Audrey Brumback is a physician, a scientist, and an Assistant Professor of Neurology at the University of Texas. During our conversation, Audrey talks about her interest in autism, what we know about autism today, and how her lab studies brain physiology to better understand the autistic brain.

The brain is endlessly complex, and autism has long been a mystery. People like Audrey are working to simultaneously increase our knowledge and decrease the stigma of the roughly 2% of the human population - tens of millions of people - who are autistic.

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(00:00) Intro

(00:45) Get to know Audrey Brumback

(01:26) Audrey’s upbringing and the life events that led her to study autism (04:56) What is autism?

(08:37) Diagnosing autism in children

(14:20) The population of Americans identified as having autism

(15:50) The influence of genes versus environment in causing autism

(17:06) Evaluating the possible factors leading to producing kids with autism

(19:56) Introducing a kinder and more rational approach to dealing with individuals with autism or autistic tendencies

(24:08) How most people explain their indifferent behavior with autistic individuals (27:09) Audrey’s areas of promise for people with autism

(31:11) Determining the kind of help that autistic individuals need

(33:00) Understanding neurodiversity and life with autism

(36:21) Is there any kind of intrinsic motivation that people with autism experience to change the nature of their minds for the better?

(41:41) Why autism is not all negative but is instead a difference in the neurological programming of certain individuals

(42:54) Is autism a spectrum disorder?

(45:15) The evolutionary history of autism and thoughts on what caused it to continue existing in the human gene pool

(47:09) Making our society a better place for individuals with autism: the potential areas of improvement in their conditions in the future