The Neanderthal theory of Autism

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Ok, So as of the past week it has now been proved that people outside of Africa have 1-4% Neanderthal DNA. There is still more work to be done on this research and they need a bigger sample group but it is certainly very interesting and I'm sure more research will be done.

Re: Blue eyes - as far as I remember blue eyes originate from a genetic mutation many years back and is believed to have originated from one common ancestor(maybe blue eyes weren't so recessive then?). This was somewhere in Eastern Europe and may have been more recent than the Neanderthals. The fact that blue eyes have managed to survive and spread so far is put down to their uniqueness way back when they were less common therefore more attractive. Anyway anyone interested can research this . Here's a start:

I can't post a link so search under 'Genetic mutation makes those brown eyes blue' and 'Geneticists Uncover the Origin of Blue Eyes'

I need to read that article because if there is no neanderthal dna in africa presently it could really throw the whole 'journey of man' y chromosomal adam spencer wells theory out the window. it would be so completely awesome to find out that tribes migrated out of africa and met up with some neanderthal stragglers after the fact, I would love a monkey wrench like that to chew on. but my imagination is probably already running wild so I just need to read it and it's probably something a whole lot more boring that explains it.

With the new study it is now clearly possible to both prove and disprove the Neanderthal theory. All it costs is a lot of money. To disprove it 48,000 dollars would do. All that is needed is to create a full genomic sequence for an Aspie, and make sure the DNA correlates the same with Neanderthal as the already analysed french individual. Of course, if this is not the result, there is a high probability that the theory is correct. To really prove it it would require to sequence more than one individual (I'll say five Aspies and five NTs). That would cost 480,000 dollars.

So, if some really wealthy Aspie want to "kill-off" the theory as soon as possible, just donate 48,000 dollars for the procedure.

I'm pretty sure somebody will do this in the near future, and I would prefer if it was an Aspie, and not an NT. There is also the race against genocide against autistics to factor-in. The current genetic autism research, which is really poorly done, threatens to start a genocide on autistic traits. I think it would be an advantage if there is research that can link common personality-traits to the Hn genome before the genocide-tests are ready.

Well, this is not what the current study claims. It claims that all non-African groups have 1-4% Hn ancestry while africans have none. This is exactly the same result as Aspie-quiz have come up with. The only outlier group is africans. There are some minor differences in non-africans as well in Aspie-quiz, but these are so minor that they require huge samples (close 100,000) to find, and I don't anticipate these would be detectable with their sample of five full genomes.

There is no 4:1 ratio,and the theory is nearly as narrow as other autism theories, and thus cannot explain more than a small minority of autistic traits.

The Neanderthal theory is not about "neural dysfunction". It is about functional traits turned into dysfunctions by a majority-group trying to eradicate diversity.

That's quite an interesting read; the last time I read material about blue eyes, they had not yet discovered corresponding genetic material.

How so?

The majority group are not the cause of my sensory issues. If I make contact with a drop of water it hurts, a lot. Pain exists for a purpose and that purpose is undermined when pain manifests itself in response to stimulus that is non-injurious and has no prospect of being injurious. A drop of water has no prospect of harming me; I am not the Wicked Witch of the West (contrary to any rumours that may circulate from time to time), and I find it unlikely that Neanderthals melted on contact with water either.

I don't know anything about "Neanderthal theory"--and I don't have to. Autism describes neural dysfunction. All I have to do is ask myself, "Is it feasible that Neanderthal genes are the primary source of neural dysfunction?" The answer is obviously no.

*By the way, your response doesn't even make sense. The Neanderthal theory is not about "neural dysfunction". It is about functional traits turned into dysfunctions... Think about that for a minute.

pandd:

there is an article somewhere on this site concerning blue eyes, I think it talked about having found the time of the genetic mutation.

re: Spencer Wells I'm not clear yet on what the article means by no DNA in Africa, modern Africans, whatever. It seems like they meant the interbreeding took place before the migration out of Africa then that group left, it would only affect the y chromosomal Adam stuff if a hominid group existed outside africa and interbred with that group that left I guess. I'm really curious now to see if the interbreeding may have been a reason for the migration itself, one article I read said that homo sapiens might have very possibly had a role in the extinction of the neanderthals.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7886477.stm (the last part of the article)

it says at that point (this article was written before the current findings suggesting the 1-4%) they'd mapped 60% of the genome, 3 billion characters, over three years. I don't know the genetic science behind autism but if such mapping is going on and autism can be correlated definitively to a gene then it seems like this theory is proveable or disproveable.

Yeah, that BBC article is a bit vague.

I was going to fetch you a link to a much more useful (and clear) article (provided by another poster in a different thread), but I see you've already found that thread yourself.

Last edited by pandd on 11 May 2010, 3:19 am, edited 1 time in total.

That's interesting, but, take into account ethnic groups who migrated to Europe, let's say, a thousand years ago from places where brown eyes, thick, dark, brown hair and medium skin tones are common. How do you explain the descendants of these people having blue eyes, a lighter complection, and hair fairer and thinner than their ancestors? One theory is moving further north means less sunlight which causes lighter pigmentation. It's been stated that if everyone moves to places near the equator, over generations, people would exhibit darker skin, hair and eyes, even if their ancestors all had lighter hair color, pale skin and blue eyes. That doesn't sound like one gene that mutated in one person and spreads throughout the offspring.
What about animals comouflaging, concealing themselves from predators? This could be more widespread than the "one mutated gene" theory. It could be an entire population spontaneously mutating at once in response to their environment.

Better links (the research studies themselves, which are both free):

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/328/5979/710
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/328/5979/723

thanks a million! anybody care to interpret this sentence, I'm having confusion about what they mean by the word 'deeper' here:

"A challenge in detecting signals of gene flow between Neandertals and modern human ancestors is that the two groups share common ancestors within the last 500,000 years, which is no deeper than the nuclear DNA sequence variation within present-day humans."

If you replace "deeper" with "further back in time" you should end up with a pretty close approximation.

I've now written an analysis of the issue in my blog: http://blog.rdos.net/?p=63

The new research doesn't support the Neanderthal theory of autism. You could say it makes it more implausible not less. It shows how genetics actually works not a fairytale syphon, in order to fit a theory.

Objectivity goes down the pan as soon as someone becomes emotionally attached to hypothesis, that is sort to the problem with dissertation culture, everyone wants a good one, and therefore "prove" something.