Scientific Brain Linked to Autism

squoozer writes "The BBC is reporting that a leading scientist in area of Developmental Psychopathology, Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, is indicating that there is good chance that there is a scientific basis to the observed phenomenon that children with highly analytical parents are more likely to be autistic. He believes the genes which make someone analytical may also impair their social and communication skills. A weakness in these areas is the key characteristic of autism."

I'm sorry ma'am...

[faloi (738831)]

But your child is an engineer.

I analyzed the article

[by Anonymous Coward]

but I can't communicate my thoughts.

old news....

[scenestar (828656)]

There used to be reports of higher rates of Autist kids in the region around silicon valley back during the dotcom boom.

Re:old news....

[gEvil (beta) (945888)]

I remember reading this article in Wired [wired.com] a number of years ago (I would guess probably around December 2001 from the date on it). Interesting read, especially if you're curious about autism and Asperger's.

Fascinating fact

[Geeky (90998)]

Professor Baron Cohen is also the cousin of Sascha Baron Cohen, AKA. Ali G.

Pertinent question

[why-is-it (318134)]

Professor Baron Cohen is also the cousin of Sascha Baron Cohen, AKA. Ali G.

Autism - is it good, or is it whack?

Wired article a few years back

[Andrew Lenahan (912846)]

This reminds me of a really good article in Wired from maybe 2002 or so, about how autism rates were skyrocketing in Silicon Valley, far too much to be just coinidence, better diagnosis, etc.

Anyone else remember it? It doesn't seem to be on their website (tried searching "autism" and "autistic"). It came with a quiz and everything. Anyone? Anyone?

Re:Wired article a few years back

[rebill (87977)]

It was late 2001, google to the rescue [wired.com].

Re:Wired article a few years back

[Autistic (613287)]

There are a variety of ideas around the causes of Autism. Some are genetic, some are environmental. Most likely it is a combination of them.

Autism is a spectrum disorder. That means it has a wide variety of symptoms and conditions. It means that people classified as "autistic" can be anywhere from mildly to sevearly affected. The big thing to keep in mind is that they are not all the same, probably not even similar in some cases. It is a wide variety of conditions captured in one term: Autism. The most common symptom between them is childhood development delays and weakness in language and social development.

There are reports that Autism increased in the 90's due to the use of Mercury [newmediaexplorer.org] in childhood vaccines [chetday.com]. The vaccine preservative in question was discontinued in the US a few years ago, but is still in use in other parts of the world.

The combined result is likely something like:
1. Some genetic combinations can cause autistic trates immediately.
2. Some genetic combinations can cause latent autistic tendencies that must be activated by external force, like mild metal contamination (mercury, lead, other heavy metals).
3. Some genetic combinations are not succeptable to autistic trates. However, extreme contamination can still cause developmental damage.

How these different traits manifest themselves may depend on both the genetic condition, and the severity of the contamination.

Kim Peek & NASA

[eldavojohn (898314)]

A while back, NASA conducted a fifteen year anniversary study [space.com] on the savant [wisconsinm...ociety.org] known as Kim Peek [wikipedia.org]. Peek was born with a strange brain deformity known as macrocephaly which results in the two hemispheres of the brain being linked due to a pocket of water at the base of the brain.

Now, there has been a lot of speculation about how neurons work and what makes someone autistic. I once had a lengthy conversation with James Olds of George Mason's Krasnow Institute [gmu.edu] and asked him about Peek. Olds explained to me that it's very mysterious how savants develop. I asked him if Peek had an abnormally large cortex but he dismissed this, citing that elephants are not geniuses. He also gave me an anecdotal story of a Harvard football player that injured his shoulder blade as the star quarter back. When they x-rayed him, they also found out that his head was mostly filled with water and the result was a severe lack of brain tissue. However, he was a 4.0 grade point average student. I asked Dr. Olds if Peek's neurons might be more densely populated but he also dismissed this saying that neurons are huge on nutrient consumption and if they grow too closely together, they will kill each other.

