Our Neanderthal cousins "apparently did not get autism.

Post Reply New Topic

We often engage into a contention whether or not the traits of autistic people were fundamentally derived from the residuum of the neanderthalic genome (recessive genes); which I'm fervently skeptical about. Now it appears that these scientists are now connoting based on postulation and conjecture with regards to their recent DNA/Epigenetic study (that should be treated with hardcore skepticism) which "infers" that autism spectrum disorders are unique only to "modernized humans," despite the lack of disparities (a minor proportion) between the Neanderthal genome and our own. So what are your own sincere thoughts on this?

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2 ... 1JBTaKDaVM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/1 ... 68730.html

Last edited by TheRedPedant93 on 19 Apr 2014, 5:53 am, edited 3 times in total.

I've been skeptical of the neanderthal theory for quite some time. This development does not surprise me.

I think the Neanderthal origin of autism is not an evidence based theory but a projection of the profound feeling of difference, otherness and alienation that being autistic in a neurotypical community can bring. The theory is compelling for psychological reasons.

Link to study: http://phys.org/news/2014-04-methylatio ... umans.html

That looks more like they have found the evidence that autism and neanderthal heritage are related. Why else would there be a relation between these region and ASD?

Read it again.

I don't need to. It says that regions that are highly methylated in modern humans are not so in Neanderthal and Denisovan, and that these regions are associated with autism. What are the odds that the same regions that differ between modern humans and Neanderthal/Denisovans and that are candidate regions for ASD is just a coincidence? Not very big, I'm afraid. You have statistics against you here.

The thread starter and others have simply not understood this. We don't know what the methylation means, and we certainly don't know that "Neanderthals didn't have autism" based on these differences in methylation.

DNA methylation is when methyl group chemicals affect gene expression. Because highly methylated regions associated with autism are not found in Neanderthal skeletons, the study is showing that gene expression related to autism were not found in Neanderthals.

There may be a possibility that there was methylation related to autism in Neanderthals, as only a few bone fragments were being worked with. However, the differences in methylation in the regions the researchers studied was evidence against gene expression for autism in Neanderthals.

All this is very interesting, but I think conclusions are premature at this point. Too little is understood about autism and Neanderthal.

The fact that Autistics have traits that would have made us better suited for the Neanderthal environment, coupled with the evidence to date that Cro Magnum and Neanderthal most likely interbred, for me is fertile ground for more research. Also, very large differences in phenotypic expression can be linked to very small areas of gene difference.

Also, this article calls autism a "psychiatric disorder". That shows a bias in how they are looking at it.

- Very little is understood about the potential relation between autism and Neanderthal

- Very little is understood about autism (see the constant changes in the DSM)

-Very little is understood about Neanderthal (with some researchers considering them their own species and others a subspecies of H. sapiens)

The perfect mix to wide speculations

I don't think we know that much about autism either.

We don't know the gene areas (plus, a minority of cases may have an autoimmune case involving maternal antibodies and/or another autoimmune cause).

Plus, DSM gives short shift to sensory issues for crying out loud!

And the civil rights dimension stays the same, with the key question being, Am I allowed to be different in a way which is significant?

And to my way of thinking, the answer is, Yes, I am allowed to be different in a way which is significant.

We don't know how the methylation looks like in ASD, which means we can basically draw no conclusions at all. We know that there are other mutations in ASD in this region, which could be mutations affecting gene expression.

Also, if autism is specific to modern humans, we can immediately stop all research on animal models as these have zero relevance when autism is specific to humans. Which I in fact have claimed for a long time, but these studies keep coming anyway.



Neanderthals cannot have autism. Neurodiversity is the behavioral profile of Neanderthal, and not some kind of disorder.

It still surprises me how these theories can hold any weight. It seems to me these researchers publish something in a magazine, journal, or online, get it read by millions and suddenly it because a "fact", and then people all over the place start to argue and debate over it. A theory isn't fact, it's one persons ideas. In science it's correct until proven wrong. In philosophy it's an idea. Theories on top of theories are like Jenga. Pull one theory out and the rest collapse - as we've seen in history.

No idea how they assume they can "look" so far back in time they speak of their theories as fact. In 200 years time our future families will be talking about our generation in the same we talk about the generation that believed the earth was flat pre-Pythagoras.

Ignore me.

⊙﹏⊙

I always give those kind of studies in the arena of Autism the side eye the minute they refer to it as being a "disease", et. al. I become skeptical immediately.

From the paper:

IOW, the genetic changes seen in "psychiatric disorders" could be the changes that affect methylation patterns so that these are more similar to the Neanderthal/ancestral state, and thus that autism would have the same methylation pattern as Neanderthal. We simply don't know until this has been checked.

They literally explicitly said that all of those associated with autism were not present in neanderthals.