What do you think causes Autism?

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I currently have an article about Aspie-quiz with an editor at "Psychiatry Research". This article, if accepted, will be a very firm confirmation that the neurodiversity-concept is valid. Probably the first one as well. For obvious reasons, I cannot post it here or on shiftjournal.

Even if all caused by a single “gene”?

Actually the statement above is not less true if you replace the word “unless” with the phrase “regardless whether or not”...

Being the result of a split in groups or introgression does not grant some magical protection from the processes of evolution and natural selection.

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It gets really fun when you consider an identical DNA sequence can code for different proteins, depending on both junk DNA and also chemical triggers attached to the DNA (and possibly other things as well - this is not well-understood at all). If you were to clone someone (so you had two people with identical DNA) and alter ANY of the triggers outside of the DNA itself in the clone, you would end up with two people who are so different in every way, shape and form that only a geneticist could tell they were genetically the same.

Because twins don't show particularly noticeable differences early on, and because studies on "identical twins" usually take place on people who have grown up and appear identical rather than are genetically identified as identical, there is simply no way to know how many "non-identical twins" are really "identical" at the genetic level, and therefore no way of knowing just how easy or difficult it is for the environment to alter how genes are expressed.



I go back to the example of chimps and humans. The overlap when both species lived together as a unified community was very, very, very long. Clearly, both species survived, so the traits that were successful in one species did NOT supplant the traits that were successful in the other. It follows that, for the period of overlap, there was actually an evolutionary advantage to BOTH species in the other existing. If there was not, then communities in which only one or the other existed would have replaced (by natural selection) the ones in which both existed.

It therefore also follows that very closely related species can exist in a symbiotic fashion, although natural selection does imply that this should be somewhat of an exception rather than a rule. However, the fact that such exceptions existed implies that such exceptions will have arisen other times as well.

However, it doesn't stop there. We've not even got into the really complicated part. Evolution is not, as was once thought, a nice and simple tree-like structure, with branches that diverge. It's much messier. Evolution includes examples of branches merging into each other to form a conglomerate species. It also includes examples of genes getting transferred by one means or another from one species into another. (This last one would include retroviruses - which embed genetic code into your DNA - that also borrow DNA from their hosts. It's only in recent times we've found viruses and bacteria can do this. The practical upshot is that a virus that can cross species can transfer DNA between those species. It does happen, it has been observed, and it's playing merry hell with simpler, idealized textbooks on the subject.)

Finally (and those still reading can wipe the sweat from their brow now), although DNA does eventually shed unnecessary material, it takes a very long time. It takes even longer when there's no actual immediate benefit to shedding the material versus simply deactivating it or altering the codons to mean something else. This is why mustard has more genetic material than humans, for example. Indeed, some fungi have over 20x the DNA of humans in their genome. It's extremely doubtful they're 20x more complex, though I have to admit I've met mushrooms I've regarded as more intelligent than some of my former schoolteachers.

Ok, well, almost finally. THIS is the last part, honestly! It's now been discovered that there's quite a bit of genetic material that goes into making cells copy reliably, that people with less of this specific genetic material will have shorter lifespans (on average) because the number of errors in copying gets too big. Every family with a preponderance of people who've lived over 100 and have been tested have more of this specific material than those families who have more "normal" lifespans. There's no evolutionary advantage to humans in the longer lifespans - indeed, for the majority of societies from paleolithic times through to the early middle ages, old people consumed far more resources than they could provide, were less mobile (bad news in nomadic tribes especially) and offered no real advantage.

Yet the genetic variation persisted. It survived in virtually every society to some extent and even found niches where it offered an advantage, becoming the dominant form. If we were to believe natural selection only picks one survivor or automatically condemns the nominally less fit species, we simply could not explain the genetic evidence we have in front of us. We have proof, solid genetic proof, that species can - and do - find it to their advantage to actively support and maintain strains that should not survive if natural selection were completely blind.

(This is not just true in humans, either. We've evidence of many species - even as primitive as early crocodillian lifeforms - actively working to maintain multiple forms where one or more of those forms would have died out without active support from the others. This does not make the theory of evolution wrong, but it does mean that you can't boil it down to four words "survival of the fittest" and hope to be remotely correct. Darwin wrote a book, not a post-it note. We can assume, then, that he was perfectly well aware that it was going to take at least a book to describe.)

