Autism in One Sentence

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How would you summarize the autism spectrum in just one sentence? I'm looking for what the whole spectrum has in common, the core essentials that make autism. Or as Plato might put it, "Describe the form of autism."

Autistic people have brains that develop differently, causing a disconnect between the way they think and the way the rest of the world thinks.

The standard stereotype presented by the news media around the world is: Temple Grandin. Temple Grandin had noticeable difficulties processing auditory information vs a gift for visual thinking/thinking in pictures/thinking like cows think/cows are thought to think. At the same time, no two persons with autism are identical.

Autism is the ability to enjoy solitude, see the world from a different perspective than most others, and to truly know yourself.

Autism means that the brain works differently. Not better, not worse, just different.

I can only speak from my own personal experience. For me Autism means that I just don't have an innate human to human connection with other people, and because of this I don't feel entirely human.

Autism: A difference in how the brain processes information which leads to differences in speech, touch, other senses, and eventually perspective.

Being Autistic is like being a cat living in a house with 98 dogs!

Autistic brains develop connections differently from neurotypical brains, and this causes people who have them to experience and interact with the the world in ways that isolate them from others.

Autistic people have differences from the norm in terms of the way our brain perceives the world, thinks about things, and reacts both inwardly and outwardly to those thoughts and perceptions.

(IMHO, the "social impairment as central" idea of autism is completely ridiculous if you look at the actual data about what's different in us.)

Autism: when a baby's crying troubles you and you want it to stop, while a dog's yelping troubles you and you actually want to help.

I'm not like everybody else, because I have autism and I see that as a good thing.

As I am diagnosed with Asperger's, I can't really describe autism because Asperger's isn't techinically part of the autism spectrum. However, as the two neurological conditions are similar in a few cases, I can offer my personal opinion. Asperger's is knowing I see differently from all the neurotypical human beans (tee hee) that exist on the world. While it often makes me sad to know I am alone, I enjoy being unique!

I see lots of responses essentially saying "It causes one to perceive or experience the world differently." That could be said of many conditions: schizoids, downs, etc. I'm looking for an explanation that includes how it is perceived differently that makes that differentness uniquely autistic and not something else. Like if you were doing it for schizoid then you'd say (with the underlined part being what makes its differentness distinct from other things), "It causes one to experience the world without joy derived social relationships, but rather from other things."

A little bit more detailed then...

Autism is mainly a social challenge - communications, emotions, socialisations being the biggest challenges.