Simon Baron-Cohen

Autistic peoples' excellent attention to detail means they may make fewer mistakes, and their narrow focus may mean that they are not satisfied until a task is completed.

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.

When I first started in this field there were all kinds of stereotypes about autism, as if these were children from another planet, or children who had been brought up by wolves, that they weren't part of our population and were somehow separate.

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.

I'm not satisfied with the term 'evil.' We've inherited this word... and we use it to express our abhorrence when people do awful things, usually acts of cruelty, but I don't think it's anything more than another word for doing something bad.

Empathy is about two people - two people meeting, getting to know each other and tuning in to what the other person is thinking and feeling.

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

I try to keep an open mind.

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.

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.

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

Like any skill, systemising occurs on a bell curve in the population, with some people being faster at spotting patterns than others. Autistic people are often strong systemisers. Indeed their attention is often described as 'obsessive' as they check and recheck the patterns of a system.

In the person with autism, the brain may already be seeing the part and be less distracted by the whole, and in the person without autism the brain may have to set aside its picture of the whole to analyze the detail.

With the right support and reasonable adjustments, autistic people make wonderful employees.

We've done fMRI scans of people taking the 'Reading the Eyes' test, and what we've found is that the amygdala lights up in trying to figure out people's thoughts and feelings. In people with autism, they show highly reduced amygdala activity.

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

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

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

I suspect that among parents or siblings of a person with autism there are higher rates of talents in systemizing.

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.

If you've got good systemising skills you can apply them to systems you aren't familiar with, and look for patterns.

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

People with autism flourish in domains where the information is consistent and predictable, and struggle most in domains where the information is ambiguous and unlawful.

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.

Brains come in different types and they're all normal.