At first glance you might not notice anything odd on meeting a young boy with autism. But if you try to talk to him, it will quickly become obvious that something is seriously wrong. He may not make eye contact with you; instead he may avoid your gaze and fidget, rock his body to and fro, or bang his head against the wall. More disconcerting, he may not be able to conduct anything remotely resembling a normal conversation. Even though he can experience emotions such as fear, rage and pleasure, he may lack genuine empathy for other people and be oblivious to subtle social cues that most children would pick up effortlessly.

In the 1940s two physicians--American psychiatrist Leo Kanner and Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger--independently discovered this developmental disorder, which afflicts about 0.5 percent of American children. Neither researcher had any knowledge of the other's work, and yet by an uncanny coincidence each gave the syndrome the same name: autism, which derives from the Greek word autos, meaning "self." The name is apt, because the most conspicuous feature of the disorder is a withdrawal from social interaction. More recently, doctors have adopted the term "autism spectrum disorder" to make it clear that the illness has many related variants that range widely in severity but share some characteristic symptoms.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
VILAYANUR S. RAMACHANDRAN and LINDSAY M. OBERMAN have investigated the links between autism and the mirror neuron system at the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego. Ramachandran, director of the center, earned his Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of Cambridge. A renowned expert on brain abnormalities, he has also studied the phenomena of phantom limbs and synesthesia, for which he won the 2005 Henry Dale Prize and a lifetime fellowship from the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Oberman is a graduate student in Ramachandran's laboratory at U.C.S.D., joining the group in 2002.

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