Revisiting autism and the extreme male brain

Post Reply New Topic

If you've read some of my older posts, you might now that I very much do not buy the extreme male brain theory. I'm going to make it clear now that I'm still throughly convinced autism is NOT an extreme male brain by any means, and it's my belief that the typical autistic brain is more androgynous than either is typical for either gender, though on the male side of perfect androgyny. I have many many criticisms for the theory, even if the male-female part is cut out, but I'm not going to go into them here. I'll just leave it that some males with autism have been shown to have brains that are in some regard more feminine than some control males, and IMO that stands as a single contrary fact that refutes the hypothesis that autism is the extreme male brain. Rather, I want to talk about how an extreme male brain DOES relate to autism. The most credence I'll give to it is something like this:

If autism were an extreme male brain, this graph would hold:

Which I find to be complete and other BS.

Rather, the most credence I'd give is to a graph more along these lines:

Where someone is in the green area, they are considered autistic. The "Borat" factor (so named because it overshadows Borat's cousin's factor, and because I don't feel like thinking up an actual name) isn't anything specific, it's just whatever makes someone autistic that is independent from masculization of the brain, and is considered the key factor here. However, if you control for the Borat factor, locally autism would appear as an extreme-male brain.

It is my humble opinion that an actual extreme male brain exists, and it apparently displays autistic traits, but IS NOT ACTUALLY AUTISTIC, at least not unless the person happens to have both an extreme male brain AND autism. Studies have shown that "autistic traits" are correlated with higher prenatal testosterone levels, but no evidence has been found for autism itself. Maybe in some cases extreme male brain can manifest as autism to a degree where it's semantics where it's autism or not in the same way Fragile X is sometimes and sometimes not considered a form of autism due to it's well established pathology. Anyway, as implied with "apparently I also believe some of the so-called autistic traits are not actually autistic at all. For example, let's look at a model of an extreme-male mindset and focus on a specific trait.

Whether based on cultural norms or biology, I think that John Wayne's character in The Searchers, Ethan Edwards, stands as model for the extreme male mindset. His character does superficially Aspergers....if you know absolutely nothing about Aspergers and just read that men with it are insensitive. Rather, I'd saying being insensitive isn't actually even a trait of autism, going with the intense world theory, I think a more accurate description is "disconnected", but once the connection is made, there is hypersensitivity, as with everything else. Meanwhile, someone who is merely insensitive will register at a lower threshold, they just won't heed it until it's at higher threshold. See the graph below.



One is just an adjustment of weights, the other suggests a substantial difference in cognition.

Now, assuming the borat factor exists, it's a manner of semantics whether autism is the borat factor and displaying more "male" traits just increases the chance of diagnosis, or the extreme-male traits are traits of autism, but regardless, the fact remains that for two people with the same borat factor, the one with more masculine traits is more likely to diagnosed with autism. This was previously stated, but the new significance here is where it comes with diagnosing girls. Naturally, it could be assumed that women would tend to have male traits then men would, so even if the borat factor is the same across both genders, autism would be diagnosed more in boys. Now, here is where I think things get interesting: in the various studies investigating masculinization in autism by looking at various biological factors of masculinization, they fairly consisting find girls with autism have more masculine traits than controls, but the same does not hold for boys. Sure, at least the aforementioned mentioned with prenatal testosterone linked it to "autistic traits", but many others found the opposite result. For, one study looking brain scans in the very least didn't find more masculinization in the brains of autistic males, while another study looking at faces found that males with Aspergers actually had more feminine faces. Using pseudomath, we one part girls more "masculine" than controls, one part boys more "feminine" than controls, one part boys as masculine as controls, and one part boys more masculine than controls. This leaves us with a 3:1 ratio, which is just a bit less than the actual diagnosis ratio, but as this is pseudomath and in reality the centers of each cluster ought to be denser, the estimate is naturally low.

