Why Autism May Not Be One Condition, But Many

For most of human history, the mind was a mystery box. Behavior emerged, and we simply accepted it—strange, brilliant, troubled, gifted. But today, we peer inside that box. We map genes. We track brain development. And sometimes, what we find upends everything we thought we knew.

Take autism. Long framed as a single condition, a spectrum of traits stretching from mild to…