Abstract: It has been suggested that one of the underlying causes of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is the presence of a High-Pass Filter Effect applied to cognitive perception (DellAnna, 2018a). Such an effect leads to an enhancement of local details at the expense of global patterns. This paper proposes a possible cause for the High-Pass Filter Effect, which is increased columnar density.
It is already known that brains of people affected with ASD tend to have denser cortical col- umn fields (Casanova, Buxhoeveden, Switala, & Roy, 2002). This paper, however, explains the way in which denser cortical columns fields lead to sharper, narrower categorizations in the intermediate perceptual areas of the cortex, which in turn induce the High-Pass Filter Effect and, consequently, most of the symptoms characteristic of ASD.