I'll believe that when somebody has proved it.



No, but when lineages split they can slowly diverge communication signals without these traits getting selected out. When the populations mix again, differences can be mixed in the same population, and it will then take a while before one of the variants get extinct. The Out-of-Africa hypothesis says that bottlenecks characterize the evolution of modern humans, not splits and remixing. In such a scenario, differences in communication cannot evolve.

Personally, I don't even think Pan is our direct ancestors. We happened to co-exist with Pan for a long time, and introgression between our lineages makes it appear that we are more closely related than is the case. There are other extinct homonid lineages that has more features in common with humans than the Pan lineage has.



The issue if one or both lineages survive is complex. If there is extinsive hybridization, chances are that only the hybrid species will survive. If there is only occassional introgression, no hybrid vigor will develop, nor any stable hybrid populations. In this case, chances are that only gene transfer will occur, and the two populations could live side by side. If the case is intermediate, there could be a long coexistance followed by a slow decline in one of the populations.




Yes, agreed.

At this point I feel comfortable interpreting the genetic algorithm outside the venue of individuals, as noted in the passage above. Consider looking at any individual’s genes as shared resources of the larger system. This view is accompanied by not looking at the individual as the level and context through which evolution operates. This creates an opportunity to observe evolution outside our human obsession with noting parts not wholes.

Natural selection as it emerged from the synthesis in the mid twentieth century often does not satisfactorily explain what we observe. I believe one reason is that we behave obsessed at interpreting the world from the scale of the individual, which happens to be the scale that we as split consciousness beings (self aware) beings seem to spend most of our time.

Another reason is that implications of the new discipline, evolutionary developmental biology, are only beginning to be understood as regards the effects of social structure and the environment on maturation rates.

Both issues relate to autism. The autistic often do NOT view the world from split conscious awareness, but from a primary process, pre split consciousness orientation. There is a world out there that exists outside materialistic, reductionist, cause and effect relationship frames of reference. A question is, how do we integrate autistic and neurotypical paradigms.

If autism is a condition that can be partially explained by understanding how humans, species, eco systems and systems in general mature, then perhaps we should be paying less attention to natural selection as a theory that offers solutions and more attention to alternative theories that concentrate specifically on maturation.

I never had a vaccination until I was an adult and had to have some to start college. Yet, I have Aspergers. So, it's not immunizations. However, I don't like them for other reasons and I don't get them for my kids. I think they are dangerous.

PaganMom

Who has to have this argument with the nurse every so often, but she knows I'm funny about it.

Believing it and refraining from presenting it as having been proven false are not necessarily the same thing though.

As for proven, well it is a proven fact that a single gene can have pleiotropic effects. Instances of Autism that appear to be caused by fragile X syndrome have been documented and arguably this demonstrates that Autism can result from a single gene.

Certainly it is very plausible that Autism could be triggered by a single gene so whether or not you personally believe that Autism is ever triggered by a single gene, listing the traits as necessarily unrelated is very poor handling and presentation of data. It’s either an indication of gaps in the author’s knowledge or dishonesty on the author’s part, and neither recommends the author and their views to the reader.



They (the genes) would not go extinct any more or less quickly whether they got into the gene pool due to inter breeding with other populations, or as the result of random mutation.

Actually the Out of Africa scenario would better fit your theory as it at least divides human groups in such a way that there might be significant DNA linked differences in social and communication behaviors. The mixed multi region hypothesis requires fairly constant gene flow between the hominoid gene pool as a whole. Nothing whatsoever stops someone from arguing that while for the most part the most common Out of Africa postulations are largely correct, that there was some limited interbreeding between groups when they remerged during times of expensive radiation.

Meanwhile, if we go with the mixed multi regional hypothesis, then we have fairly consistent gene flow, the best genes arising in any group being propagated throughout the gene pool. In such a circumstance if we apply your theory about Autism, what we have are redundant and dysfunctional atavistic traits. Did you know that the primary philosophy of the eugenics movement in the 19th and early 20th century was that criminal and deviant types were degraded atavistic throwbacks who could either be bred out of the population (by restricting their breeding and encouraging the breeding of the “fit”), or who could otherwise be expected to eventually degrade the entire human gene pool?

