A human-accelerated neuron type potentially underlying autism in humans

There's an ambiguity in the title, reflected in some comments below. It can be understood either as the claim that "in a particular human being, to be intelligent as measured by IQ means that you are more likely to be autistic", suggesting for example a trade-off between social and general intelligence; or the claim that "the evolution of the human brain and so human intelligence as such, which characterizes both those of low and high IQ, entailed those genetic shifts that made autism a possibility for our species but not other primates." The paper argues a form of the latter.

Thank you for the clarification. Can't read the paper.

Who was it that was quoted often a decade ago that described the intellectual variance difference between the sexes?

The research concluded that women are smarter (just kidding) that men have much greater variance while women are generally closer to the mean and one another in abilities.

Since differences between the sexes exist, I would also expect differences among the sexes to cluster for evolutionarily relevant reasons.

In general, anyone not crossing medical taboos in evolutionary biology and neurology will never understand the horribly simple reality of modern humans.

Also, most savants score as cognitively deficient on IQ tests. =3

Boys are diagnosed with autism 4 times more than girls by age 8. There's a certain amount of supposition that this is due in part or largely down to "boys being boys" type handwaving, though my two nephews are on the spectrum and neurodivergent behavior in them presented as distinctly different from simply being energetic (one being almost nonverbal). Though it's possible, it seems unlikely to me that there isn't actually a difference.

However, the "greater male variability hypothesis" in terms of IQ scores is not terribly well supported by studies, and the difference isn't significant enough to account for the 4:1 ratio of autism diagnoses. As such, I imagine there's more at play here.

Personal experiences play important roles. As for the hypothesis, if not represented in studies, it is certainly reflected in penitentiaries.

IANAG but the idea is that women get two copies of the X chromosome (XX), and men only one (XY). This explains why women have squared the colour blindness rates of men - women have to get two bad copies, men only one.

Many intelligence related genes are on the X chromosome, so it makes sense you get more variation in men. However, not all genes interact in this way.

I think boys just present symptoms that are more obvious. Girls with autism are very often much better at masking than boys are.Young girls also tend to fixate on more 'socially acceptable' topics that make that fixation less obvious

> in a particular human being, to be intelligent as measured by IQ means that you are more likely to be autistic

I find this part to be a really strong highlight of our change in perception of autism and what it means to be "autistic" or "on the spectrum."

Perhaps due to the broadening of the spectrum or just an odd association with success and spectrum attributes, we now strongly associate intelligence with spectrum. Historically - perhaps due to a narrower definition of autism - the inverse was true. It's understood now to not have much strong correlation with IQ at all, but apply fairly distributed in a way similar to general population, certainly not skewed one way or the other in a strong way.

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9058071/

I think it was Larry Summers.

My niece has autism and it’s much more subtle than I’ve seen in boys. It was difficult to even get her diagnosed until teen years when the masking became much harder for her because of more complex social dynamics.

Also, 'better at masking' there isn't necessarily inherent by gender; it could well be a consequence of young girls in general being put through more social training than boys.

That’s interesting, thanks for posting an explanation.

There is a parallel strain of argument for the former:

- https://www.tinygnomes.com/qwiki.cgi?mode=previewSynd&uuid=B...

- https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-06-brain-overgrowth-dict...

(I have my own theory, which is that a large brain increases the risk of ADHD rather than autism—a larger flow of thoughts and ideas requires more executive function to manage, and therefore more executive function is required to achieve the same attention span—but that ADHD is a kind of multiplier for autism, because social situations are more challenging to navigate if you can’t reliably stay focused on the social interaction you’re having.)

It was Larry Summers, who was frequently mischaracterized as having claimed that men were smarter than women. But he was far from innocent--it was one of the worst cases ever of failing to read the room--a room full of extremely accomplished and intelligent women ... and his speculations severely failed to account for cultural factors. It rationalized the status quo and suggested that nothing could change it. The history of women in STEM since then has refuted those speculations ... though the attack on "DEI" is turning the progress around.

> Since differences between the sexes exist, I would also expect differences among the sexes to cluster for evolutionarily relevant reasons

And what is one supposed to do with this vague generalization? Mostly it used to reinforce biases.

Are symptoms not the sole means of diagnosis? So if girls present less symptoms then aren't they therefore less autistic? Or, alternatively, if they present different symptoms then perhaps they have something else?

Basically, it's a population-level story about evolutionary trade-offs, not a psychological profile

No. That's the whole point of masking. It's doing social behavior 'in software' instead of doing it 'in hardware' like everyone else. An alcoholic who is high functioning is still an alcoholic.

I still think it's odd how aspergers disappeared as a label. Made more sense than a spectrum with both really smart people and really stupid ones.

Why? We don't have 2 different terms for "blindness" (or any other condition for that matter), one for people who are intelligent and another for those who aren't.

Hans Asperger was a Nazi collaborator who drew an imaginary line between "less autistic" children, whom he believed could still be valuable to society, and "more autistic" children who were considered to be a threat to their racial purity - so he murdered them. That's the only reason this distinction came to be.

Autism "spectrum" isn't about severity at all - it's a spectrum because every person has a unique presentation and combination of challenges, e.g. sensory processing, communication, relationships, emotional processing, and cognitive rigidity. "Asperger syndrome" was just one specific combination of those that drew a line between people who are worthy of life and those who aren't.

Girls are much more likely to be socialized to mask before the parents or children have a clue that's what's happening.

Boys are much more likely to be allowed to "express themselves," act out, etc.

Larry Summers:

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/18/us/harvard-chief-defends-...

He clarified his intent: https://www.harvard.edu/president/news-speeches-summers/2005...

This is a direct result of a push from within the autistic community to stop using eugenicist labels and notions of "more" or "less" autistic. The community is really sensitive to eugenics because of all of the people trying to do eugenics against them and treating them as subhuman.

Autism isn't a scalar. One is not more or less autistic than another. It's a multidimensional vector space where each individual has unique needs and disabilities throughout that space.

We also don't really talk about the IQ angle because, again, eugenics and elitism. It is a fact that some or many autistic people are incredibly intelligent, but it is exclusively allistic people who get hung up on this point. For autistic people, it's just the way things are and we have to make do, just like with everything else in life.

Turns out when a lot of people want to murder, sterilize, experiment on, or genetically engineer you, you get pretty sensitive about other people using actual, factual, literal Nazi eugenicist ideas to describe you.

That's why everyone should be using the terms that autistic people choose for themselves. So that you're not continuing to promote, again, actual Nazi war crimes as a way to distinguish "good" autism from "bad". That's why we've purged Asperger's as a diagnostic label.

This happened like 5-10 years ago didn't it? What changed?

It's not very odd. It's all part of the drift of science, where now things are loosely defined and what passes for science is often political propaganda.

The removal of Aspergers label has a lot more do to with politics (not wanting to be associate with nazi) than anything else.

As far I'm concerned, the only hope is from genetics studies, which greatly accelerated thanks to computing. At some point with enough studies, we will know what's what. In the meantime, it is safe to discard most of the bullshit coming from psychological studies...

Stereotype echo, ok.

I was diagnosed with aspergers just as this happened - basically new information came out showing he'd sent the higher support need autistic kids off for experimentation so they'd leave him alone with his lower support needs autistic kids.