On the relationship between autism and evolution

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Poke
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29 Mar 2011, 8:55 pm

Bluefins wrote:

Poke wrote:

wavefreak58 wrote:

Deviance becomes bad at what point? Without deviance there is no genetic 'experimentation' with potentially beneficial change.

It might be helpful to remember that the point of my original post was not that "deviance = bad" in any intrinsic sense, but that natural selection rewards (and predisposes us toward) normality.

Thanks, and that's false. Natural selection rewards fitting your environment, which doesn't care at all about normality.

Natural selection doesn't reward "fitting your environment", it rewards the propensity to survive and reproduce. Perhaps that's what you meant by "fitting your environment", but given the crude ambiguity of that phrase, I can't say for sure.

You might want to consider the fact that I'm not saying that predisposing members of a species towards a "norm" is the fundamental mechanism of natural selection--it's merely an implication, something that logically follows, given everything else we know about biology, inheritance, and evolution. Might I suggest that you're missing the point of my original post completely? :wink:

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29 Mar 2011, 10:01 pm

Poke wrote:

A few relevant searches:

"Autism is not a single condition"--1,200 results
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe ... =&aql=&oq=

"Autism is a single condition"--6 results, each of which is actually someone asserting the opposite
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe ... =&aql=&oq=

1,200 results means it must be true. You've made some very interesting observations but you're starting to lose me. I can do a search on Paris Hilton's underwear habits and get a million results. Do the same search on me and you will get 0. So her underwear, or lack of it must mean something. Don't diminish your point with such obvious logical fallacies.

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Poke
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30 Mar 2011, 7:45 am

wavefreak58 wrote:

Poke wrote:

wavefreak, my point in posting those links was nothing so vapid as "more results means that it's true"--it was just an observation.

The truth of the matter is, it is widely accepted that autism is a (highly) heterogeneous condition. It is absurd to suggest that it isn't. When researchers are trying to narrow down a very specific "cause" of autism, like this "local overconnectivity.." etc. model, they are only establishing one of a vast number of possible "brain states" that are conducive to autistic behavior.

Autism is not some kind of "mysterious" affliction that one day we're going to find a uniform basis for--like, "Aha! So this is the cause of autism!" We know what the cause of autism is--any brain abnormality that's significant enough to produce "autistic behavior".

It truly amazes me sometimes, how people who are so interested in autism can miss the overall "gist" of what autism actually is.

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30 Mar 2011, 11:03 am

Poke wrote:

It truly amazes me sometimes, how people who are so interested in autism can miss the overall "gist" of what autism actually is.

It would appear that there is no "is" to autism. I would be surprised if at some point in the future it is broken onto several different, more precisely defined disorders. A brain lesion on the temporal lobe does not cause the same issues as one on the parietal lobe. If it turns out that local hyperconnectivity and regional connection deficits are consistent across a large enough population of autistics, then you could create a series of objective tests measuring these. if you don't have both, you aren't autistic. You are something else entirely. This is the real problem with behavioral based psychiatric diagnosis. There is so much overlap in personality and behavior that it becomes impossible to objectify. A brain tumor can be classified as a glioma, a glioblastoma, or one of several other type. It can further be distinguished by its location in the brain. Autism has no such classification methods. It's entirely too subjective.

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30 Mar 2011, 11:14 am

Wavefreak58 wrote:

If it turns out that local hyperconnectivity and regional connection deficits are consistent across a large enough population of autistics,

This is, btw, exactly what John Elder Robison appeared to be saying, and he got his information from people who have been working with a large number of autistic people, scanning their brains, magnetically stimulating their brains, etc.

I don't think that this is stating a singular cause, though, so much as stating an observation about manifestation. It certainly doesn't rule out the likelihood of multiple causes.

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30 Mar 2011, 12:58 pm

Poke wrote:

Autism is not some kind of "mysterious" affliction that one day we're going to find a uniform basis for--like, "Aha! So this is the cause of autism!" We know what the cause of autism is--any brain abnormality that's significant enough to produce "autistic behavior".

I guess all the research should just stop then because you obviously have it all figured out. How on earth do you know that they won't someday find a specific common causality? Or as wavefreak suggests, research may find out that there are multiple specifically identifiable conditions. Just as lesions in different parts of the brain can result in different behaviors, lesions in different parts can cause behaviors that appear to be the same or similar. Again as wavefreak says, there is a real problem with diagnosis based on the subjective evaluation of the outward expression of behavioral traits. Behaviors that appear on the outside to be very similar could be the result of two very different pathologies.

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30 Mar 2011, 1:13 pm

Bombaloo wrote:

Behaviors that appear on the outside to be very similar could be the result of two very different pathologies.

To give a ridiculous analogy, Joe goes to the doctor with his detached arm in his hand. The doctor says "you have Armoff disease".

The next day Bob comes in with his arm in his hand. The doctor says you have "Armoff disease".

But Joe had his arm taken off with a chain saw. Bob was fortunate enough to retrieve his arm after killing the alligator that chomped it.

