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* Autism/Asperger's syndrome

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05:20 / 17.05.05

if internet dating is the culrpit, we should advocate its immediate ban!

i read recently a similar theory, but just the high incidence of aspergers sufferers congregating in silicon valley and similar envions was inducing a proliferation of autism and aspergers. but while this probably has some merit, if there is a strong genetic link, it doesn't address the other issue of simply more diagnoses now we know more about it...

yes, or environmental causes, though if the population exhibiting high incidences of autism is also geographically co-located... is there something in the water in silicon valley? is sand the answer?!!

sand causes autism stay away from the beach...

21:06 / 17.05.05

Might you be refrring to Simon Baron Cohen's interesting findings on genetics and autism?

You start with the child with autism; he or she is the end result of this experiment of nature. And you work backwards to see if there were there clues in the previous generation — or previous two generations. This new theory is called "the assortative mating theory", The clue that both sides of the family are contributing similar genes is that in our study of occupations, grandfathers on the maternal and the paternal sides were both more likely to be working in the field of engineering. So the strong systemizing wasn't coming down just one side of the family. It's called assortative mating because it describes the idea that two individuals might end up in a union because of having similar characteristics. They're selecting each other on the basis of having similar characteristics.

Sounds perfectly cromulent to me.

00:41 / 18.05.05

actually, no, i was reading this slightly old wired article, but the sb-c edge article is also excellent. seems to be consistent and i can't see why it will be any more contoversial than any other theory of genes for behaviour/predilictions...

btw cromulent is an excellent word. know its derivation?

07:07 / 18.05.05

It's a neologism coined in the Simpsons along with "embiggens".

10:28 / 20.05.05

I'm not sure how much of a factor internet dating might be - astrojax, set me right if I get anything wrong here -aren't the late 80's / early 90's usually the time around which the rise is said to start? If most high functioning cases are caught when the kid is about three, I imagine that would mean that the majority of autistic kids now were conceived before internet dating became common (as far as I know, anyway...) Unless you weren't talking about high functioning but more severe cases in which case they might be caught earlier.

22:22 / 22.05.05

hard to know what real rise there is in the number of autistic/aspergers cases, mainly 'cause there just wasn't the diagnoses earlier. many cases are now diagnosed that earlier - say pre 90's - would have been attributed to other causes. especially high aspergers.

but from what i can gather, there does seem to be a rise in incidence of autism, most pronounced in populations with larger numbers of high functioning aspergers, like silicon valley and the like.

but more data collection needs to be done. and yes, i think you are probably right that it is yet too early to see the effects of internet dating and mating, though of course not all internet daters are asperger geeks! some are sick sad individuals who see the anonimity of virtual chatting as a sanctuary to their ego and probably many others who have little time/access to bars and other social settings who see it as a pragmatic way to find a partner... all complex stuff to make a case for a rise in autism in just a few years!

00:52 / 28.05.05

This is a bit off topic, and may be better suited for one of the "why are people gay?" threads, but since it concerns autism, and this thread is about autism, and not restricted to any specific subject related to autism, I thought I'd put it here.

It seems that people with autism and Asperger's syndrome are more likely to be queer than the rest of the population. To back this up, notice that the Danish study on Sexuality and Autism finds that "When sexuality is directed towards others, 12 (35%) of the autistic residents express sexual interest in both sexes, while only 3 (9%) show interest in persons of the same sex.". More evidence, which is much less scientific, but which seems to mirror the evidence found in the Danish study, can be found in a poll of autistic people on an email list for university students with autism/Asperger's syndrome. The poll was conducted on a publicly available website, but the URL was not released to anyone who was not on the email list, so it's likely that no one else has responded (and I'm not going to give out the URL, because the poll doesn't say that it's specifically for people with autism/AS, and thus if a lot of NT's find out about it, they'll start responding to it and it will not longer be a poll of autistic sexuality). The results:

heterosexual: 56%
bisexual: 33%
homosexual: 11%

This is from 18 responces.

If these percentages are even close to accurate, they seem to indicate that a lot of autistic people are queer. I've heard figures for the general population ranging from 1% to 10% (10% being from the Kinsey study, and I've heard that there are problems with it, like the inclusion of a lot of incarcerated people, and as far as I know the 10% figure hasn't been replicated in studies of the general population).

So, since genes seem to have a significant influence in whether someone is autistic, does the increased incidence of queerness in autistics indicate a genetic linkage between autism/AS and queerness, or is there something that happens in the raising of autistic kids that makes them a lot more likely to be queer?

22:43 / 29.05.05

very interesting study - thanks for posting it...

as autism is a dysfunction in social functioning, in effect a prolonged infancy, it is not so surprising to find that autistic people respond to the sexual nature of socialisation in a different manner to non-autistic people. as there is much social conditioning involved, it may be a long bow to draw between genetic traits and homosexuality.

it would also be interesting to see the proclivities, compared to the national average, of the carers working in this field. the autistic person's social awareness is being built, in a non-trivial way, by these people.

17:08 / 05.09.06

New study links autism with having an older father:

Men over 40 are almost six times more likely to father a child with autism than younger men, according to a new study.

