Mark Johnson is professor of experimental psychology and head of the psychology department at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
![](https://www.thetransmitter.org/wp-content/uploads/image-archive/images/authors/markjohnson.jpg)
Mark Johnson
Professor
Birkbeck University of London
From this contributor
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.
![](https://www.thetransmitter.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/20150818viewpointautismbrainadaptjohnson.jpg)
Autism may arise from brain’s response to early disturbances
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.
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