SIMON BARON-COHEN

It is possible that by studying autism we'll learn about the nature of talent. Supposedly there's no connection between scientific talent and autism, but if we look closely, we find a very basic connection.

Among both individuals with high-functioning autism or Asperger and their parents, many are superfast at spotting details. You hardly have time to get the experimental materials out on the table before they've spotted the target.

Inspiring children at an early age is key, and perhaps we need to put technology in a more social context.

There are people with Asperger's whom I've met who certainly would be very upset to learn they'd hurt another person's feelings. They often have very strong moral consciences and moral codes. They care about not hurting people.

Autism doesn't seem to have a seasonal component, unlike some forms of depression.

Difficulty empathising translates into a whole set of hurdles. You might be last person to get the point of a joke, which can leave you feeling like an outsider. You might end up saying something that another person finds hurtful or offensive, when that was the last thing you intended.

Hundreds of studies of various cultures have proven that, on average, boys play more than girls with constructional toys like Lego and toy cars, and girls play more with dolls.

Baby girls, as young as 12 months old, respond more empathically to the distress of other people, showing greater concern through more sad looks, sympathetic vocalisations and comforting. This echoes what you find in adulthood: more women report frequently sharing the emotional distress of their friends.

The idea of a cure for autism is itself controversial. Some people with autism say they don't want to be cured, because autism gives them a different way of looking at the world.

What we want is that one day every workplace will be diverse - we already encourage that with gender and ethnicity, but the next frontier is neurodiversity and it will become ordinary. People won't think twice about it.

A diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome can be useful to help a person understand why they have had difficulties.

Autistic people's disabilities are widely known, but one of their best-established strengths is their attention to detail.

Autism spectrum disorders are linked to other problems: Most of the people we see in our Asperger clinic for adults also suffer from clinical levels of depression.

If you have a child with autism, and he or she has good intelligence, with no delay in language learning maybe there is an advantage to autism as well? Maybe it gives them a better understanding of mathematics, or science? After all, the essence of science and the essence of autism is to notice patterns that others have not noticed.

Genes are thought to contribute a certain amount to the cause of autism but it's not 100 per cent. It might be about 60 per cent genetic. So there are going to be environmental factors that mediate the impact of autism.

Autism typically means a person may not be fully aware of the consequences of their actions, or understand the consequences of their behaviour on others.

My theory is that the female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy, and that the male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems.

Well, in the general population, we find differences between the typical male and typical female. For example, males seem to be more interested in systems and females seem to be more interested in people and particularly people's emotions.

Empathy is a skill like any other human skill - and if you get a chance to practice, you can get better at it.

I think it's particularly clear in borderline personality disorder (BPD) that there's a strong association between early environmental deprivation and neglect and abuse and later outcome of BPD.

I'm hoping that autism is going to get to that same point, where it becomes quite ordinary to say, 'I have autism,' or 'I have Asperger's syndrome,' and that there will be many more resources available to make life easier for people on the autistic spectrum.

In general it's good to give children as wide a choice as possible, and there is no harm in encouraging children to play with 'typical' toys for the opposite sex. But whether they should be trying to change children is a more ethical decision; I think we should be supporting a child's interests, whatever they are.

We have found fathers and grandfathers of children with autism are more likely to be engineers.

Because people with autism are also strongly obsessional, meaning that they pursue their current interest to extraordinary detail and lengths and in great depth, they can develop 'tunnel vision' that prevents them from seeing the bigger picture, including the repercussions of their current actions.

Everyone recognises that genes are part of the story but autism isn't 100% genetic. Even if you have identical twins who share all their genes, you can find that one has autism and one doesn't. That means that there must be some non-genetic factors.