I am not sure if you are merely elaborating or actually believe something you have posted is contrary to the points I raised in my earlier post. So far as I can tell, as interesting as your comments are, they do not contradict anything I posted in my earlier post.

In the first instance, evolution at group level is not always the best approach. Whether or not humans as a group benefit when a man lives for 100 years, during which time he remains reproductively viable, is not so relevant as whether or not the ability to live this long is heritable and whether or not this man or his offspring who have inherited this trait (where it is heritable) take reproductive advantage of their extended reproductive run. If they carry on breeding while living twice as long as their cohorts, then they have a good chance of reproducing roughly twice as many offspring, each of whom have a 50% chance of inheriting the relevant genetic material.

Even without the advantage of “bonus reproductive opportunities” there are other potential advantages to long lived familial scions. Elder persons are not necessarily significantly less mobile than their younger cohorts. In the same regions where long lived persons are found to be common, so are healthy, agile elderly adults, many of whom are much fitter and more mobile than many people in their prime who live less active lifestyles in “industrialized societies”.

Consider that severe drought might come to a region once in a lifetime. Many people will be too young to have experienced or learned from the last drought if there are no elderly persons in the group. Elderly persons in the group are likely to have been cognitively engaged the last time this happened and may be the only members of the group who know where to go to look for “keystone/fall back” resources in times of extreme shortage.

For humans in particular (because of our extreme reliance on social cooperation as a primary strategy) there is an advantage to the increased size and range of kin groups that stem from elderly family/group members. If you consider a family whose eldest relative is a grandparent, this produces a much more limited “effective kin group” than if you have a great grandparent. In the first instance effective kin group is much less likely to extend beyond “cousins” in the latter instance the kin group is unlikely to not include “second cousins”. This has distinct advantages for an animal that relies on social cooperation to the extent that we do. In a hunter gatherer lifeway it greatly increases the territory size and diversity as related groups will generally share resources between each other in times of localized shortage (the greater the territory one has “kin access” to the greater the chance that localized shortages will not effect territory one can gain “use access” to).

When societies become settled and material wealth and land possession becomes viable, then extended kin groups are even more advantageous. A long lived patrician in a patriacal society has longer to build wealth and social networks that will benefit their kin. When and where reproductive females are a valuable commodity, their (elder_patricians')_wealth and social networks, and the trust they have built over a life time, become tangible assets that allow more wealth and social contacts to be made and more reproductive females to be acquired-(by_the-kin-group), so that the advantages become self perpetuating.

So whether or not humans as a group benefit, the individuals with genetic attributes for longevity, and their immediate kin group (particularly their off spring and descendants) quite clearly do stand to gain a number of reproductively relevant benefits, and this is likely to be sufficient to propagate the relevant genetic material rather than induce selection against it.

Nothing causes Autism, nor is it one thing. It is as old as the genome.

Golden Age Greeks wrote about it, as a good thing.

The percentages of everything stay the same, the differance is many more people living closer together, and through a conformity, the idea of a "Normal Human" for which there is no evidence, taking notice of the different.

The Fool, The Village Idiot, are well reported, and that they were free to wander about providing some entertainment. Even in high places, the Court Fool was an advisor to the King. He was the other point of view, a safety check on human blindness.

The wisdom of the fool was the same reality seen from another point of view. A differance of thought and perception, yet a consistant pattern of differance. This is about the modern deffinition of autism.

The past was smarter, in that they would never had considered what is now called autism to be one thing. In preliterate times a Bard had to know music, remember songs, and from the Bards were chosen those who would remember and recite the laws and customs of the people. Memory is connected to Autism, as is musical talent. The next step was becoming a Druid, and pondering the known and unknown. This is also an autistic talent.

At the same time and later, the prentice boys chose to be trained into a trade also had autist traits. In an uneducated world they spent fourteen years in study of a trade.

When 99+% had to spend all their time producing food, all of the autistic were working to provide other services.

When movable type came along the ability to set type, and proof read, in reverse, called for a type of brain that was not common, when few could read.

