41 Facts About Simon Baron-Cohen

Sir Simon Philip Baron-Cohen was born on 15 August 1958 and is a British clinical psychologist and professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge.

Simon Baron-Cohen is the director of the university's Autism Research Centre and a Fellow of Trinity College.

In 1985, Baron-Cohen formulated the mindblindness theory of autism, the evidence for which he collated and published in 1995.

Simon Baron-Cohen has made major contributions to research on autism prevalence and screening, autism genetics, autism neuroimaging, autism and vulnerability, autism intervention and synaesthesia.

Simon Baron-Cohen was knighted in the 2021 New Year Honours for services to people with autism.

Simon Baron-Cohen was born into a middle-class Jewish family in London, the second son of Judith and Hyman Vivian Simon Baron-Cohen.

Simon Baron-Cohen completed a BA in human sciences at New College, Oxford, and an MPhil in clinical psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London.

Simon Baron-Cohen received a PhD in psychology at University College London; his doctoral research was in collaboration with his supervisor Uta Frith.

Simon Baron-Cohen is professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.

Simon Baron-Cohen is the director of the university's Autism Research Centre and a Fellow of Trinity College.

Simon Baron-Cohen is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, the British Academy, the Academy of Medical Sciences, and the Association for Psychological Science.

Simon Baron-Cohen is a BPS Chartered Psychologist and a Senior Investigator at the National Institute for Health and Care Research.

Simon Baron-Cohen serves as vice-president of the National Autistic Society, and was the 2012 chairman of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence Guideline Development Group for adults with autism.

Simon Baron-Cohen has served as vice-president and president of the International Society for Autism Research.

Simon Baron-Cohen was founding co-editor-in-chief of the journal Molecular Autism.

Simon Baron-Cohen was the chair of the Psychology Section of the British Academy.

Simon Baron-Cohen is a clinical psychologist who has created a diagnosis clinic in the UK for late autism diagnosis in adults.

Simon Baron-Cohen gave the keynote lecture on the topic of Autism and Human Rights at the United Nations on World Autism Awareness Day in 2017.

Simon Baron-Cohen has worked in autism research for over 40 years, starting in 1982.

Simon Baron-Cohen went on to show that autistic children are blind to the mentalistic significance of the eyes and show difficulties in advanced ToM, measured by the "reading the mind in the eyes test" that he designed.

Simon Baron-Cohen conducted the first neuroimaging study of ToM in typical and autistic adults, and studied patients with acquired brain damage, demonstrating lesions in the orbito- and medial-prefrontal cortex and amygdala can impair ToM.

Simon Baron-Cohen reported the first evidence of atypical amygdala function in autism during ToM.

Simon Baron-Cohen found single nucleotide polymorphisms partly contribute to individual differences on this dimensional trait measure on which autistic people show difficulties.

Simon Baron-Cohen concluded that the genetics of autism not only includes genes associated with disability but include genes associated with talent in pattern recognition and understanding how things work.

Simon Baron-Cohen proposed this theory to understand why autism is more common in males.

Simon Baron-Cohen's team discovered that in typical children, amount of eye contact, rate of vocabulary development, quality of social relationships, theory of mind performance, and scores on the empathy quotient are all inversely correlated with prenatal testosterone levels.

Simon Baron-Cohen's group studied the rate of autism in offspring of mothers with polycystic ovary syndrome, a medical condition caused by elevated prenatal testosterone.

Simon Baron-Cohen found that in women with PCOS, the odds of having a child with autism are significantly increased.

In 2006, Simon Baron-Cohen proposed the assortative mating theory which states that if individuals with a systemizing or "type S" brain type have a child, the child is more likely to be autistic.

Simon Baron-Cohen's team developed The Transporters, an animation series aimed at teaching emotion recognition to preschool age autistic children, and conducted the first clinical trial of lego therapy in the UK, finding that autistic children improve in social skills following this.

Simon Baron-Cohen found that autistic people are being failed by the criminal justice system, and have higher rates of suicidality, higher rates of postnatal depression, and higher rates of mental and physical health conditions.

Simon Baron-Cohen has replied in an op-ed in Scientific American acknowledging the challenges families face.

Simon Baron-Cohen has commented that the huge body of scientific evidence supporting predictions from the mindblindness and E-S theories cannot be ignored.

Time magazine has criticized the assortative mating theory proposed by Simon Baron-Cohen, claiming that it is largely speculative and based on anecdotal evidence.

Critics argue that Simon Baron-Cohen's focus on autistic people without intellectual or learning disability limits how far his findings can be generalised.

Simon Baron-Cohen has acknowledged that a disproportionate amount of autism research globally is conducted with autistic people without learning disabilities and has called for more research with autistic people who have learning disabilities, to ensure that autism research serves the whole autism community.

Simon Baron-Cohen was awarded the 1990 Spearman Medal from the BPS, the McAndless Award from the American Psychological Association, the 1993 May Davidson Award for Clinical Psychology from the BPS, and the 2006 presidents' Award from the BPS.

Simon Baron-Cohen received an honorary degree from Abertay University in 2012, and was awarded the Kanner-Asperger Medal in 2013 by the Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft Autismus-Spektrum as a Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to autism research.

Simon Baron-Cohen was knighted in the 2021 New Year Honours for services to people with autism.

Simon Baron-Cohen has an elder brother Dan Baron Cohen and three younger siblings, brother Ash Baron-Cohen and sisters Suzie and Liz.

Simon Baron-Cohen's cousins include actor and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen and composer Erran Baron Cohen.