Brain Construction and Neurogenesis: A Basis for the Neuroscientific Understanding of Autism

1. How a brain is born 2. Neural Darwinism 3. The origin of neurons 4. Neuronal activity during development   This chapter follows the characteristic and symptomatological picture and precedes a chapter devoted to the cranio-cerebellar features typical of autism. The spirit of this book is to offer an overall picture that can reach, and thus actively involved, the ‘differently specialised’. I think it is necessary, for what I will say next, that certain concepts are clear, and to do so this chapter offers a common basis for further study and reasoning. In this context, this chapter provides the essential basis for a conscious and rigorous understanding of what I will expound in Chapters 6 , 11 and 15 . But it is also—I believe—a valuable support in understanding the dynamics of neurogenesis and brain development as a whole.