Expansion on the adaptative hypothesis

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I would have put this in the "cave-man" thread, but the topic went off into an unrelated topic about inter-breeding with neanderthals. I'm going to say at the outset that I'm not positing neanderthalic ancestry as the cause for autism. Don't bring it up here. I honestly think that it's highly tacky and far-fetched.

Some people have a serious axe to grind with non-pathological slants on the subject of neurological disorders: if you are one of these people and can't handle more progressive thinking, please hold your silence. I'm not denying that autism is a serious condition. I'm not trying to mitigate any suffering that you have endured because of it.

Lastly, I want to turn away those of you who are determined to believe that the genes responsible for autism necessarily renders a person defective. The actions of genes on human development are highly complex. With the same trait, there are going to be winners and losers, depending upon how it interacts with other traits and the degree to which it is expressed.

For those of you who tend to be knowledgable on this subject, I need some important information:

1) In autists, what are the glutamate levels in the olfactory bulb? This is important because there is a huge difference between excitoxicity and underdevelopment. In the case of excitoxicity, the presence of protective hormones like GABA would result in hyperdevelopment in the same area. I'm having trouble finding accurate information on this topic, and I need to know.

2) In the autistic brain, where are the main concentrations of norepinephrine? Part of the action of norepinephrine is to cause dendrite to retract, and this can have an important shaping influence on structures within the brain.

3) I understand that opioids have some analgesic properties. I also understand that a highly active opioid system would result in lowered levels of oxytocin and raised levels of dopamine. Part of the action of oxytocin is to raise aggression and lower anxiety. Part of the action of dopamine is to raise awareness and induce paranoia. However, I am missing a lot of the more extensive interactions of the opioid system on everything from skin health to bone growth. If you have a rigorous understanding of the opioid system, please make a contribution. It seems to be important in understanding autism.

4) How would gorging on carbohydrates affect one's ability to cope with colder climates? This is important because this behavior would be induced by high cortisol levels and conceivably reduced when cortisol levels are low. This is important because autists seem to have a propensity for exhibiting remarkably low levels of cortisol.

5) How would high prolactin levels affect bone health? Because it is used for producing milk, I suspect that high levels of prolactin would have a negative effect on bone strength. Because prolactin levels are low in autism, you would expect autists to be big-boned: curiously, they are not, and this is confusing to me.

6) What are the main food cravings present in autism?

7) How does autism differ from schizophrenia? I'm not talking about the symptoms. Rather, I'm talking about root causes.

This is preliminary. I think that, if we go over these particulars first, we can gain a deeper understanding of the most suited environment and diet for autists, and hopefully we can gain a fuller understanding of exactly what goes wrong with them. What I'd like to do is gradually develop a strategy for correcting some of their deficits and reducing some of the more egregious damage from excitoxicity. The reason that I'm using the word "adaptation" here is that I think that it's very helpful to try to picture the sort of environment in which the phenotype would be useful without the tragic over-expression that we see in autism. I'd like to piece together exactly where in nature the autist would belong.

Another question: What are the main theories as to what CLIP does in the human body? ACTH (which exists in extraordinarily high levels in some autists) breaks down into both this and the alpha melanocyte-stimulating hormone.

Another thing that interests me is that the alpha melanocyte-stimulating hormone acts as an endogenous opioid. Since proopiomelanocortin, from which ACTH is derived, is also necessary for the production of two other opiods, beta endorphin and met-enkephalin, does this suggest that the effects of autism are linked heavily to the opioid system? Have any experiments been done that are targeted at lowering levels of proopiomelanocortin?

Okay, I just found further information that suggests that GABA is necessary for controlling the expression of proopiomelanocortin. This seems to be an important and strangely paradoxical relationship between the GABA system and the opioid system. What is GABA/glutamate's relationship with adaptation to cold climates, deserts, etc.? If I were to hazard a guess, low GABA levels would favor a dweller of freezing and sub-freezing climates because the anti-excitory effects of it would put them at greater risk of frost bite and would slow cell production. It's possible that the Ice Age is what transformed primitive Man into modern Man. As a result of cold-weather acclimation, we lost an inhibitory hormone that would also have inhibited our intellects. Once the ice lifted, the effect was basically to put us in flash mode. Suddenly, some of us couldn't stand the heat due to our outrageous glutamate levels. We were forced to migrate Northward quite literally to keep ourselves from going insane. This is probably why the Inuits tended to migrate Northward to keep themselves in cooler climates. These guys are running around in t-shirts and short-shorts in conditions that would be deadly to most people. It suggests extremely low GABA activity, doesn't it? The North Europeans probably took a similar but different evolutionary route, but it was probably also tied to their opioid system, just in a way that made them cracker white.

