children. Thus, a genomic imprinting with slight maternal bias would supposedly be associated with factors such as decreased growth, more tractable behavior, and an empathizing and less self-centered personality causing less demands on the mother. The opposite would occur for a slight paternal bias. However, an extreme genomic imprinting in favor of maternal genes is argued to cause psychosis such as in schizophrenia spectrum disorders, while an extreme genomic imprinting in favor of paternal genes is argued to cause autism spectrum disorders. This claims the symptoms of schizophrenia are caused by overempathizing, resulting in delusions and paranoia, while those of autism are caused by underempathizing. Specifically, autism is considered to be a tendency to under-mentalize and under-empathize in a way that treats people as objects, while schizotypy is considered to be the inverse tendency to over-mentalize and over-empathize until objects are treated as people. Certain neuroimaging findings lend support to the hypothesis, although neuroimaging in schizophrenia is controversial due to the neurological impact of neuroleptic medication, and other neuroimaging findings have results inconsistent with the hypothesis. Traits such as the ambivalence seen in negative symptoms versus the single-minded focus of autistic special interests are also posited to be distinctions, although the pronounced similarity and overlap between negative symptomatology seen in the two disorders weakens this claim substantially. The imprinted brain hypothesis was first proposed in 2008 by biologist Bernard Crespi and sociologist Christopher Badcock, neither of who had previous experience with cognitive science or behavioural genetics. Publishing their first presentation of their claims in the influential cognitive science journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences, the hypothesis attracted significant attention, both interested and critical. Arguments of proponents The imprinted brain hypothesis has some similarities with the extreme male brain theory of autism, but they come apart significantly. Proponents of the imprinted brain hypothesis state that the hypothesized imprinting mechanism may have detrimental interactions when extreme genomic imprinting occurs in the opposite sex, which they claim provides an explanation for something that would be a 'problem' for the extreme male brain claims—specifically, that female autism tends to be particularly severe. This is also used as an explanation for the relative severity of schizophrenia in males. However, proponents of the extreme male brain theory believe sexual dimorphism in autism severity is already explained by diagnostic discrepancy. In both autism and schizophrenia, the theory of mind is impaired, which the imprinted brain hypothesis posits occurs