For decades, researchers have thought of autism as a predominantly male condition. The more we studied boys and men, the clearer the picture of autism that emerged – or so we thought. Now, we have come to realise we were missing a huge piece of the puzzle.
Gina Rippon, a neurobiologist at Aston University in Birmingham, UK, explores the topic through her research, and in her new book, The Lost Girls of Autism: How science failed autistic women, she explains that not only have we been failing to recognise autism in vast numbers of women and girls – preventing them from getting a diagnosis and support – but we have now made the profound discovery that the female autistic brain works differently than the male one, especially when it comes to social motivations and behaviours. As a result, an entirely new picture of autism in women and girls is crystallising, forcing a radical rethink of everything we thought we knew.
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