Dr. Eide's Neurolearning blog has an interesting set of links and a overview of an interesting Autism/PPD theory that essentially says that the increased rate of PDD type behaviours in individuals in fields like math, engineering, and physics may lead to a group of systemizers who seek out a similar group in spouses. And when you mate those two groups together you increase the selection of genes that target those behaviours, and potentially increase the likelihood of extreme expression of those traits such as Autism.
Here is a excerpt of an excerpt putting that into a narrative:
"assortative mating," as he calls it, would have served to concentrate the critical genes, increasing the chance that such a couple will give birth to the most extreme systemizers of all those with autism.
Now this is not just philosophically driven theory alone. They did actually do some research. And they found that the incidence of Autism in the families of the Math/Engeineer/Physics students was 6 times higher than it was in English or French Literature students families.
That is a pretty large difference. Interestingly the Literature students families were twice as prone to bipolar disorder.
Now the result is interesting, but we have to first determine if there is other distinctions within these two "family groups" that could lead to increased rates of diagnosis. Are arts families more prone to seek out mental health treatment and assessment, while hard science families more likely to seek out psychoeducational assessment? Do families who are more logically driven have increased difficulty handling a child that seems on the surface to be acting without logic and therefore more likely to seek assistance which leads to increased PDD diagnosis? Is parenting style have anything to do with it? Let's hope not on that last one, because that started a lot of blaming in the past with this disorder.
You can read more about this at Dr. Eide's blog and the many great resources he linked too by CLICKING HERE.
Note: And for those who may have been at first confused as I was ... Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen is not Borat/Ali-G that is Sasha Baron-Cohen :) Though I am curious of what Borat's theory is on this as well. Most likely has something to do with the mother being dropped during mate abduction.
