I was reading about how hormones can effect the brain's plasticity. Specifically:

"Gonadal hormones alter the brain and make the male and female brains more or less responsive in different environments. One way that they have such an influence is by altering the susceptibility of cortical neurons to the effects of environmental stimuli. For example, Janice Juraska found that exposure to gonadal hormones perinatally determines the later ability of environmental stimulation to alter the synaptic organization of the cerebellum. Furthermore, she showed that environmentally induced changes in the hippocampus and neocortex are affected differently by gonadal hormones. For instance, the female hippocampus is far more plastic in new environments than the male hippocampus, and this plasitcity depends on estrogen."

Reading this immediately made me think of autism, and how it is predominant in males. Could estrogen therapy be a possible treatment for children with autism?

An interesting website I found by googling autism hormone, is:-

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20041113/bob8.asp

Many sites are available with deeper information of the possible causes, and maybe there need to be different 'cures' for different cases.