The problems appear when the factory system replaced the skilled trades, their jobs were designed for the least skilled lowest wage workers. Workers were no longer expected to replace masters, just work and die for someone else.

When the Universities could not supply the trained workers, things like the computer industry went back to natural skill, and it is an autistic field.

The current idea is Capital will hire the middle of the population, the socialized ones, the conformists, and with money and numbers out do skill. Universities will do as they are told, and Government will provide wisdom and guidence.

What they have no use for will be considered disabled, old people, those who will not work for them, and any with another political or social view.

It is the rise of the NT that is the social aberation of the last hundred years. It is a class that never before existed. As the old saying goes, "Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations." Farm labor, to factory worker, to educated office worker, to unemployed.

The NT Social Bubble has popped. We are losing jobs when we have to produce a million a year for the new workers, and even at producing two million a year, full employment would take a decade, but we are losing jobs.

The growth of capital has been based on a 10% return. lately that has come from reducing the workforce, but that will not produce future profits. Capital will not stay invested if it is losing, and with world markets better supplied from China, India, and the home population having lost their investment in homes, stocks, there are no new customers for the Ponzi.

No one will invest where they lose, the government economic patch will devalue the dollar, so capital will just melt. Cities, Counties, States, have to face the fact they are just failed businesses.

NT are Magical Thinkers, they feel thought will overcome reality. They feel they are right, because all the other NT agree with them, it is God's Will. The Government will have a University make a study to show that the problem is over, and the media will tell everyone, and then the problem will be over.

The Rational Economies of Asia are growing, The Rational and Social Economies of Europe are growing slowly, but the Social Economy of NT America is doomed. They did not build on what they had, did not repair what they built, for they would just think up something else if they needed it, and float a Bond Issue. Now the payments are due.

20% unemployed, and growing, more than a third work for governments, which leaves less than half to pay for it. Such is Magical Thinking. The response is increase the debt, which only speeds up the decline.

Autist thinking is rational and reality based. I am more like the Chinese than NT America.

MT, Magical Thinker, should be put in the next DSM. Those who would organize a Steering Committie meeting on the Titanic to plan the future.

That I might have featured Asperger's when I was young never crossed my mind until this year. I'd been studying autism for 12 years. Working for 12 years with the thesis that testosterone informed the rate of maturation, it never struck me that estrogen might manage the timing until last winter when I discovered I'd been causally considering it for a couple of weeks. My creative process is an artistic process that often features a conscious mind just along for the ride. There are similarities between those of us living lives deeply informed by the creative process and those that this society calls autistic.

Understanding autism is at the heart of my theory of evolution, what I'm calling the orchestral theory of evoluion. My premise is that autism is a condition that features male maturational delay and, in females, acceleration. Social structure, neurological anomalies and endocrinological differences are all integral to autism and Asperger's etiology. By adjusting our current theory of evolution to take into consideration how exactly maturation rates and timing are influenced by social structure and the environment, the causes of autism and the causes of a number of other conditions and diseases are hypothetically made clear.

Autism does not have just one cause. Perhaps there are several different etiologies and autism will acquire several different names when the different causes are uncovered. The particular evolutionary dynamic I describe (neoteny dot org) describes exactly how one kind of autism emerges, under what circumstances and in which kinds of families. I focus on three specific causes of autism that are directly connected to an underlying evolutionary matrix, a collection of processes that influence physical and mental health in a number of areas. Though I concentrate on autism, this work represents a new theory of medical etiology, removing natural selection from its present station as all that doctors know. In its place, I offer a number of tools that have the potential to make medical diagnosis an evolutionary intervention. Consider that if we understand that how we treat our bodies and what we are exposed to compel the evolutionary trajectory of progeny, with repercussions for both ourselves and our children, then understanding health becomes the same as how we choose to evolve.

There are three main variables that impact autism. Neoteny dot org discusses contemporary changes in social structure, environmental influences and the blending of two parents with no recent common forebears.

