In 1943, psychiatrist Leo Kanner described 11 children who preferred to be alone and ignored people around them. Some of the children didn't respond to direct questions, others used the pronouns 'you' or 'he' instead of 'I'. Kanner called the children 'autistic', from the Greek word 'autos', or self.A team of cognitive scientists at University of Cambridge has uncovered a brain signature of this abnormal self-representation in people with autism. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, the team found that when thinking about themselves, adults with autism have lower activity in two specific brain regions important for decision-making and social interactions than do healthy controls.What's more, individuals with autism have weaker connections between one of these areas, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vMPFC), and regions harboring mirror neurons, cells that fire either when a person performs or observes a given action. The report — only the second imaging study to address the concept of 'self' in people with autism — was published in the February issue of Brain.Read more at...SFARI, February 2010.