Perhaps we are seeing evolution unfold in real time. The human brain is under constant pressure from modern life: technology, nonstop information, and increasingly complex social systems. Autism may not be a limitation, but the emergence of a cognitive style better suited to these challenges. Some researchers suggest we are at the beginning of a divergence in human cognition. If so, autism could be one of the first signs of a broader shift in how our brains develop.
A human-accelerated neuron type potentially underlying autism in humans
131–140 of 178 posts
Re: A human-accelerated neuron type potentially underlying autism in humans
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just noticed (and got a chuckle out of) something: To me it looks like you first "assumed malice", got called out and now don't want to be assumed malignant yourself. Thanks for the chuckle! But in seriousness: would you mind describing how you interpret your own participation in this thread? I'm fascinated by this behaviour, but I suspect it's as "easy" as you not being able to interpret the original comment in mo…
I said > but I understand you probably didn’t mean it that way. Which I assumed the person I was talking to originally would see, read, and understand to mean that their comment was rude but I’m sure they didn’t mean it that way. Instead, a bunch of others jumped in to interpret it a different way. I don’t see how I supposedly have assumed malice when I literally said that the OP probably wasn’t being malicious in a…
You are correct, I'm not sure how I missed the second part of your original comment, my apologies!
(I thought I could edit my first comment, but I can't, so this comment will have to do.)
Re: A human-accelerated neuron type potentially underlying autism in humans
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s called masking. I have level 1 ASD and rated pretty high in masking when tested. I show up the way I’m expected to show up. I don’t let people see what it costs me. I deal with that later in private.
You can be an introvert without having autism. A lot of people “mask” it doesn’t mean they’re autistic.
You can’t peer inside someone’s head to know the motivations behind why a person acts the way they do. A autistic person will have different causal reasons for acting in a way that might look like an introvert from the outside.
I ran across a video that went over this and all the autistic reasons in the examples were the ones that resonated with me. I had even spent an hour debating back and forth with a therapist a few months earlier about one of the examples the video gave. The therapist was trying to apply the neurotypical view, and I was unknowingly arguing for the autistic view, trying to explain that I didn’t feel the way he was saying, but he couldn’t understand the nuance I was trying to explain. It was very frustrating. This happened many times, and I finally quit the day before getting the results from the testing.
I used to think like you. That’s why I actually got tested; I wanted to know for sure. It took over 6 months and cost around $3k. It’s not something a person is going to do on a whim to justify their fidget spinner collection. When I got the results, I spent the whole time asking about the tests. Could I have gamed it, objective vs subjective tests, etc. I spent decades trying to figure out what’s “wrong” with me. I didn’t come to this lightly or because it’s popular. It was the first thing that actually fit and made sense. And the more I learn, the more it fits and makes sense. The visibility in the mainstream helps people like me find the answers we have been relentless searching for our whole life, that everyone overlooks because of masking.
Re: A human-accelerated neuron type potentially underlying autism in humans
#134> In summary, we introduce a general principle governing neuronal evolution and suggest that the exceptionally high prevalence of autism in humans may be a direct result of natural selection for lower expression of a suite of genes that conferred a fitness benefit to our ancestors while also rendering an abundant class of neurons more sensitive to perturbation. I don't see how the title "Autism may be the price of hu…
The idea is that the same evolutionary process that rapidly selected human brains for intelligence also selected for autism as a side effect. Perhaps because the genes are proximally linked or it’s just the way brains work or some other random reason. It is NOT saying that for specific individuals intelligence is correlated with autism. That is actually not the case.
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Re: A human-accelerated neuron type potentially underlying autism in humans
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there now? High functioning autism exists, but autism in general doesn't seem to give any advantage to general intelligence. And the low end of functioning in autism is really, really low.
An observation I've made is that the most people ("the general population") will compromise on hard facts without pause to attain social goals. I.e.: They will follow instructions from a workplace superior with zero push-back even if the instructions are total nonsense or impossible to physically implement. It's a rare breed (1-2%) of the population that will actively push back, insist on facts, and stick to only the…
Watching a foreign language movie without subtitles might allow someone to notice visual components others might miss on the first pass, but it definitely doesn’t give the viewer a better understanding of the movie.
Re: A human-accelerated neuron type potentially underlying autism in humans
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep it's like they're grouping all kinds of mental disabilities as autism
It is the so-called "autists" who do that. It's become a vanity diagnosis for the rich and powerful. Look at the case of Kanye West https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/sick-people-are-sick There was this study that found that "autists" have 5 different diseases https://www.princeton.edu/news/2025/07/09/major-autism-study... If it wasn't something people were flocking to like neurotypicals that is now a valuable part…
You’re arguing semantics here. You seem to acknowledge there are diagnosable issues, both with the subtype article and older DSM, but because it’s under one umbrella currently you want to throw it out instead of acknowledging the issues?
Re: A human-accelerated neuron type potentially underlying autism in humans
#137If their hypothesis holds, it sort of reframes autism (and maybe schizophrenia) as evolutionary trade-offs
Re: A human-accelerated neuron type potentially underlying autism in humans
#138There's an ambiguity in the title, reflected in some comments below. It can be understood either as the claim that "in a particular human being, to be intelligent as measured by IQ means that you are more likely to be autistic", suggesting for example a trade-off between social and general intelligence; or the claim that "the evolution of the human brain and so human intelligence as such, which characterizes both tho…
Basically, it's a population-level story about evolutionary trade-offs, not a psychological profile
Re: A human-accelerated neuron type potentially underlying autism in humans
#139My father’s (extended) side of the family seems to have once a generation severe autistic case and many of us less severely on the spectrum. Doesn’t seem to exist on my mother’s side with any regularity with similar cohort sizes. Lots of PhDs and other left brain super functionals on that side that seems to correlate to intellectual attainment as well.
If your father's side carries some of those sensitizing variants, it could explain both the cluster of traits and the generational occurrence of more severe ASD cases. That actually fits eerily well with the picture this paper is painting
Re: A human-accelerated neuron type potentially underlying autism in humans
#140I'd thought that by living indoors and in otherwise controlled environments that there's not really much evolutionary pressure in any particular direction. Higher intelligence isn't a specific requirement to have (many) children live healthy lives.
But the evolutionary pressures discussed in the paper are much older