However, GABA would only explain a certain type of autism. Autism that is not accompanied by discoloration or tanning of the skin wouldn't necessarily be explicable by this route. We'd have to pursue radically different approaches to understand the various subsets of the disorder.

Just tell me if my understanding of this stuff is off. I'm still a beginner on the subject.

Last edited by Griff on 18 Aug 2007, 1:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Interesting questions, Griff-
unfortunately, my biology background dosen't cover the specifics (I know what those chemicals are, and their actions on the body in general, but no brain specifics).

Good luck - I hope to follow this thread if you can find someone with the knowledge to converse with. Or even if you just expand on the theories yourslef.

I don't have any answers for you, but numbers 1, 4, and 6 have been on my mind as well.

What I'm extremely curious about right now is that different forms of autism can exhibit a dramatically different range of qualities. Again, some autists and Aspies are cracker white, which wouldn't at all fit with what I was just discussing. They probably have some mechanism that isn't tied to the action of proopiomelanocortin or necessarily to GABA. I'm not sure what, but I'd sure like to find out. If North European cultures have a profound affection for milk, though, this could suggest that the mechanism at work in them is tied more to the action of casomorphins and similar aspects of the opioid system. It's possible that this group adapted by consuming quantities of milk when they had access to heat and depended upon the withdrawal flush to keep their bodies warm in the cold weather. It would be a strange way to adapt, though, because opioids usually have the effect of lowering the body temperature (which is why ice cream is so effective at helping us beat the heat). As strange as this may seem, however, it all goes back to cold-weather adaptation. If our systems aren't producing enough GABA for us to be comfortable in warm weather, our bodies will produce more opioids of one kind or another in order to keep us from overheating and dropping dead.

Want to know what else is weird? Cold weather induces a greater release of oxytocin. This actually makes sense because it would be beneficial for us to react to the cold by becoming more social and huddling together. This would prevent us from coming down with hypothermia. Probably, the heightened levels of oxytocin is mediated partially by a reduction in opioid receptor action. I'm not sure about all sufferers of the disorder, but I would bet that many Aspies become more social and outgoing when the weather is very cold. I have one friend who is diagnosed schizotypal (it's related to either autism or Asperger) who insists upon keeping himself in the coldest environment possible. He absolutely can't stand the heat. It makes him batty.

Does this make sense?

Griff, please read the information about scientific research before continuing to produce random hypothesis about random autistic traits.

My hypothesis is well-unified. I've given a great deal of detail in this case. If you want me to walk you through it, feel free to ask any specific questions. However, you shouldn't label it "random" just because you don't understand it. I understand that the material I'm covering here can be pretty arcane, but I assure you that I know what I'm talking about.

Anthropologically, I think that the Mediterranean and Mesopotamian regions would have been the natural cradle and birthplace of civilization. As the glaciers receded, they would have been the first to experience the effects of this ramped-up brain chemistry. However, they would have also been susceptible to delusions, madness and mental retardation because of some of the things that happen when this effect gets out of control; religions would have immediately begun to materialize if they hadn't already existed. Some cultures would have used meditative exercises in order to combat this, such as the methods that have developed in India and related cultures.

The anthropological aspect, however, would be a bit harder to determine. Many of the cultures that fled South to escape the warmer weather, which some would have found unpleasant, might have later developed a seafaring lifestyle and come to inhabit various islands, and many would have, in their travels, found their way to such Northern regions as the Aleutian Islands, Siberia, the Americas, etc. Changing climate would have driven mass migrations across continents and oceans as populations fled conditions which they suddenly found unsuitable, some of them raiding and pillaging as they went. It's really hard to know anything for sure, though. The only specific thing that I dare to take a guess at is that the roaming culture that swept into India were able to remain there almost strictly because they chose to integrate and interbreed with the native population instead of killing them off.

Sounding interesting?