Maternal obesity and Type 2 diabetes may be linked to the increased incidence of autism due to accelerated brain growth during embryonic development from sustained mTOR pathway activation.

“So, the neuroscientists have good evidence that in autism, during brain development in the embryo, in the uterus, the brain grows more rapidly than normal. And probably because their mTOR pathways like, just, you know... The persons, if they have obesity and Type 2 diabetes, they're undoubtedly not exercising or, you know, calorie restricted. And so, they never have the metabolic switching, the mTOR pathway, which is the growth mode is on. And so, nerve cells, the neural stem cells proliferate more rapidly, neurons grow more rapidly, connections start forming.”