Interesting. 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?
Is autism the legacy of humans evolving the ability to innovate?
81–90 of 100 posts
Re: Is autism the legacy of humans evolving the ability to innovate?
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
That’s actually not what made the connection for me. I noticed my son developed much more quickly than his peers and we stomach slept him. Also my friends got much worse sleep than we did, which surely meant so did their babies. My son hated back sleeping. He’d sleep 3 hours at a time versus through the night. So I looked up when forced back sleeping became a thing and it was strongly correlated to when autism exploded. I think there may be a Euro study. Then I read this recently https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/38/eaba0398
And I emailed the authors about my theory and they sent me the voles study. They can’t do a human study for ethical reasons. Maybe they can find a natural study ala Israel and peanut butter puffs but forced back sleeping is prevalent worldwide as it reduces SIDS. We were comfortable stomach sleeping my son with good air circulation because of this study: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/...
Back sleeping may have adverse side effects beyond low sleep quality for baby and parents. Frankly, it’s well established that sleep matters a lot for all brains. It’s not hard to make the leap that reduced sleep quality during important stages of life might matter a lot.
Re: Is autism the legacy of humans evolving the ability to innovate?
#83I 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…
Shy kids are still shy kids. When you can't absorb it naturally on your own even given a normal level of exposure and it's negatively impacting your life, that's autism.
Re: Is autism the legacy of humans evolving the ability to innovate?
#84Interesting. 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?
Cos shit is actually debilitating and positively mal adapted to modern life.
Re: Is autism the legacy of humans evolving the ability to innovate?
#85I 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…
Shy kids are still shy kids. When you can't absorb it naturally on your own even given a normal level of exposure and it's negatively impacting your life, that's autism.
A friend of mine had a child diagnosed with selective mutism. This means she literally couldn't manage to speak in some social settings, something that might more prosaically be called being tongue-tied.
Telling coaches, teachers, etc the diagnosis made things so much worse that she went back to saying "She's just shy." to explain her daughter's social challenges.
That word was not chosen at random. I was involved in a voluntary health and welfare organization for a time and had a spiffy title, though no pay, and lots of people turned to me for support or advice or to share their stories and just talk with someone who would understand.
At one time, I was getting referrals. People would say "You should email this lady about your difficult child." and give them my address.
It never turned into paid work but it is the reason I began blogging.
Re: Is autism the legacy of humans evolving the ability to innovate?
#86I am now quite curious about this book. One thing which seemes puzzling and distinctive about autism is that it appears to manifest much more in males than females (I think somewhat over 4x) - I'd be interested to see how Baron-Cohen addresses that.
Women and girls with autism are believed to be much better at hiding their social awkwardness and display more socially accepted behaviour. This leads to more anxiety and depression, which makes correct diagnosis even harder.
Re: Is autism the legacy of humans evolving the ability to innovate?
#87A 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.
I can't look it up now, but some theories define it as "context-blindness".
Re: Is autism the legacy of humans evolving the ability to innovate?
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Somali children in Sweden are 3-4x more likely to be Autistic than Swedish children: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23221308_Prevalence... 73% of pregnant Somali women in Sweden are Vitamin D deficient vs 5% of pregnant Swedish women: https://www.alliedacademies.org/articles/vitamin-dbinding-pr...
I thought a complaint that Somalis in Minnesota had was that autism in their kids was disproportionately (not sure about exact meaning of this term) "low-functioning"
Low/high functioning isn't really a specific medical term, but basically it just means if you can live on your own or not.
If you're not only high functioning but gifted* then you're "twice exceptional".
* school term that supposedly means exceptionally intelligent, sometimes gets you to a different school/class for smart kids, but actually it's like special education for kids too fast/nerdy to be in regular classes without going nuts
Re: Is autism the legacy of humans evolving the ability to innovate?
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
autism does correlate with birth month https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3296777/?report... and does seem to be more prevalent in particular latitudes, though that may be an effect of social/industrial/economic conditions.
Somali children in Sweden are 3-4x more likely to be Autistic than Swedish children: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23221308_Prevalence... 73% of pregnant Somali women in Sweden are Vitamin D deficient vs 5% of pregnant Swedish women: https://www.alliedacademies.org/articles/vitamin-dbinding-pr...
This is a very good example of how difficult can be the biology sometimes.
Different social strata.
Parents working in different jobs, maybe more prone to go in contact with dangerous substances or living in more contaminated areas.
Different diets, maybe relying more in very cheap food choices.
Different country, with different resources and laws that could lead this women to not be fully aware of the local opportunities available in their pregnancy, or how to ask for their rights.
Recent campaigns of hate against immigrants in Swedden, that could lead to a worse treatment in hospitals by one or a few racist members of the staff.
Not able to pay for a premium healthcare while giving birth.
And immigrants live in countries with poor environmental laws and endure a dangerous travel that can damage their health. Dangerous levels of heavy metals were found in workers that had to burn hardware and recycle computers in a third world country to pay for their travel to Europe, for example. Somali people also eat a lot of migrant fish (aka: mercury with fins).
Vitamin D is just one in a thousand of possible explanations
Re: Is autism the legacy of humans evolving the ability to innovate?
#90Interesting. 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…
> The increasing rates of Autism now are most likely the result of increasingly advanced maternal age for pregnancies Wiki seems to say it's either even split between parents, or leans paternal: > It is not known whether mutations that arise spontaneously in autism and other neuropsychiatric disorders come mainly from the mother or the father, or whether the mutations are associated with parental age.[74] However, re…
> the increased awareness and access to medical professionals could also explain an upward trend in diagnosis.
I don't see how any other hypothesis can even be considered until this is controlled for. How many people diagnosed as autistic today would have, had they lived in the past, been considered as having mental illness or intellectual disability? Would those who are high-functioning even be diagnosed as having anything at all, or just thought of as eccentric or a little touched?