The brains of males with autism contain unusually few neurons in the amygdala, an inner-brain structure involved in emotion and memory, a new study finds.
Although previous research had suggested that wayward amygdala development contributes to autism, the new investigation shows for the first time that the disorder features low numbers of neurons in that part of the brain, say neuroscientists Cynthia M. Schumann of the University of California, San Diego and David Amaral of the University of California, Davis.
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