Imagine walking through a crowded room, full of strangers glaring at you for no known reason. Even the most self-confident person would be intimidated. Well, new research seems to indicate that's exactly how autistic children feel all the time. By showing children pictures of different faces while scanning their brains with an MRI system, scientists discovered that while children in the control group responded negatively to hostile faces but normally to smiling ones, autistic children responded negatively to all faces shown to them. The study also indicates this is not caused by damage or malformation, but rather a lower level of activity in the fusiform region of the amigdala, the part of the brain responsible for facial recognition. These new insights could eventually lead to new treatments for this oftentimes devastating disease.