Children with autism avoid eye contact because they experience uncomfortably intense emotional reactions when looking at faces, a new brain-imaging study suggests. What’s more, a brain area needed for perception of faces fails to be activated in people with autism, proposes a team led by Kim M. Dalton of the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
The scientists recruited 25 boys with autism, but not in its severest form, and 28 boys with no psychiatric condition.
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