Autism is a developmental disorder characterized by two main components: an inability to interact socially with other people with joint attention to understand other people's thoughts.

I think my own bias is that there may be something wrong with the timing and the connectivity between regions rather than pointing to one particular spot in the brain.

I think the gold standard is a clinical diagnosis, that an astute clinician interacting with a child, interviewing the parents, talking with teachers makes the diagnosis based on some standard tests and also on clinical impression and skill.

It is not all that common, but there is a phenomenon where autism could get worse at about age two. There are some controversies whether regression is a prominent part of autism, but many people feel that it's very hard to diagnose autism before you can begin really talking in detail with a child.

The brain immediately confronts us with its great complexity. The human brain weighs only three to four pounds but contains about 100 billion neurons.

Autism reaches out in many different directions. It can be associated with language delays. It can be associated with epilepsy. It can be associated with some degree of intellectual disability, but the two core features of autism, I see, is impairments and social cognition, understanding and in restricted interests and repetitive behaviors.

Memory is the scaffolding upon which all mental life is constructed.