But both are Armoff disease and need the same cure, right? Not hardly. Joe's arm is a clean severing and might be able to be reattached. Bob's is hopelessly mangled and he gets a prosthesis. And preventive measures for other people to avoid the fate of Joe or Bob would be different as well. Learn how to use a chainsaw safely for one. Avoid hungry alligators for the other.

Hungry alligators wielding chainsaws? That's a different problem entirely.

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Apple_in_my_Eye
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30 Mar 2011, 11:45 pm

I wonder if humans (or any social species) are subject to a "macro" level of natural selection, in which having certain genes in your 'tribe' (as opposed to in an individual) is a good thing for survival.

I.e. say there's a tribe of 30 people. There is a famine, and best hunter in the village loses his wife. He was going to have his first child, and so is devastated, and talking about throwing himself off a cliff, or going on a solo suicide mission against an enemy-but-not-currently-threatening tribe.

But there's another person in the tribe who can't walk (or heck, say, can't even get up off the floor or feed themselves). But they're really good at, say, listening to people and writing poems. So poem-guy listens to hunter-guy, and writes him a note, and it's just what hunter-guy needs, and so hunter-guy decides not to kill himself. That person-who-can't-get-up-off-the-floor just proved as valuable to the tribe as the hunter-guy will for the rest of his life. Maybe the tribe has to carry poem-guy around and chew his food for him, but it works out to be worth it to them in the end. (I guess this is along the lines of a "medicine man.") From a narrow perspective they're making the "mistake of being altruistic," but on a tribal level it's a plus for their survival to do that.

And, maybe there is another tribe which abandons anyone who isn't a good hunter, but has really lousy hunting performance because they can't settle squabbles and have really crummy morale. Say, they all adopt an "every man for himself" attitude, and never co-operate. I.e. Joe has 10 sharp spearheads, but James has none, due to bad luck with fracturing them. But since Joe won't give James a spearhead, James has to hunt with a sharp stick, which doesn't work as well, which results in the tribe losing a buffalo which they otherwise would've gotten.) So, maybe their tribe dies out one hungry winter, when the former tribe doesn't.

Ultimately, if things like altruism happen, then they have been selected for by evolution. Trouble always happens when humans try to "help evolution along" (because there is no such thing).

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31 Mar 2011, 9:49 am

MONKEY wrote:

Hmmm, that does make a lot of sense. :chin:

Although I think the ratio of ethics:laws of nature vary depending on your living conditions. In a place like America or Europe for example a lot of what we need is handed to us on a plate, and the way of life is very convenient with our electrical gadgets and warm houses. So we can afford to care for the vulnerable. and we can run care homes for the severely mentally disabled, and set up charities for them and keep ill people alive. And also of course the autistic people can live perfectly good lives.
But, when you go to places like the middle of the Amazon or in a small community in Kenya somewhere you notice the vast majority are physically healthy and with full mental capacities. And why is this? Well because the ill or ret*d people have died in childhood because they can't keep up with the pace of life. Of course the people are just as altruistic as the city people, but they also have the laws of nature putting pressure on them. When you live in the middle of the rainforest or desert and have to go out running after wild pigs for your food, you can't afford to be born with no legs or be totally blind. And if you're severely mentally ret*d or autistic you become a burden, I know that sounds really mean but when you live in the middle of nowhere it's hard for the rest of the community to look after you even if they do try hard. In these environments you still have the danger of famine, predators, poisonous creatures and severe injury (with no medical care to fall back on). And the unhealthy people are not going to cope.
I read in a book about anthropology there was a tribe a tribe where when a woman gives birth the other women checked the baby and if they weren't strong enough the baby would be abandoned, and if the baby looked strong they giver them to the mum. And when missionaries went over to this tribe to change their views on things that practice was banned. What ended up happening was that the same amount of kids died of illnesses as the babies that died at birth, keeping so many sickly kids alive in these harsher conditions just wasn't possible. And I'm sure the practice of checking newborns is still carried out today in some remote areas.

You say all that... and yet there's archaeological evidence that we have been providing care to severely disabled people (some of whom could not even have eaten on their own), well into adulthood, since prehistoric times. Where does that fit into the idea that in more "natural" settings this doesn't happen? I find that often people think they know about these things, by going by what they assume would happen, and yet their assumptions are often wrong. Certainly there are people who could not survive without modern technology, but taking care of everyone that it's humanly possible to take care of (including people you "wouldn't think" would have been possible to take care of in certain situations) seems to be something that has existed since humans existed if not beforehand.

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31 Mar 2011, 10:17 am

wavefreak58 wrote:

It would appear that there is no "is" to autism.

I'm sorry, I don't know what to say. If you can't agree that "autism" is any neurological abnormality that results in "autistic behaviors"--if you can't see that this is logically, necessarily true...

Quote:

I would be surprised if at some point in the future it is broken onto several different, more precisely defined disorders. A brain lesion on the temporal lobe does not cause the same issues as one on the parietal lobe.

