Another one of "these" to kick around

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I...
* Am not a scientist myself
* Am interested in science generally, and the causes of Asperger's
* Have the utmost respect for science and will always defer to the authority of peer-reviewed evidence, ultimately
* Had a crazy idea this morning, nevertheless, and
* Cannot resist posting it before I forget it. (Sorry in advance.)

I've heard of the underconnectivity theory of AS, and I understand the causes are thought to be some combination of genetic and environmental, and that various regions of the brain are thought to be affected by it. I've seen theories debunked that AS is the byproduct of neanderthal genes trying to express themselves, etc. I also understand that AS probably does not make sense to view as the "next step" of human evolution either, because it doesn't really increase reproductive success.

So please stop me if someone has posted an idea like this before, but I'd be really interested to hear what you think / know about the following.

Is there any possibility that AS could be due to humans putting intense micro-evolutionary pressures on our brains that our physiology can't keep up with?

Here's what I mean:
As far as our physiology not being able to keep up, I'm wondering if one root of the problem with AS is cranium capacity: The available space we have in our skulls for our brains. I.e, we suddenly need a lot more brain power in certain areas and we don't have room to make the necessary adaptations smoothly. One clue I think I remember learning is that our jaw muscles had to grow weaker to allow our craniums to grow bigger, giving us more space in our skulls for our brains, and that allowed us to grow bigger cerebrums and develop more self-awareness and more complex conscious thought.

I'm thinking, maybe the pattern here is that the quickest way to add brain function when our species needs it is to just tack on more brain matter. More brain = more capacity to think and process in various ways. I know that it's really brain structure / folding that makes our cerebrums so advanced, but short of being able to advance the folding structure of our whole brains in the short run, having room for more neurons would be the most easily-achievable way for our brains to solve the problem.

Except maybe the problem is, our genes aren't selecting for larger skulls as fast as they're selecting for increased brain function. All of the sudden in recent human history, across large swathes of our society, we are trying to teach everyone math, science and engineering, and to understand and work with concepts that people like Newton and Einstein pioneered relatively recently. Meanwhile, for one reason or another, our skulls just aren't growing fast enough to keep up with the changes.

By now you probably see where I'm going with this: The genetics and epi-genetics in a big chunk of our gene pool are reacting to this sudden environment that demands advanced mathematical, logical and/or spatial processing from a lot of the people in it. But there's nothing in particular (that I've ever heard of at least) that is making us think that bigger skulls are sexy when we're looking for mates. We like intelligence, but not necessarily inflated bone structure in our heads. So I wonder if our neural stem cells in utero are getting a message like "more math ability, stat!" and are forced to borrow against other regions of the brain since there's no room to just expand outward... like social processing areas. "Hey, you don't need to be that successful socially as long as you're good with math, you don't need so much of this part!"

As for underconnectivity etc., maybe our brains development before birth is even having trouble keeping up with how to wire all the re-purposed grey-matter areas together on the fly. In other words, I'm imagining that the whole process of adaptation is being stressed and pushed to its limits, and we're seeing the results in our brain function after birth.

I say all this knowing full-well that I'm probably being totally pseudo-scientific; which is pretty much literally and automatically true just from the fact that I'm not a trained professional scientist. So I'm sure I'm completely off the ranch with this idea. I get that as far as anyone can tell, AS is just an abnormality that just happens, for no particular evolutionary reason. But I'd like to hear about how I'm wrong in that case; I'm sure I'll learn a lot from it.

It is one of those possible indications.

Possibly some people suffering with AS will also have higher sexual productivity. They will have genes that will not make them less productive in sex.

Researchers are actually finding brain size differences so who knows?

http://www.webmd.com/brain/autism/news/ ... -to-autism