying autistic people as not fully human. Baron-Cohen has replied that autistic people are fully human and that theory of mind or cognitive empathy exists on a bell curve. He views autism as an example of neurodiversity and disability.[81][82]

Recognition

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Baron-Cohen was awarded the 1990 Spearman Medal from the BPS,[83] the McAndless Award from the American Psychological Association,[84] the 1993 May Davidson Award for Clinical Psychology from the BPS,[85] and the 2006 presidents' Award from the BPS.[86]

He received an honorary degree from Abertay University in 2012,[87] and was awarded the Kanner-Asperger Medal in 2013 by the Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft Autismus-Spektrum as a Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to autism research.[88] He was also knighted in the 2021 New Year Honours for services to people with autism.[89]

Baron-Cohen's Mindreading and The Transporters special educational software were nominated for the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awards in 2002 and 2007.[90][91]

Personal life

[edit]

In 1987, Baron-Cohen married Bridget Lindley.[92] Together, they had three children.[44]

He has an elder brother Dan Baron Cohen and three younger siblings, brother Ash Baron-Cohen and sisters Suzie and Liz.[4] His cousins include actor and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen and composer Erran Baron Cohen.[2][93][94]

Selected publications

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Single-authored books

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  • Mindblindness: An Essay on Autism and Theory of Mind. MIT Press/Bradford Books. 1995. ISBN 978-0-262-02384-9.
  • The Essential Difference: Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain. Penguin/Basic Books. 2003. ISBN 978-0-7139-9671-5.
  • Autism and Asperger Syndrome. Facts. Oxford University Press. 2008. ISBN 978-0-19-850490-0.
  • Zero Degrees of Empathy: A New Theory of Human Cruelty. Penguin/Allen Lane. 2011. ISBN 978-0-7139-9791-0. (published in the US as The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Human Cruelty, ISBN 978-0-465-02353-0)
  • The Pattern Seekers: A New Theory of Human Invention. Allen Lane. 2020. ISBN 978-0241242186. (published in the US as The Pattern Seekers: How Autism Drives Human Invention. Basic Books. 2020. ISBN 978-1541647145.)

Other books

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  • Baron-Cohen S, Tager-Flusberg H, Lombardo MV, eds. (2013). Understanding Other Minds: Perspectives From Social Cognitive Neuroscience (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-852446-5.
  • Hadwin J, Howlin P, Baron-Cohen S (2008). Teaching Children with Autism to Mindread: A Practical Guide for Teachers and Parents. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-471-97623-3.
  • Baron-Cohen S, Lutchmaya S, Knickmeyer R (2005). Prenatal Testosterone in Mind: Amniotic Fluid Studies. MIT Press/Bradford Books. ISBN 978-0-262-26774-8.
  • Baron-Cohen S, Wheelwright S (2004). An Exact Mind: An Artist with Asperger Syndrome. Jessica Kingsley. ISBN 978-1-84310-032-4.
  • Baron-Cohen S; Tager-Flusberg H; Cohen DJ, eds. (2000). Understanding Other Minds: Perspectives from Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-852445-8.
  • Baron-Cohen S, Harrison J, eds. (1997). Synaesthesia: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Blackwells. ISBN 978-0-631-19763-8.
  • Baron-Cohen S, ed. (1997). The Maladapted Mind: Classic Readings in Evolutionary Psychopathology. East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press/Taylor Francis Group. ISBN 978-0-86377-460-7.

