Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, one of the most influential voices in autism research, has publicly rejected the framework he spent three decades developing. In an interview with The Guardian on July 5, 2026, he said he regrets using the term "extreme male brain" and no longer thinks labels like "male brain" or "female brain" are useful for understanding autism.

The timing is significant. Baron-Cohen made this statement just as Cambridge University announced a £26 million ($34.5 million donation from US philanthropist Lisa Yang—the largest single private gift for autism research in the institution's history. The money will create two new research centers under Baron-Cohen's direction: the K Lisa Yang Centre for Autism Research and a clinical autism center within Cambridge's future children's hospital.

Why This Matters

Baron-Cohen's shift carries weight because he basically invented the "extreme male brain" theory. As recently as 2014, Cambridge's own press office cited his work as strong proof the theory was correct. In 2018, a Cambridge study involving over 500,000 people was framed as the largest investigation ever of psychological sex differences — explicitly built on his framework. Today, Cambridge's website still promotes these findings without revision or caution.

Baron-Cohen's specific concern is the harm caused by the terminology. The "extreme male brain" label, he argues, leads to reductive news coverage with a central claim: that autistic people lack empathy. He calls this a myth, and the distinction he makes is important. Autistic people often differ in cognitive empathy — the ability to figure out what someone else is thinking — but not in affective empathy, the ability to feel concern when others are upset. When these two get confused, it creates an inaccurate and damaging stereotype that affects how autistic people experience relationships, work, and healthcare.

Researchers who study gender and neurodiversity have criticized the theory for years, arguing that mapping brain patterns onto male/female categories was both scientifically imprecise and potentially harmful to autistic women and non-binary people. Some of Baron-Cohen's own data complicated the clean male/female split. A 2015 Cambridge study found that women with autism also scored in the "extreme male" range on a test of reading others' emotions — a finding that either confirmed the theory or undermined it, depending on how you looked at it.

A Shift in What Gets Studied

The Yang donation appears to be reshaping Baron-Cohen's research direction. The announcement included preliminary data from 141,672 people suggesting that autistic women face a 71% higher risk of serious heart problems — heart attack, stroke, and related conditions — compared with non-autistic women. This data has not yet been peer-reviewed, meaning other scientists have not yet checked it, so it should be treated cautiously. Large preliminary datasets often change significantly as they go through the review process.

That said, the finding is striking enough that it seems to be shaping what the new centers will actually focus on. Autistic women are historically underdiagnosed — partly because diagnostic criteria were developed mostly on male samples — and if the heart risk difference holds up under scrutiny, it could reshape how doctors screen autistic women and how the NHS allocates resources.

There is a noticeable gap between what Baron-Cohen says now and what Cambridge's websites still say about his work. His faculty profile still references the "extreme male brain" theory positively, with no caveats. Universities update their public-facing materials slowly, and a single interview is not a formal retraction of a research program. Still, the disconnect between his current stated position and what the institution still publicly promotes creates a tension that the new centers will eventually need to address, particularly as they recruit research participants and seek more funding.

The deeper shift here is methodological. Moving from a theory built on psychological sex-difference scores to one centered on physical health outcomes and clinical care is a substantial change in what kind of science gets done. Whether the new centers will formally replace the "extreme male brain" framework or simply work around it depends on what the data show — the same standard Baron-Cohen himself has always used to evaluate research.