Are people with ASDs decendants of ancient nocternal humans?

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After yet another cycle of sleeping from 5am to 6:30 in the evening, it accured to me that maybe there was a reason why people with ASDs tend to be nightowls. I was wondering if anyone has considered the reason may be because, despite the majority of humans having circadian cycles that make them most active by day, could it be that there are some that are, by nature, supposed to be active at night?

Many of us suffer from a tendancy to be over-stimulated by noise, light, colors and smells to the point of meltdown if not careful. Our hearing is often so acute we can hear things such as the high-pitch noise from televisions and conversations from far off. Some of us are more comfortable in the dark since bright lights hurt our eyes. Could it be because since we're supposed to be nocternal, our senses are more in tuned with the envirement to compensate for being in the dark just as cats, wolves and bats have heightened senses that are adapted to navigation after dark?

It may be that the reason we get overload is due to being exposed to more stimulous in the daytime than our bodies are equiped to handle. It would be like Ridduck in "Pitch Black" who had great night vision but had to wear specially made goggles in the daytime to turn down the glare. There is a genetic link to ASDs so we might've had stone-age ancestors who either lived in a part of the world that had many hours of darkness or that was so hot in the daytime they only went out after the sun went down (kind of like the "Neanderthal theory" ) . Therefore, even when humans migrated to other parts of the world and became more genetically diverse, their genes still show up in modern humans as what we call autism or Asperger's Syndrome.

Many Aspies have sleep problems. I have since childhood, taken more then 1 to 2 hours to get to sleep each night. Switching off, relaxing, is difficult. Also, we seem to be immune to melatonin or we don’t produce enough, it is a hormone that makes you sleepy and is supposed to be released late in the evening.

My body-clock seems to be about 26 hours long, so I keep processing forward. So I can have very odd sleeping patterns, alternating between sleeping during the day and then the night. I was told by an Aspie called "Tinted" - who's obsession is sleep patterns, that I have a free running circadian rhythm. It is very rare. "Free running" is normally seen in some Blind people, they have no idea if it is day or night and will sleep in cycles, between sleeping during the day and during the night. I think it comes down to a lack of melatonin or an immunity to melatonin.

Or maybe I was born on a worng planet.

As much as I like the night, I need sunlight to keep me sane. If I don't have SAD, then I have something close to it. When the sun is out less (especially February), I usually get depressed. And as much as I function better at night, I need sunshine. I get a spike in energy when I stay up late enough, but that could just be arenaline.

I think that sleeping from 4am-12pm would suit me best, but that is just a hunch. Basically, I do like the idea of a dawn to dusk cycle--that's kind of the cycle I'm in now, with a bit of wobble--but I like to see the sun too. Half the reason I moved to CA--East Coast winters stopped being fun for me. Well, not entirely, but I like a choice.

I haven't seen any research on the subject. I'll Google it and see what comes up.

I have found 300mg maletonin (sp) tabs help extencivly with sleep patterns. Take one before bed and you have eight hours. After a night or two of this pattern you can get into that habbit. They are over-the-counter and safe. That is an great idea about the nochternal thing. I however think i am simply on a schedule where there arent enough hours in a day. I am eccentric and have no conception of time. but nochternal? i doubt it. however it makes sense as i htink about it.

Always have - even when I was 10 or 11, my sleep cycle would shift all summer to "stay up 'till 3 AM, sleep 'till noon". I hate mornings, can't get up to save my life, and am groggy for hours. And need too much caffeine to stay alert (on first shift for the forseeable future).

I've always gotten along with second shift people as well - wonder why...

I can sleep all day long but I don’t know if it’s from my depression or if it’s a normal aspie condition

I can sleep all day long but I don’t know if it’s from my depression or if it’s a normal aspie condition

I feel so much more at ease at night time than during day. I find daytime harsh and overstimulating whereas at nighttime, the darkness feels warm and welcoming to me.

Only if I've had a hard day will I be able to fall asleep at a normal time. Other than that, I toss and turn in bed until 3am.

Question about melatonin? I want to be able to wake up in the morning and feel refreshed and ready to go. When I wake up it takes my system 30 minutes or more to reach full speed. Does this stuff make you feel refreshed and ready to go in the morning, or do you still wake up groggy eyed.

4am-noon is the preferred sleep cycle

I stay up late on Saturday and dont wake up till about 11.

I take sleeping stuff. But I dont think it works some nights.

That IS an interesting thought. My sleep patterns are extreme as well. I would really like a life where I slept all day and was up all night. And about the light thing, that's something that's been amplified since I got a job...the fluorescent lights make me feel sick all day, it really bothers me. But it really does sound like an interesting idea!

Especially the sleep part. Like right now, I should sleep...it's almost 1am...but I wasn't even this awake at work all day. I wish I felt like this in the morning! lol I just CAN'T sleep properly at all. However, my mother will not allow me to get Melatonin because she feels it'll be addictive. She doesn't even seem to understand that my boyfriend (Andrew, earlier in the thread) has taken it and he's not addicted. It even states online that there are no addictive tendencies related to it and there are no side effects besides drowsiness, which, well...that's kind of expected

I'm very much a day person, which causes probelems with my friends, who are all night owls.
My sensory issues are mostly indoors, or in crowds. I'm pretty comfortable alone day or night in the outdoors.

I can physically adjust my sleep cycle. The only FIXED rule is the 8 hour minimum, and even that can be bent, as long as I catch up on my sleep later in the week (ususally at weekends)

That's an interesting idea... it would explain a lot of things, but genes don't really work like that.
If it was true that our closer ancestors were nocturnal, we could have developed some nocturnal characteristics... but that would probably have to have been a relatively very short period of evolution, with only a few "major" genes being introduced. Of course we have had nocturnal ancestors in the remote past, but our recent ancestors and closest great ape cousins are designed to be most efficient in the daylight. It is possible that for a time, hominids moved about and scavenged after sunset because it was safer, as a cultural adaptation, and some genes were brought forward for better night-time sensitivity in an isolated population- but- as a whole, humans are and have been for quite some time diurnal. And the human genome, on a whole, is very similar.
And because the average person has a very mixed genetic heritige, it is highly unlikely genes selected for nocturnal life in the recent past would recombine in any one individual, and certainly not at the rate that Aspergers presents itself.... because there is no gene responsible for being nocturnal, it is a large number of genes that are randomly distributed throughout the population, and becoming nocturnal takes a lot of "evolving".

You don't inherit certain traits, you inherit genes that work with other genes to create traits.
Once a certain gene has been introduced into a population of new genes, the genes work together to create characteristics in different ways, depending on the type of gene.
That is why we don't spontaneously sproud a tail, or scales, even though we may still have the same "genes" for fur and scales as our ancestors did.

Asperger's is likely genetic in nature, which means it can run in families, but when you're talking about ancestors that distant, than the heritability no longer really applies on that level, since such a larger percentage of the current population would share the same genes, and then many more people would also share the same characteristics.

A more suitable explanation for the high rate of sleep problems would be one that accounts for sensitivity issues and higher stress levels impacting hormone regulation.

It is a nice theory though! But its just very very unlikely that there would be such a straightforward genetic answer such as that one...