Mark Johnson

Professor
Birkbeck University of London

Mark Johnson is professor of experimental psychology and head of the psychology department at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.

From this contributor

Spectrum

By Mark Johnson

18 August 2015

6 min read

Autism may arise from brain’s response to early disturbances

Autism is not a developmental disorder, but rather the brain’s adaptive response to early genetic or environmental disturbances, says Mark Johnson.

Spectrum

Autism may arise from brain’s response to early disturbances

By Mark Johnson

18 August 2015 | 6 min read

Spectrum

By Mark Johnson

21 August 2012

3 min read

Executive confusion

Among siblings of children with autism, those with better prefrontal cortex functioning — observable as relatively strong executive functions for their age — are better able to compensate for atypicalities in other brain systems early in life, and are therefore less likely to receive a diagnosis of autism later in their development, argues Mark H. Johnson.

Spectrum

Executive confusion

By Mark Johnson

21 August 2012 | 3 min read

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By Holly Barker

11 December 2025

5 min read

Among brain changes studied in autism, spotlight shifts to subcortex

The striatum and thalamus are more likely than the cerebral cortex to express autism variants or bear transcriptional changes, two unpublished studies find.

Spectrum

Among brain changes studied in autism, spotlight shifts to subcortex

The striatum and thalamus are more likely than the cerebral cortex to express autism variants or bear transcriptional changes, two unpublished studies find.

By Holly Barker

11 December 2025 | 5 min read

Organoids

By Claudia López Lloreda

10 December 2025

7 min read