A big problem with the label "autism" is that it does not seem to map to one, unified, underlying condition.
Intense "special interests" may be useful for some kinds of problem solving but actually maladaptive for others.
Is autism the legacy of humans evolving the ability to innovate?
41–50 of 100 posts
Re: Is autism the legacy of humans evolving the ability to innovate?
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Was that a difficult conversation with your wife about whether to keep trying for kids knowing your first was autistic?
I don't know about this person but I have an acquaintance who is a autistic and has three children, all on the spectrum, and they love them all. It never occurred to them that they should not have more children.
I know a couple that underwent sterilization because they did not want a younger sibling to be burdened with the care of an autistic older brother. They were also concerned that they would not be able to adequately raise another child while also caring their autistic firstborn.
Re: Is autism the legacy of humans evolving the ability to innovate?
#43Interesting.
There's a hypothesis about ADHD that it's a trait of evolution for Hunter-gatherer lifestyle, with even a few studies favoring the opinion. But that doesn't explain many symptoms of ADHD.
Btw, with many 'gifted' children having ADHD, I am curious whether there is any reason / correlation for it.
Re: Is autism the legacy of humans evolving the ability to innovate?
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This article fills a gap in my vocabulary for someone who shares some traits associated with ASD but doesn't suffer from any negative effects, i.e. is not in the scope of the medical autistic spectrum Another phrase you could add to your vocabulary to describe that is "broad autism phenotype" (BAP). People with BAP have significantly more autistic traits than the average person does, but not to the extent that a di…
TIL. Is BAP comorbid with ADD too?
That's a very interesting question. BAP is a subclinical condition. I'm not sure whether you can, strictly speaking, have a subclinical condition in conjunction with a clinical condition–how do you know that the features of the subclinical condition aren't actually symptoms of the clinical condition? (And the word "comorbid" maybe doesn't quite fit–does a subclinical condition really fit under the definition of "morbid"?)
ADHD and ASD have a lot of overlap. A significant minority of individuals with ADHD (20-30%) have a substantial degree of autistic traits. Many of that 20-30% would have enough for a comorbid ASD diagnosis, but not all of them. If you zero in on the individuals with ADHD who have substantial autistic traits but not quite enough to justify the comorbid diagnosis of ASD – do you say those individuals have ADHD with BAP? Or do you say that they just have ADHD, and that the varied symptoms of ADHD can sometimes include autistic traits?
Re: Is autism the legacy of humans evolving the ability to innovate?
#45A big problem with the label "autism" is that it does not seem to map to one, unified, underlying condition. Intense "special interests" may be useful for some kinds of problem solving but actually maladaptive for others.
Baron-Cohen indeed created a tool to measure it based on his theory which he hints at in this interview: he says autism means that you have a high 'systemizing quitient' AND a low EQ. And of course it's a spectrum. I don't know the validity of this, but it's his rather specific definition. (And it's not about specific interests in general.)
Re: Is autism the legacy of humans evolving the ability to innovate?
#46Interesting. Mutations have their uses, but not all. The increasing rates of Autism now are most likely the result of increasingly advanced maternal age for pregnancies. Healthy BMI, cardiovascular fitness, and youth are some of the key factors to a healthy pregnancy. Edit: I didn't mean to say that advanced maternal age is the "only" reason for autism. I was just quoting what I was taught to be one of the main facto…
It’s the Back to Sleep campaign that started in the 90s. https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaav5188/tab-art... Basically, sleeping is important to brain development in new borns and infants and forced back sleeping is hugely disruptive. Hence the increase in autism rates for kids born in 90s and later.
It seems like a large leap from “voles develop social bonding problems when their sleep is disrupted in early life” to “making babies sleep on their backs increases the rate of autism”. Is there any other data that would indicate a correlation between back sleeping in infants and autism rates?
Re: Is autism the legacy of humans evolving the ability to innovate?
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe... but anecdotally we had an autistic son born when my wife was 26. But we later had 4 more children (including 2 more boys) who were born throughout her 30s and none of them are autistic. I think there is more going on than simple advanced maternal age.
Was that a difficult conversation with your wife about whether to keep trying for kids knowing your first was autistic?
No, we never had any sort of conversation of that sort.
Re: Is autism the legacy of humans evolving the ability to innovate?
#48Interesting. There's a hypothesis about ADHD that it's a trait of evolution for Hunter-gatherer lifestyle, with even a few studies favoring the opinion. But that doesn't explain many symptoms of ADHD. Btw, with many 'gifted' children having ADHD, I am curious whether there is any reason / correlation for it.
Then why in the western world do so many adults and medical professionals try to suppress ADHD with amphetamines?
edit: do you happen to have a source to this theory of linking ADHD to the evolution of hunter-gatherers?
Re: Is autism the legacy of humans evolving the ability to innovate?
#49I am so tired of these sorts of articles. Even in a piece proposing that "autism is based on genes that are 70,000 years old and we are basically pattern seekers" they fail to really make the point "Maybe it isn't, per se, a defect at all." I imagine the author is going for that, but the article doesn't really get there. The article comes across like "Autistic guy likes his defect and wants to prettify it by claiming it's a feature not a bug (while we snicker up our sleeves behind his back)."
When do I get to see some headlines asking "Are they really defective? Or did the world just go and get all busier and noisier than in the past while humans kind of mostly stayed the same?"
Re sensory issues (which are often associated with ASD):
My parents couldn't stand noise. They were tyrannical about keeping things quiet so they could sleep.
No one accused them of being autistic. They were just old and set in their ways and spent all or part of their childhoods on a farm where things were quieter than the modern world.
Kids used to be called shy if they weren't social butterflies. Now we take them to a specialist and get them labels like autism and selective mutism and treat them like defective weirdos.
Not everyone is a social butterfly. The human race was never mostly social butterflies.
Also also: social skills are learned behaviors. If kids get less attention from other people and spend all their time staring at a TV or something instead, is it really shocking that they don't have much social savvy these days? Won't this show most obviously in those kids who innately need to work at it to learn it and don't naturally soak it up like a sponge?
(Edited because autocorrect is sometimes an annoying butt.)
Re: Is autism the legacy of humans evolving the ability to innovate?
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sickle cell anemia? 1 gene malaria, two copies a disease (I might have cause wrong).
But that doesn’t explain the multiple genetic and chromosomal disorders that are associated with autism. It’s almost like autism is a side effect of disorders that are associated with cognitive impairment.
Personally I think it's more likely that we are grouping a bunch of distinct disorders under the "Autism" label right now, because psychiatric diagnosis is still quite crude. Origins, mechanisms, etc. could be widely different while still causing some overlap in symptom profile. Imagine if we had to distinguish between different infections using only fuzzy behavioral definitions for example.