Specific lesion producing autism likely found

[Perspicuo]

An Unexpected Discovery in the Brains of Autistic Children
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2014/03/disordered-cortex-autism/

Nobody knows what causes autism, a condition that varies so widely in severity that some people on the spectrum achieve enviable fame and success while others require lifelong assistance due to severe problems with communication, cognition, and behavior. Scientists have found countless clues, but so far they don’t quite add up. The genetics is complicated. The neuroscience is conflicted.

Now, a new study adds an intriguing, unexpected, and sure-to-be controversial finding to the mix: It suggests the brains of children with autism contain small patches where the normally ordered arrangement of neurons in the cerebral cortex is disrupted. “We’ve found locations where there appears to be a failure of normal development,” said Eric Courchesne, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego and an author of the study, which appears today in the New England Journal of Medicine.

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Sorry for the weird grammar of the title

 

[dockeen]

Title was clear to me. Interesting news.

 

[Underseer]

Neat!

 

[Zeluvia]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/females-are-genetically-protected-from-autism/

And when it comes to autism XX is once again > than XY. Females seem to have a "protection" from expressing mutations.

I seriously think that male homosexuality, attention deficit disorder (Real ones, not misdiagnosed behavioral problems) and autism are all related to environmental changes in utero.

I have suspects even. BPA and other estrogen mimics, pesticides, and of course heavy metals. It's still a dice game because the amount of genetic and developmental damage is unpredictable, and I think that makes cause and effect very hard to prove.

 

[Juma]

Male homosexuality? Why?

 

[Narapoia]

Male homosexuality? Why?

It could be because babies are more likely to be homosexual if they have a number of older brothers. The last time I read up on this a proposed mechanism behind this effect was the mother's immune system reacting to male babies in utero. From Wiki

The fraternal birth order effect is the strongest known biodemographic predictor of a male's sexual orientation.[3] According to several studies, each older brother increases a man's odds of having a homosexual orientation by 28–48%.[4][5][6][7][8] The fraternal birth order effect accounts for approximately one seventh of the prevalence of homosexuality in men.[9] There seems to be no effect on sexual orientation in women, and no effect related to the number of older sisters.[10][11]

That said I don't think that this effect accounts for all male homosexuality, and my understanding is there is a genetic component. Regardless, as far as I can tell the statistics would not support such an assertion.

 

[Zeluvia]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenatal_hormones_and_sexual_orientation

This Wiki sums up a lot of the current theories and speculations currently running around including the Birth Order Theory

And here is a list of some recent studies on Endocrine disruptors in the environment, which kind of ties in....much of the science is still at the animal level, and hasn't been proven in humans yet.

http://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/endocrine/

Here is something more specific, a student lesson on endocrine disruptors and gender in animals.

http://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/ass...on_are_edcs_blurring_issues_of_gender_508.pdf

And here is a whole PDF from the World Health Organization on the current level of the science.
http://www.who.int/ceh/publications/endocrine/en/

 

[travc]

A partial mechanism for some cases of autism...
Useful in the sense that it raises a hell of a lot of potentially good questions.

BTW: Most cases of autism where the cause has been identified (about 5%) are Fragile-X syndrome. It is a direct genetic cause... but even that is a bit odd since the mutation is a repeated triplet, and the severity of the symptoms correlates with the number of repeats present. So even Fragile-X alone produces a specturm.

PS: The Fragile-X mutation was only sequenced last year because big repeats are basically impossilbe to sequence using short-read shotgun methods. We have cool technology to do long reads (up to about 15kb), but sadly it is relatively expensive so not really tractable to do whole genomes.

 

[Jarhyn]

I find this encouraging. Knowing the causes of 'autism', notably AS may finally allow us to trigger it explicitly at a respectable rate, while more reliably avoiding non-functional autism disorders.

Seriously, all of the most respectable people, who are most devoted to dispassionate discussion of important issues, the ones who contribute the most novel ideas without the emotional investment that makes discussion impossible, these people have strong expressions of AS. The world would be a poorer place if people like me were 'socially normal' because that 'normality' is actually a hinderence.

At my workplace there's 30% AS representation, compared to the ~.5% representation within society. That can't be an accident. Software engineers, true philosophers (not Ions), chemical engineers. I'll take being clumsy and not being able to learn how to assert position in an unqueued line, in exchange for being able to model those things explicitly after observation and analysis, and then maybe making a computer that does it for me.

 

[travc]

Seriously, all of the most respectable people, who are most devoted to dispassionate discussion of important issues, the ones who contribute the most novel ideas without the emotional investment that makes discussion impossible, these people have strong expressions of AS. The world would be a poorer place if people like me were 'socially normal' because that 'normality' is actually a hinderence.

It seems that early intervention (in the form of specialized play, exercizes, socialization, ect.) can greatly mitigate difficulties people with mild and moderate ASD face later on. The current standards (at least in Yolo county CA) are for intervention to start as soon as possible, normally between ages 2 and 3. Severe ASD is, well, severe, but mild cases can hopefully just become non-imparing variation.

BTW: Fragile-X normally causes some generalized retardation, so that appears to be pretty much "all bad" IMO.