Anyone care to take a stab at this? Can anyone speculate on this?

Well....

[Otter (3800)]

1) There's nothing new here. This seems to be a review of both theories and data that have already been linked here.

2) I was about to joke about this, but it appears that the Professor actually is the cousin of Sacha "Ali G" Baron Cohen.

Yup. We're still cavemen.

[ScentCone (795499)]

Smarty-pants couples (of the truly sharp, science-minded variety) having kids is only recently useful (or even likely), in the primate-history scheme of things. Just shows that it takes natural selection a while to catch up with the fact that we're not very far removed from small, pack-like groups living hand to mouth in primitive, hostile circumstances and not living much past 30 years old. Wait... that sounds like my neighborhood!

That being said, a close friend is an occupational therapist with a lot of experience in helping out kids experiencing the full spectrum of autistic characteristics. She's indicated that a somewhat unscientific review of those kids' parents (hundreds of which she's met and gotten to know) would completely resonate with the findings mentioned in the article. She and her husband, both sharp, analytical people, just gave birth - and not without some trepidation. Just in case, they watched re-runs of "Pimp My Ride" before conceiving.

Makes sense to me...

[Two99Point80 (542678)]

Being autistic, for me, means having to analyze social situations and interactions on-the-fly. Emulating intuition, I suppose. But having to be analytical also means getting to be analytical, looking beneath the surface to gain understanding of what's going on and why. Tools to achieve this will vary depending on one's ability to process complex material, but having a sensible explanation makes it much easier for me to be cooperative, appropriately social, and so forth.

This is a lot of work, but IME is well worth it. See the conference papers at my website [davespicer.org] for more on one person's experience of autism...

'Social skills'

[0123456 (636235)]

I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here. As far as I can see, it's basically lying and bullshitting, which surely can't be hard for any smart person to learn? I'm sure most of us are pretty successful at bullshitting our bosses, if nothing else.

I think what really upsets the average person is not that 'geeks' don't have 'social skills', but that they just can't be bothered to bullshit with someone who has little to nothing in common with them. Why bother? What's the point in spending an evening talking about football scores when you could be doing something constructive and interesting instead? I don't get it.

Stop the presses!

[murderlegendre (776042)]

I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.

Ladies and gentlemen, I submit to you our new Slashdot motto.

Re:'Social skills'

[SeekerDarksteel (896422)]

It is far more than lying and bullshitting. In a social situation, most people can talk naturally. They simply say what comes to mind. For someone with autism, they have little to no intuation. They literally have no concept of what to say or do. If it is severe enough, the only way they can perform in social situations is to observe how others act and react and mimic them when they are in similar situations. This is much more analytical than intuitive to do. If they can't choose a reaction they can't create one on the fly and will just freeze and say very little ("ah, i see") or nothing at all.

They also generally have a difficult time understanding and picking up on more subtle forms of communication. They only hear the words. They don't hear the emotion or inflection or notice the facial expressions, and they have a difficult time reading (or listening as it were) between the lines. Furthermore, they have a difficult time extrapolating the thoughts and feelings of another person. They can't "put themselves in the other person's shoes." Basically, if something isn't said, it doesn't exist to them. That is a crippling disadvantage in social situations.

I tend to believe the converse

[foreverdisillusioned (763799)]

I think that people without analytical genes lack the ability to communicate and socialize effectively or even sanely--I mean hell, just look at the world around you. The only reason why we analytical types have a problem with these things is because we are in the minority.

If the majority of the population were like us, it would be the nonanalytical, impulsive, controled-by-their-emotions people that would be viewed as antisocial.

I have always suspected it myself

[erroneus (253617)]

It's refreshing to hear that what I have suspected now has a little more weight... that there is a connection between those who are more actively analytical and autism. That said, to be an idiot-savant is quite rare, where most autistic forms make a person mostly or completely incapable of unassisted living with nothing else that would otherwise be interesting or novel about them. (Is that too insensitive a way to put it?)