Selected journal articles

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See also

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References

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  22. ^ Baron-Cohen S, Wheelwright S, Hill J, Raste Y, Plumb I (February 2001). "The "Reading the Mind in the Eyes" Test revised version: a study with normal adults, and adults with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism". Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, and Allied Disciplines. 42 (2): 241–51. doi:10.1111/1469-7610.00715. PMID 11280420. S2CID 3016793.
  23. ^ Stone VE, Baron-Cohen S, Knight RT (September 1998). "Frontal lobe contributions to theory of mind". Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 10 (5): 640–56. doi:10.1162/089892998562942. PMID 9802997. S2CID 207724498.
  24. ^ Baron-Cohen S, Ring HA, Wheelwright S, Bullmore ET, Brammer MJ, Simmons A, Williams SC (June 1999). "Social intelligence in the normal and autistic brain: an fMRI study". The European Journal of Neuroscience. 11 (6): 1891–8. doi:10.1046/j.1460-9568.1999.00621.x. PMID 10336657. S2CID 9436565.
  25. ^ Warrier V, Grasby KL, Uzefovsky F, Toro R, Smith P, Chakrabarti B, et al. (June 2018). "Genome-wide meta-analysis of cognitive empathy: heritability, and correlates with sex, neuropsychiatric conditions and cognition". Molecular Psychiatry. 23 (6): 1402–1409. bioRxiv 10.1101/081844. doi:10.1038/mp.2017.122. PMC 5656177. PMID 28584286. S2CID 196478363.
  26. ^ Peterson, E.; Miller, S. F. (5 July 2012). "The Eyes Test as a Measure of Individual Differences: How much of the Variance Reflects Verbal IQ?". Frontiers in Psychology. 3: 220. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00220. PMC 3389807. PMID 22783217.
  27. ^ a b c Baron-Cohen, Simon (9 November 2012). "Are geeky couples more likely to have kids with autism?". Scientific American. Retrieved 14 April 2018. Pdf. Now in "4.4. Autism and the Technical Mind". Understanding Autism: The Search for Answers. Scientific American. 18 March 2013. ISBN 978-1-4668-3385-2.
  28. ^ a b Greenberg DM, Warrier V, Allison C, Baron-Cohen S (November 2018). "Testing the Empathizing-Systemizing theory of sex differences and the Extreme Male Brain theory of autism in half a million people". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 115 (48): 12152–12157. Bibcode:2018PNAS..11512152G. doi:10.1073/pnas.1811032115. PMC 6275492. PMID 30420503.
  29. ^ Warrier, Varun; Toro, Roberto; Chakrabarti, Bhismadev; Børglum, Anders D.; Grove, Jakob; Hinds, David A.; Bourgeron, Thomas; Baron-Cohen, Simon (12 March 2018). "Genome-wide analyses of self-reported empathy: correlations with autism, schizophrenia, and anorexia nervosa". Translational Psychiatry. 8 (1): 35. doi:10.1038/s41398-017-0082-6. PMC 5845860. PMID 29527006.
  30. ^ a b Baron-Cohen S, Tsompanidis A, Auyeung B, Nørgaard-Pedersen B, Hougaard DM, Abdallah M, et al. (November 2020). "Foetal oestrogens and autism". Molecular Psychiatry. 25 (11): 2970–2978. doi:10.1038/s41380-019-0454-9. PMC 7577840. PMID 31358906. S2CID 198982283.
  31. ^ a b Baron-Cohen S, Auyeung B, Nørgaard-Pedersen B, Hougaard DM, Abdallah MW, Melgaard L, et al. (March 2015). "Elevated fetal steroidogenic activity in autism". Molecular Psychiatry. 20 (3): 369–76. doi:10.1038/mp.2014.48. PMC 4184868. PMID 24888361.
  32. ^ Baron-Cohen S, Knickmeyer RC, Belmonte MK (November 2005). "Sex differences in the brain: implications for explaining autism" (PDF). Science. 310 (5749): 819–23. Bibcode:2005Sci...310..819B. doi:10.1126/science.1115455. PMID 16272115. S2CID 44330420.
  33. ^ Baron-Cohen S, Lombardo MV, Auyeung B, Ashwin E, Chakrabarti B, Knickmeyer R (June 2011). "Why are autism spectrum conditions more prevalent in males?". PLOS Biology. 9 (6): e1001081. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001081. PMC 3114757. PMID 21695109.
  34. ^ Lombardo MV, Ashwin E, Auyeung B, Chakrabarti B, Taylor K, Hackett G, Bullmore ET, Baron-Cohen S (January 2012). "Fetal testosterone influences sexually dimorphic gray matter in the human brain". The Journal of Neuroscience. 32 (2): 674–80. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4389-11.2012. PMC 3306238. PMID 22238103.
  35. ^ Schwarz E, Guest PC, Rahmoune H, Wang L, Levin Y, Ingudomnukul E, Ruta L, Kent L, Spain M, Baron-Cohen S, Bahn S (December 2011). "Sex-specific serum biomarker patterns in adults with Asperger's syndrome". Molecular Psychiatry. 16 (12): 1213–20. doi:10.1038/mp.2010.102. PMID 20877284.
  36. ^ Lai MC, Lombardo MV, Suckling J, Ruigrok AN, Chakrabarti B, Ecker C, Deoni SC, Craig MC, Murphy DG, Bullmore ET, Baron-Cohen S, et al. (MRC AIMS Consortium) (September 2013). "Biological sex affects the neurobiology of autism". Brain: A Journal of Neurology. 136 (Pt 9): 2799–815. doi:10.1093/brain/awt216. PMC 3754459. PMID 23935125.
  37. ^ Cherskov A, Pohl A, Allison C, Zhang H, Payne RA, Baron-Cohen S (August 2018). "Polycystic ovary syndrome and autism: A test of the prenatal sex steroid theory". Translational Psychiatry. 8 (1): 136. doi:10.1038/s41398-018-0186-7. PMC 6068102. PMID 30065244.
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  40. ^ Autistic License. "Simon Baron-Cohen and the Theory of Mind: why research is not always right". Retrieved 19 October 2024.
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