Figure 2:

Impairments in reciprocal social relationships, spatial reasoning, and memory are components of the three main symptom clusters that comprise the ASD phenotype. The hippocampus is known to support these behaviors; hippocampal abnormalities may thus lead to some of the symptoms commonly observed in ASD. Though there is a lack of direct evidence for hippocampal involvement in insistence on sameness, a prevalent symptom in ASD characterized by ritualistic behaviors and circumscribed interests, altered functioning of the hippocampus may lead to such behaviors through impairments in cognitive mapping. The size of the circles represents the prominence of each symptom in the ASD phenotype, with larger circles indicating aspects that are more at the core of the disorder. Figure created with BioRender.com.