Friday, 11 January 2008
9:00 - 10:00 AM

The Seminar will be held in the Gonda Center First Floor Conference Room, Rm 1357
E5 on the South sector of the UCLA Campus Map.

For further information contact Candace Wilkinson at (310) 825-9041.

All are welcome and there is no fee to attend, but seating is limited so please arrive early.

Dr. Baron-Cohen also will be lecturing Saturday morning January 12 in Orange County at an event sponsored by the Children's Hospital and Monday afternoon January 14 at an event sponsored by The Help Group; the community at large is welcome to register for these two events.

Abstract

Autism (a condition leading to social and communication difficulties) affects males much more often than females. The explanation for this must either lie in diagnostic practice, hormones, or genetics, or a mix of all three. In this paper I summarize work from our lab investigating the role of foetal testosterone (FT) in post-natal typical behavioural sex differences (e.g., in social and communication development), and in the development of autistic traits. The study uses amniocentesis, the timing of which coincides with the surge in FT production, and is a longitudinal follow-up. Whilst this methodology does not rule out the role of genes, it suggests FT is a key factor underlying some key sex differences in the mind and brain, and may be related to the number of autistic traits an individual has. Converging evidence for the link between testosterone and autistic traits comes from two other sources: rare medical conditions where FT is elevated (such as Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia) and the timing of puberty in autism (which is under the influence of androgens). The discussion ties these different lines of evidence together, and considers how FT has its effects in the developing brain.

Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen; A Biography

Simon Baron-Cohen is Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at the University of Cambridge and Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge. He is Director of the Autism Research Centre (ARC) in Cambridge. He holds degrees in Human Sciences from New College, Oxford, a PhD in Psychology from UCL, and an M.Phil in Clinical Psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry. He held lectureships in both of these departments in London before moving to Cambridge in 1994. He is also Director of CLASS (Cambridge Lifespan Asperger Syndrome Service), a clinic for adults with suspected AS.

He is author of Mindblindness (MIT Press, 1995), The Essential Difference (Penguin UK/Basic Books, 2003), and Prenatal Testosterone in Mind (MIT Press, 2005). He has edited a number of scholarly anthologies, including Understanding Other Minds (OUP, 1993, 2001), The Maladapted Mind (Erlbaum, 1997) and Synaesthesia (Blackwells, 1997). He has also written books for parents and teachers such as Autism: The Facts (OUP, 1993), Tourette Syndrome: The Facts (OUP, 1998), and Teaching children with autism to mind read (Wiley, 1998). He is author of the DVD-ROM Mind Reading: an interactive guide to emotions (Jessica Kingsley Ltd, 2003) that was nominated for a BAFTA award for Best Off-Line Learning, and The Transporters (www.transporters.tv), an animation for preschool children with autism to help them learn emotion recognition.

He has been awarded prizes from the American Psychological Association, the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA), and the British Psychological Society (BPS) for his research into autism. For 2007 he is President of the Psychology Section of the BA, Vice President of the National Autistic Society, and received the 2006 Presidents' Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychological Knowledge from the BPS. His current research is testing the 'extreme male brain' theory of autism at the neural, endocrine and genetic levels.