{"id":240781,"date":"2026-07-14T00:41:59","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T05:41:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/brains-of-teens-with-autism-tune-in-less-to-unfamiliar-voices-study-finds"},"modified":"2026-07-14T00:41:59","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T05:41:59","slug":"brains-of-teens-with-autism-tune-in-less-to-unfamiliar-voices-study-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/brains-of-teens-with-autism-tune-in-less-to-unfamiliar-voices-study-finds","title":{"rendered":"Brains of teens with autism \u2018tune in\u2019 less to unfamiliar voices, study finds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/brains-of-teens-with-autism-tune-in-less-to-unfamiliar-voices-study-finds.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Like other teenagers, teens on the autism spectrum are itching to exercise their social muscles. They hope for new friends, fun with people who share their interests, maybe even a romantic relationship.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAdolescence is a moment of opportunity for these kids,\u201d said Daniel Abrams, Ph.D., clinical associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford Medicine. \u201cThey want to build friendships.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But spreading their social wings is challenging for teens with autism. A new Stanford Medicine-led study, <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1073\/pnas.2601227123\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/i>, sheds light on a key factor: how the brains of teenagers with autism handle the sounds of unfamiliar voices. Unlike neurotypical teenagers, the reward centers in autistic teens\u2019 brains don\u2019t become increasingly responsive to strangers\u2019 voices as they mature, the research found.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Like other teenagers, teens on the autism spectrum are itching to exercise their social muscles. They hope for new friends, fun with people who share their interests, maybe even a romantic relationship. \u201cAdolescence is a moment of opportunity for these kids,\u201d said Daniel Abrams, Ph.D., clinical associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1495,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-240781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-health","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240781\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}