If you’re interested in cognitive neuroscience, keep following the leaps and bounds coming out of fMRI (functional MRI) studies. They are the most exciting window into the localization of function in the CNS we’ve had. For example, this: People with autism and Asperger Syndrome process faces as objects, Yale study of brain abnormalities finds. The study demonstrates reduced activity in the part of the brain subsuming facial recognition as well as increased activity in an adjacent area processing non-face objects.It seems to me that finding such an impairment in the neural substrate of a function so crucial to the essence of human interaction goes a long way to explaining the etiology of the profound social interaction deficits that characterize autism and other so-called “pervasive developmental disorders” such as Asperger’s Syndrome.