In any case, like so many other slashdotters, I suspect my analytical disconnection (my own handicap in it's own way) has always been a hinderance in terms of social skills and adaptation. I have learned, however, that I can compensate to a degree (though not completely by any stretch) by reaching out to the more emotional part of myself and allow it to do some of the thinking for me. This results in at least a mildly child-like acclimation, but I believe it's a start for most as I have found myself growing quite a bit through such exercises. As for the rest of the balance, I have found that learning how to transmit the impression of confidence, competence and wisdom, while trying not to appear arrogant and superior, makes up for anything else. I have found that most people are really very shallow and don't require much illusion to be convinced... just dress the dress, walk the walk, talk the talk and the people are believers.

Easier said than done, of course -- it takes a lot of practice and a great many episodes in life where you closely identify with Data from ST:TNG.

Dumb Spouses

[Brownstar (139242)]

This is just more proof that I should pick the Hot dumb Cheerleader type for a wife. Honestly, it is for the kid's benefit.

Re:Evolution

[murderlegendre (776042)]

This is more accurately a social restraint on nerds breeding. I've never seen any information to suggest that there is a lower rate of fertility among autistic / aspergers individuals, or even common nerds.

Over the large span of human evolution, characteristics such as physical strength, size, agression and so forth had much more to do with the ability of an individual to procreate, as opposed to the ability to smooth-talk a member of the opposite sex.

Our modern social conventions are obviously much 'nicer', but as for the positive / negative consequences for our gene pool, only time will tell.

Re:Evolution

[Fordiman (689627)]

They linked autism to very specific skills: math and science.

The point is that a balance is needed. Slashdotters: find yourself an artsy chick to get down with; one who's pretty smart and asthetically pleasing. Add a little creativity to them logical sperm you've been carrying around.

Re:pwn3d

[op12 (830015)]

Most of the geekiest people here at Slashdot lack the necessary tools to hold a decent conversation; if two slashdotters marry and produce offspring, the result would be dangerous to society!

This effect is now known as Slashdautism.

Re:pwn3d

[mfh (56)]

And you smoke what flavor of crack now?

Seriously.

I was mostly joking around, but on another note -- crack comes in flavours now???

Re:Huh?

[smitty_one_each (243267)]

This looks like as good a place as any to mention the ecological fallacy [wikipedia.org].

The term comes from a 1950 paper by William Robinson. For each of the 48 states in the US as of the 1930 census, he computed the literacy rate and the proportion of the population born outside the US. He showed that these two figures were associated with a positive correlation of 0.53 -- in other words, the greater the proportion of immigrants in a state, the higher its average literacy. However, when individuals are considered, the correlation was 0.11 -- immigrants were on average less literate than native citizens. Robinson showed that the positive correlation at the level of state populations was because immigrants tended to settle in states where the native population was more literate. He cautioned against deducing conclusions about individuals on the basis of population-level, or "ecological" data.

In other words, it can be helpful and interesting to scramble up some statistics on a question for a study omelette, but we have certainly destroyed some information in the process. Ex post facto attempts to opine about the original materials will leave us with egg on the face.
Elsewhere on Wikipedia, Einstein [wikiquote.org] is on record for doubting whether the Almighty throws dice with the universe. Allow me to second that from the standpoint of refusing to fret. Do what you consider Destiny would have you do with respect to your reproduction; rejoice in any outcome.

Re:Finally!

[Ignignot (782335)]

While the article does say that people with highly analytical brains tend to have more Autistic children, it does not say that people with poor social skills tend to have highly analytical brains. I think it is a common fallacy around here that not knowing how to interact with other people well is some kind of badge proving how smart they are. Or to put it the slashdot way, even if you have a really fast Athlon 64 system, if you are connecting to the world with a dialup you aren't going to be able to play an online FPS well.