ABSTRACT
In early childhood, boys and girls with autism are about the same. If anything, girls appear to be more social — whether because they actually are or are just perceived to be. As they edge closer to adolescence, however, girls with autism may lose this early social advantage, becoming less and less likely to have friends and more likely to be isolated. Adolescent boys tend to socialise in loosely organised groups focused on sports or video games, allowing a boy with minimal social skills to slide. The unpublished observation that in girls with autism, the social brain seems to communicate with the prefrontal cortex — a brain region that normally engages in reason and planning and is known to burn through energy — is particularly intriguing. It may be that women with autism keep their social brain engaged, but mediate it through the prefrontal cortex — in a sense, intellectualising social interactions that would be intuitive for other women.