Social structure is huge. Contemporary theorists have been blind to the effects of an emerging matrifocal society. They are so focused on what seems the default convention, patrifocal social structure. The mind blindness described by Baron-Cohen that offers a window to understanding autism serves as a societal metaphor when it comes to understanding that patrifocal social structure is but one of two primary social structure paradigms. Blind to the emergence of the power of women in contemporary society, we don't notice the repercussions of that change. The delay of maturation in males is one such repercussion. I describe specifically how this happens.

There are at least eight variables that influence levels of testosterone and estrogen, often changing those levels differently, if not in opposite fashions, in men and women. Changing uterine testosterone levels impacts maturation rates, delaying or accelerating the lifelong maturation rates of progeny. Adjusting estrogen levels has the potential to impact the timing of maturation processes, resulting in dramatically different neurological structure. I explore how changes in environmental variables influence autism, Asperger's and other conditions.

Darwin noted that mated variants of the roc pigeon, bred separately in China and Europe over 2,000 years, created chicks that revealed features of their 2,000-year-old roc pigeon progenitor. Modern breeders combine variants that are not closely related in order to create "hybrid vigor," bringing forward some of the strength of ancestors. If humans acquired facility with spoken language at about the same time we departed Africa, then mating ethnic persuasions that have had almost no contact over many thousands of years may produce children revealing features of their last common ancestor. This may result in gifted progeny like Barack Obama. It may also lead to children with difficulty speaking or who are unable to achieve split consciousness without the kind of guidance and stimuli that their ancestors received.

I am proposing that autism is a social condition that is impacted by the environment. By understanding autism, not only can we grasp how humans evolved, but we can form a deeper understanding around what it is to be human. If an understanding of consciousness is integral to understanding evolution, and if this theory satisfactorily defines the variables that have impact, then autism is a good place to begin as we seek a way to understand ourselves.

I don't think anything causes autism. It's just something you're born with. I mean, no one looks into like what causes Downs Syndrome, or why someone has a certain color of eyes. It's just genes.

Your hypothesis that only Aspie males maturate slower is fundamentally flawed. Evidence: Aspie-quiz R1. Look at question 2 and 38. Both questions in fact have higher scores among female Aspies than male Aspies. This is just as flawed as the skewed gender-ratio in the broader autism phenotype.

I'm pretty sure we're not talking about the same thing, looking at the questions and answers. Neoteny vs. acceleration as it applies to maturational delay vs maturational acceleration has for more to do with evidence of specific physical and behavioral features than how young you feel or if you look younger than your age.

Not that I might be wrong. I may very well me barking up an exotic tree. See http://bit.ly/7eMppq.

OK, so you don't mean looking & feeling younger than biological age? But this is a criterion on the list you refered to:



Feeling younger than biological age is a sign of a longer maturation period, and it is very likely that Aspies (of both genders) have longer period of dependency. Personally, I didn't feel like I was mature until my mid-30s, while ordinary NTs are usually mature at 20 or so.

As for the rest of the traits, they are predominantly physical traits, and none of them are linked to ASCs to any large degree, neither Aspie males nor Aspie females.

I also question if these traits are related to neoteny:



These traits seems more like adaptations than neoteny.

So, which specific traits related to neoteny do you propose that Aspie males have that Aspie females lack?

Thank you, rdos, for your focused reply. It's helping me understand what I thought I already understood.

This posting, http://bit.ly/4AkDSk offers more detail on the autistic girl or woman.

The premise is that autistic (and Aspergers) are folks naturally positioned in a matrifocal society. Females are accelerated in that features encouraged are more commanding and authoritative. This does not mean that they don't often feel out of place and child like in a contemporary context where their natural inclinations are not reflected or encouraged. Both sexes are in a sense living anachronisms where their strengths serve another social structure in another time.

Hypothetically, the physical features of the autistic female would not reflect the current (patrifocal) convention of small chins, big eyes, smaller features. Patrifocal societies are attracted to neoteny in females. The austisic/Aspergers female is hypothetically featuring less neoteny, broader body, bigger chin, more physically commanding, not petite.

For a far more specific definition of neoteny in this context, go here http://bit.ly/tUzYF. One of the things I'd not considered that seems important in this discussion as regards neoteny as a concept focusing on childlike features, is that ANY person with autism or Aspergers, living outside the conventional neurology of our society, will feel childlike, often alone in their isolation.