Study Linking Autism to 'Male Brain' Retracted, Replaced • Hacker News Board

Re: Study Linking Autism to 'Male Brain' Retracted, Replaced

#91

Post by DaiPlusPlus » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 12:34 PM UTC

lostmyoldone wrote: post #84

klyrs wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Managing anxiety in ASD is different to neurotypical people, for example. Speaking as somebody too 'high functioning' for a diagnosis... please elaborate edit: the responses to this feel weird, does anybody have resources for ASD folks experiencing anxiety?

I'm in a similar borderland, I'm diagnosed ADD, and my daughter ADD with autistic traits. Doesn't make me the best person to answer, but I also felt the responses to be weird. But I'll relate some of my experiences, if they might be of some use. I'm not an expert in anxiety by any means, however, one thing that stands out to me is that when my daughter is feeling anxious about something, let's say it would be about t…

Off-topic, but I subscribe to the notion that ADD and ASD share a broader spectrum if not a common neurological pathology. DSM-V changed the rules overnight and now it’s very common for ASD and ADD comorbidity to be positively diagnosed. My personal, lay-person (but diagnosed) opinion is both spectrum definitions are “wrong” and I hope we’ll have more objective diagnostic criteria in the near future.

An issue with ASD is the prevalence of higher intelligence levels that mask occurrence of ADD - until those people advance their education or careers until a point where it becomes a problem - and then it becomes a real problem.

Do you have an opinion or position on the subject of ASD/ADD comorbidity?

Re: Study Linking Autism to 'Male Brain' Retracted, Replaced

#92

Post by belorn » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 12:39 PM UTC

exelius wrote: post #41

daenz wrote: post #2

A quick look at Simon Baron Cohen's tweet[1] (linked from the article) shows that this topic seems extremely divisive and inflammatory to people. Is this retraction and resulting modified study seen as an important victory for people promoting that there are no differences between the "male" and "female" brains? [1] https://twitter.com/sbaroncohen/status/832490232721371136

I wouldn’t say there are no differences between the “male” and “female” brain. I do know my brain wasn’t very happy on the hormones I was born producing — and there’s promising research about how gender identity actually has a basis in physical differences in brain structure [1] which are hypothesized to form based on exposure to various hormone levels during gestation (and which have already been shown to impact gen…

Testosterone and estrogen studies are quite interesting in that they are marinated in cultural bias. A lot of studies that historically linked aggression with testosterone or estrogen with mood swings have later been found to be on shaky ground.

Funny enough, estrogen has also been linked to increased aggression just as testosterone. You take a baboon and look at when females act most violently and it spikes just as estrogen spikes. Same for violence in women prisons. At the same time, depression also spikes which further suggest that estrogen causes wild mood swings.

But when we look at more modern studies a new pattern is emerging. For high social status individuals we see the exact same pattern as old studies, but as we go down the social ladder the picture change. For testosterone the current findings seem to link it to increases learned behavior when a individual has their social status challenge. That response in baboons is always more violence, but directed at the nearest individuals below them on the social ladder. For estrogen you see a drop in violence as you go down the social status ladder, while isolationing behavior goes up.

An other relative recent finding is that hormone secretion increase in men after winning social status. Unsurprising that correlated in animal studies when males has the highest probability of reproduction.

Hormones are useful when explaining behavior linked to reproduction, and in that you do get some gender differences. I would however be a bit cautious. A good talk I would recommend is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bnSY4L3V8s&t=30m17s as it explore this a bit further.

Re: Study Linking Autism to 'Male Brain' Retracted, Replaced

#93

Post by bellerose » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 6:25 PM UTC

drilldrive wrote: post #85

bellerose wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Escapism might just be the case. I know from my own experience gaming was just a way to focus on something else besides a cruel reality. Eventually moved to programming and realized later what was happening. I'm sure if life had been different, I would have done a different career and one that's more social with the focus in a social aspect.

Escapism is certainly an aspect of autism. My personal theory is that autism is akin to really dense hair, in that your mind is less flexible, and thus themes of constancy arise early in development. This analogy implies both that an autist would be highly structured in thought, which is Simon Baron Cohen's pioneering idea, and would be very low in prowess of executive function, as the mind would be too inflexible to…

I'm surprised you associate it with autism and not gender dysphoria.