Autism linked to 'male hormones'

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Just read this on the BBC news site:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-27662080

So, it seems like yet again, females are being left out in the cold.

I wonder if this explains why I have so often been told that I walk, talk, and think like a man.

Interesting.

I had considered testosterone supplementation to see if it would improve my lackluster libido. If there's any risk of it making me more autistic, though, I don't think it would be worth the trade-off.

Why is AS overrepresented in MtF's and effeminate boys, then? Never heard an explanation for that from the 'extreme male brain' folks.

I've not decided whether I support the extreme male brain theory or not but here's some conjecture on that: if maleness and femaleness are partially genetic and partially environmental/cultural then maybe the feminine traits that ASD guys show are just more cultural/social and are not acquired by ASD guys because of their social deficit. For example, guys with ASD who are effeminate might have more feminine body language or a higher voice etc. because they just don't soak up by "social osmosis", as Happe would say , things like boys don't cross their legs in a girly way or even if they tend to have a high voice that that's unmanly and they should try to lower it a bit whereas NT guys would. Even being quiet and shyer might be something that NT males subconsciously learn is unmanly and strive to avoid (not that there aren't shy NT guys, just fewer of them). Some guys might even feel they weren't meant to be male because they don't conform to these social norms. However, things like being more systematic and oriented toward things instead of people and better at spatial stuff than language stuff might have more of a biological component, be more related to male hormones or genes that lead to sex differences etc. (not necessarily all biological, but more) and those things are common in guys with ASD. Just speculation but it's a possibility, I think.

Last edited by daydreamer84 on 03 Jun 2014, 1:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'm kind of intrigued by the "Neanderthal Theory of Autism" myself (Google it).

It's probabaly a load of ka-ka along with most other theories of autism but it's fun to read.

I thought that too.

i as well.

Yeah, Africans have no Neanderthal ancestry, but autism is just as common in Africa (though it's underdiagnosed).

Incidentally, did you know that red hair is a Neanderthal trait? I just found that out recently. Explains why only Europeans have red hair.

But anyway, researchers have translated an autism scale to chimpanzee behavior, and found that typical chimpanzees score in the NT range on this scale. The one chimpanzee who scored in the autistic range had been observed by staff as showing repetitive behavior and poor social skills.

To me, the finding that typical chimpanzees are non-autistic makes it very unlikely that autism was the norm for any hominid species. My guess is that most of the great apes, including hominids, show an allistic majority with an autistic minority. If any great ape has autism as the norm, it would be orangutans, because they're a semi-social rather than fully social species.

However, the fact that autism is more common than chance mutations would predict suggests that there is an advantage to having an autistic minority. A lot of people assume that natural selection will change the entire population, but there are some traits that only confer an advantage if they're present in a minority of the population, and so natural selection holds them at the optimal percentage. In the case of autism, hyperfocusing and specialized skills may be advantageous, as long as you have the support of some generalist social companions. The one guy who is obsessed with making the perfect stone tool might be too focused on that to get much good at hunting with those tools, but his tool-making innovations will be learnt by other members of his group, including the socially savvy, physically coordinated guy who leads the hunting parties.

I suspect that if testosterone has anything to do with autism, it is not in a gender-specific way.

Androgens and estrogens have effects on the human body that are the same in everybody who has working hormone receptors to use them ....not all of those effects really have anything to do with gender/sex, per se. For example, testosterone is thought to play role in regulating the immune system, and estrogen appears to be responsible for regulating adolescent bone growth (starts it and stops it, via the same mechanism) in all genders.

Personally, I don't think it's likely that extra testosterone causes autism -- at least not by itself (and even then, not in every autistic person). There are people (male and female) who have high testosterone levels and low testosterone levels but no autism/autistic children.

There may be some connection between hormone levels and autism, but I don't think it's super likely it would be a causal relationship .... two things happening together doesn't prove that one causes the other. High testosterone and autism could happen together because they are both the result of genetic differences affecting, say, the hypothalamus (involved in sex hormone production way before it gets to testicles and ovaries, as well as the production of other hormones and a whole host of other things), but that's not a causal relationship between testosterone and autism.

Hmmm.

If I were exposed to abnormally high levels of testosterone in the womb, ring finger would be significantly longer than my first finger, and I would be much much better at playing stringed instruments.

best post ever on this subject!! !

Yes I posted a thread about this study. I guess it's finally being published.