These patches were 5 to 7 millimetres (about 0.2 inches) long and were found in the frontal and temporal cortexes of 10 of the 11 children with autism but only one of the 11 unaffected children, the study claimed.
"These patches are not like a lesion, or loss of cells. The cells are there, but they haven't become what they were supposed to, in the layer they were supposed to be in," said Eric Courchesne, a professor of neuroscience in University of California, San Diego.