Yes, this is why there's an autism "spectrum"--a diverse "category" of conditions that, in spite of their great diversity, still share a few common traits.

Quote:

If it turns out that local hyperconnectivity and regional connection deficits are consistent across a large enough population of autistics, then you could create a series of objective tests measuring these. if you don't have both, you aren't autistic. You are something else entirely. This is the real problem with behavioral based psychiatric diagnosis. There is so much overlap in personality and behavior that it becomes impossible to objectify. A brain tumor can be classified as a glioma, a glioblastoma, or one of several other type. It can further be distinguished by its location in the brain. Autism has no such classification methods. It's entirely too subjective.

Autism isn't supposed to be "specific" in this way. It's just a label we give to people whose brains are abnormal to the extent that they have problems socializing and restricted patterns of behavior. If the "local hyperconnectivity, regional deficits" model proved to be the basis of a certain number of cases of autism, that wouldn't mean that any other neurological condition wasn't autism, it would just mean that one potential basis for autism had been established. Underdeveloped frontal lobes and malformed right hemispheres would still produce autistic behavior. And that's what autism is--behavior. Behavior that can result from a wide variety of neurological "conditions", and is thus described as a spectrum rather than a homogeneous condition.

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31 Mar 2011, 12:25 pm

Poke wrote:

You seem to miss my point. The spectrum aspect of autism diagnosis is just a capitulation to the intrinsic subjectivity of the diagnostic process. It is an artifact of the inability of clinicians to derive any truly objective and quantitative description. How else can you explain that the same individual can get different diagnoses from equally competent professionals?

I know I have malaria because I can show the existence of a particular parasite. Calling malaria a fever disorder is accurate if overly general. But "fever disorder" covers a wide range (a spectrum) of similarly presenting conditions. I am suggesting that as more is understood, autism itself may disappear as a specific diagnosis and be replaced with much more clearly defined conditions.

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31 Mar 2011, 12:50 pm

Isn't one of the core elements of ASD an abnormal absorption with the self? Are there any people with ASD for whom this doesn't apply?

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31 Mar 2011, 12:51 pm

wavefreak58 wrote:

I know I have malaria because I can show the existence of a particular parasite. Calling malaria a fever disorder is accurate if overly general. But "fever disorder" covers a wide range (a spectrum) of similarly presenting conditions. I am suggesting that as more is understood, autism itself may disappear as a specific diagnosis and be replaced with much more clearly defined conditions.

I could make the same complaint about this "underconnectivity/overconnectivity" model you're hung up on--it's just a general description, and could apply to brains that are, in reality, quite different.

This subdividing process, applied to neuropsychological conditions, wouldn't end until a unique diagnostic "box" was built for every individual, as none of our brains are exactly the same, even brains that are similar in general ways.

The purpose and utility of "autism" is not to be just another "box", another degree of specificity. From my Asperger's/PD thread:

This is why the DSM is moving away from the splitting/differentiating of diagnoses, the endless building of more boxes, and toward a "spectrum" approach. They've begun to realize that, if they keep going the "build more boxes" route, eventually they'll have to build a box for every single one of us--none of us are exactly the same, the "condition" of our brains is ultimately different. It's much more practical to erect a few "spectrums" that simply describe our general degree of severity in terms of a few broad trends, and leave it to our doctors to address our individual issues and determine which plan of treatment is best on that basis.

In other words, the purpose of the diagnosis of "autism" is not meant to predict the location and nature of a brain lesion, but, for example, to give parents an idea of what they might expect in regard to their child's future.

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31 Mar 2011, 2:15 pm

Poke wrote:

wavefreak58 wrote:

I could buy your line of reasoning if the presentation of symptoms was more consistent across the entire spectrum of what is currently called autism. Or even if clinical practice was more consistent in diagnosis. I see far too much subjectivity.

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31 Mar 2011, 3:19 pm

wavefreak58 wrote:

I could buy your line of reasoning if the presentation of symptoms was more consistent across the entire spectrum of what is currently called autism.

If the presentation of symptoms were more consistent across the entire spectrum of what is currently called autism, my "line of reasoning" would be less valid. You're definitely missing something here.

Part of the reason that there's so much subjectivity in diagnosing autism is that the autism spectrum "fades" into normality, and it's up to the person making the diagnosis to decide where to draw the line. But that's not because the concept of "autism" isn't formulated well, it's just a reflection of reality. It's hard to say where to draw the line, and it always will be.

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31 Mar 2011, 4:16 pm

Poke wrote:

wavefreak58 wrote:

I could buy your line of reasoning if the presentation of symptoms was more consistent across the entire spectrum of what is currently called autism.

If the line were autism/not autism, maybe. But the lines are blurred not only along the autism spectrum, but across multiple psychiatric disorders as well. Hard science requires crisp definitions, objective measures, and reproducible results. None of these exist in the current diagnostic process. The hard science happening in brain and cognition research is much more compelling to me than the fuzzy boundaries between DSM-IV diagnoses. I suspect that has the hard science progresses, it will force restructuring of more diagnostic categories than just autism.

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