Israeli researchers looked at birth data of more than 130,000 people born in the 1980s, where the paternal and maternal ages had been recorded. Of these 110 – or just over 1 in 1000 – had an "autism spectrum disorder". ASD can include autism, Asperger syndrome and Rett syndrome.

“Men who were over 40 at the time of the child’s birth were 5.75 times as likely to have a child with ASD compared with men under 30,” says Abraham Reichenberg at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, US. “The risk was slightly higher for men in their 30s – they were 1.6 times as likely to produce a child with ASD.”

Older maternal age was not found to be a risk factor for ASD.

Might have something to do with DNA repair mechanisms breaking down as men age.

I suppose if this is the case, then the recent rise in autism numbers could be linked to the rise in age-of-marriage.

22:31 / 05.09.06

saw that yesterday grant - sent it immediately to my demanding lover as i am, well, shall we say slowly moving on over the top of the hill, as it were [the meaning of life..] and she, much younger, [and i] want children by and by.

so, is the older father thing a real contributor to the dramatic rise in incidence of autism spectrum disorders, or is better diagnostics still doing most of the startling? interesting work. male body clocks. another thread in there somewhere...

23:16 / 05.09.06

I suppose if this is the case, then the recent rise in autism numbers could be linked to the rise in age-of-marriage.

I can start to see the connection here as well, grant. It would relate with the earlier findings that tech sectors and regions comprised of many highly-skilled laborers trend towards higher levels of autism as well... meaning that those who spend time furthering their education generally start child-rearing later in life.

09:19 / 06.09.06

Is there a causal link between increased age and poor DNA transmission in men? It does seem fairly intuitive but the study doesn't really mention any specific mechanism. Is there any evidence that it's soley a physiological effect, and not to do with the relationship to an older father, or the modes of family life that are more likely with older parents?

I only ask because in my experience (which is admittedly only on the periphery of mental health) there are large sociological factors at work in exposing something like Autism, and many people (though I have no evidence to suggest it's a statistically significant amount. Almost by definition figures of undiagnosis can only be guesses) compensate so well for any difference-from-the-majority that they never get diagnosed in the first place. I wonder if, in some way, being the child of younger parents could have a greater chance of equiping a child with the physchological tools necessary to compensate better than being the child of older parents.

10:10 / 06.09.06

That story was in the Independent yesterday, meanwhile over in the Guardian;

Probiotics might cure Autism

Seams a little lightweight given the gene obsessed focus of curent research, then I remember the 'antibiotics cure stomach ulcers' palaver of ten years ago and personally I'm off to buy yogurt for my baby boys.

18:43 / 06.09.06

nameinuse, there's a lot of debate about whether autism/aspergers is mostly genetic or mostly environmental. The scientific consensus is that it is a mixture, and probably considerably more genetic (up to 90%). That's the way the (relatively scarce) data points, anyway.

The "cold parenting" hypotheses and similar went out the window a few decades ago. There is some evidence that babies who go on to develop autism, show behavioural differences at birth, which may suggest that environmental risk factors are limited to the uterine environment.

As far the paternal age, I'm not sure, but I suspect there are mechanisms involving fidelity of DNA replication in older men (and women), and sperm might be especially vulnerable. Therefore, older men might produce sperm with more genetic mutations.

Also, off the top of my head, there may be genetic factors that, in the father more than the mother, influence age of procreation (including genetically influenced socialising skills). There's a host of theories around these ideas, which we can discuss, if you like.

18:56 / 06.09.06

Oh, redtara - the report does seem a little lightweight. Personally, I hesitate to put much stock in science in the lay press - if it's real I will end up reading it after peer-review, after all.

That's not to say it isn't true, as you said - like the ulcer story. However, I remember reading something recently (in the lay press) about how many probiotics contain no live bacteria. And that regular yogurts are just as good for you. Also, I've never been clear on how probiotics are any different from regular yogurts - which do contain live bacteria... But that's probably better discussed on a whole other thread.

17:01 / 16.10.06

Slate reports on a study linking autism to television.

Check this reasoning out:

Today, Cornell University researchers are reporting what appears to be a statistically significant relationship between autism rates and television watching by children under the age of 3. The researchers studied autism incidence in California, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington state. They found that as cable television became common in California and Pennsylvania beginning around 1980, childhood autism rose more in the counties that had cable than in the counties that did not. They further found that in all the Western states, the more time toddlers spent in front of the television, the more likely they were to exhibit symptoms of autism disorders.

Part of the research methodology is fascinatingly indirect:
Bureau of Labor Statistics studies have found that when it rains or snows, television viewing by young children rises. So Waldman studied precipitation records for California, Oregon, and Washington state, which, because of climate and geography, experience big swings in precipitation levels both year-by-year and county-by-county. He found what appears to be a dramatic relationship between television viewing and autism onset. In counties or years when rain and snow were unusually high, and hence it is assumed children spent a lot of time watching television, autism rates shot up; in places or years of low precipitation, autism rates were low.

So, switch the cable on, autism rates go up. Starts raining outside, autism rates also go up.

I have an instinctive distrust of television that makes this all very persuasive to me....

17:49 / 16.10.06

OH.MY.

thanks grant!

Less searchable M0rd4nt

13:30 / 21.09.11

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