1. What does the brain look like in autism? Ed Bullmore National Autistic Society Meeting: September 2002, London

2. What do we think the brain looks like? Gall, c. 1800 Freud, 1898

3. What does the brain ideally look like? Of course, really the brain is dynamic and individually variable…

4. Magnetic resonance imaging One scanner can safely take pictures of brain structure and function

5. Contrasting experimental stimuli cause changes in local brain blood supply which are measured by rapid, repeated measurements of MR signal, and statistically mapped onto brain anatomy www.fmrib.ox.ac.uk Pierce et al (2001) Brain Psychology Physics Statistics

6. Modules and Networks

7. The Social Brain Brothers (1990) Facial perception Affect recognition Social judgement Mentalizing Gaze detection

8. Social brain function in autism Simon Baron-Cohen et al (1999) European Journal of Neuroscience Assigning mental states to eyes-only facial stimuli activates amygdala, superior temporal, dorsal cingulate and frontal brain regions

9. Abnormal amygdalar response to fearful faces in people with Asperger’s syndrome Chris Ashwin et al (2002) Normal amygdalar activation Attenuated amygdalar activation in autism Experimental stimuli: Faces expressing variable intensities of fear Attenuated orbitofrontal activation in autism Random Neutral 25% Fear 100% Fear

10. Mind blindness and the brain Uta Frith (2001) Neuron Consistent activation by mentalizing tasks of medial frontal (paracingulate), temporo-parietal and peri-amygdaloid cortex

11. Brain mechanisms for preserved or superior function in autism Howard Ring et al (1999) Brain People with autism may be better at local processing and activate ventral occipital coretx more strongly during embedded figures task performance

12. Conscious and unconscious social processing Hugo Critchley et al (2000) Brain Automatic and deliberate facial processing activate different brain systems

13. Measuring brain structure in MR images Drawing boundaries by hand round “regions of interest” is being superseded by greater use of computers to measure anatomical differences comprehensively

14. Computational mapping of anatomical abnormalities in autism Grainne McAlonan et al (2002) Brain Grey matter White matter

15. Neurodevelopmental trajectories in brain structure Eric Courchesne et al (2001) Neurology McAlonan et al (2002) Brain

18. Intervention/compensation FMRI can show recovery of brain function following (drug) treatment in schizophrenia… what about recovery of function following educational interventions in autism? Honey et al (1999) PNAS

21. http://www.psychiatry.cam.ac.uk/bmu