ABSTRACT
Neuroscience has become one important perspective from which to understand autism, spanning from aetiologies to behaviours. Most importantly, unlike the wrongly perceived notion that talking about differences between females and males implies the sexes/genders are distinct, most human differences in the brain, cognition and behaviour are ‘on-average’ differences. There is increasing attention paid among the autism community and researchers to understanding how autism characteristics may present differently in females and males in behaviour and cognition, and how these may be associated with the likely under-recognition of autism in females. Only a small number of studies have formally examined whether any autism-related brain characteristics are similar or different between males and females. Conceptually, an appropriate understanding of autistic girls and women should be based on the appreciation that multiple sex- and gender-related factors shape their development and life experiences, and therefore brain and cognition.
