Brain Signatures of Early and Late Neural Measures of Auditory Habituation and Discrimination in Autism and Their Relationship to Autistic Traits and Sensory Overresponsivity.

Cary et al. (2024) wired up adults with mild autism and adults without autism.

They played beeps while recording brain waves.

They looked for two things: how fast the brain stopped reacting to the same sound (habituation) and how well it spotted a new sound (discrimination).

All adults were outpatients at the same clinic.

The two groups scored the same on the Autism Quotient self-report.

They also had the same rate of other mental-health diagnoses.

In short, the paper found no clear brain or survey marker that split mild ASD from other adult referrals.

Chuah et al. (2025) pooled child studies and saw smaller MMN waves in autism.

Vlaskamp et al. (2017) found the same in kids: weaker early change detection but stronger later attention bursts.

Those child studies seem to clash with Emily’s null adult data.

The gap is likely age: brain differences may fade in adults labeled "mild," so questionnaires and single EEG tests lose power.

Maddox et al. (2015) already showed adult self-report screens like the AQ miss too many cases; Emily’s data add brain measures to the same "not good enough" pile.

If you assess adults for possible ASD, do not trust the AQ alone.

Add real-life tasks or caregiver reports.

If you research biomarkers, expect smaller or zero effects in high-functioning adults; kids or lower-functioning groups may show clearer signals.