Just as the fact that on average girls with autistic disorder have more cognitive deficits than males with the same diagnosis suggests that high functioning autism is under diagnosed in girls, I believe this suggests that autism isn't actually a masculinization of the brain of any sort, but rather than just people don't get diagnosed with autism unless they display a certain level of "male traits", while many others still have the same fundamental difference (the borat factor) and just get overlooked because their more feminine traits mask the disorder. People often talked about autism being under-diagnosed in girls because it manifests differently in girls and experts aren't trained to recognize it in girls, but I never really understood how this worked until I considered the borat factor. It should be noted that just because autism is underdiagnosed in girls and it's not an extreme male brain doesn't mean it's not more prevalent in boys, there are countless other explanations for that that can also contribute, like genes found in certain sex chromosomes or a gender being more sensitive to other factors. It's also possible that feminine neurological traits may transform the same aspect so it no longer manifests as a disorder, for example more oxytocin and less vasopressin (as mentioned in this article)may reduce social/behavioral problems in an otherwise autistic neurology, causing it to be considered subclinical.

So, in summary, autism is not an extreme male brain, it's just male traits make a diagnosis of autism more probable as they are a confounding factor.

I will be having you know that Borat guy also was my voice actor, and thus I am decreeing Borat's cousin's factor hereby be renamed King Julian's cousin's factor.

I also think the extreme male brain is a deeply flawed concept, at best applicable only to a subset of the diverse group now under the autism spectrum label.

The evidence that there are multiple autisms with distinct characteristics and etiologies is growing rapidly. There is an increased understanding of the very complicated gene interactions that underlie autism:
http://sfari.org/news-and-opinion/news/ ... treatments
And a recognition that some symptoms may be related to distinct syndromes:
http://sfari.org/news-and-opinion/blog/ ... rom-autism
http://sfari.org/news-and-opinion/news/ ... ay-diverge

Simon Baron Cohen's latest studies to explore the extreme male brain idea have generated insightful criticism of the study methods and theory:
http://sfari.org/news-and-opinion/news/ ... ws-critics

There are other very interesting and strong factors that point toward gender differences in the nature autism--not that autism is an example of a typical male pattern, but that males are more prone to problematic genetic variants that play a role in autism and females have a lot of protective mechanisms that males lack.
http://sfari.org/news-and-opinion/news/ ... y-suggests

http://sfari.org/news-and-opinion/news/ ... tism-genes

Given these developments, it doesn't seem reasonable to look at one explanation for all the factors that are described as autism, particularly not the "male brain" idea, when there are so many gender related aspects to the contributing factors that are being discovered that have nothing to do with the theory.

It's looking more and more like autism truly IS a Spectrum.

I wish there was more credence attached to anecdotal accounts. They, inevitably, provide ammunition for the results of research studies.

Like a law with teeth.

Like legislation imbued with the power of enforcement.

I actually read a couple of those article whiles I was writing the thread. I definitely agree that autism has multiple etiologies, and that at most the extreme male brain is only a single subtype of autism. Anyway, with regards to genetics, I'm pretty annoyed at gene centered studies because they are too mechanistic yet abstract, while autistic people who real thinking and feeling people with psychological causology for their behavior, not just the result of genes being on and off. As a programmer, I'll illustrate it with this metaphor: instead of trying to debug a computer by analyzing it's source code and tracing inputs, you just look at the byte-code and compare it with, except you have no idea how the processor even works, and often neglect to even acknowledge there even is a processor. The methodology is generally ineffective if other approaches can be taken. With regards to this, I agree that girls are likely protected from autism to some extent, but I disagree with the apparent notion that girls just suddenly get severe autism once enough autistic genes are present, I find that absurd. More likely, I think there is a phenotype present in both girls and boys with the genes which could be considered autism in some sense, but some other traits the girls have prevent it from manifesting as a disorder unless other factors, like cognitive impairment, override whatever the harmonizing traits are. This is where oxytocin or whatnot may play in. Thinking about it this way, it's not that autistic traits aren't present, it's that we don't even understand what the autistic traits truly are. Discovering what those common traits among both those with clinical autism and just the genes would be a victory for both neurodiversity and the pro-cure movement. In an ironic way, it's seems this hypothetical fundamental autistic trait may actually be considered a feminine trait, because it's in harmony with other feminine traits, while in disorder with male traits. I could go on in more detail about my overarching theory of autism, but I digress.

I don't think there needs to be one theory of autism.

Well then it's good thing there isn't.

I'm a straight male and quite content with being a male, but I definitely do not have an extreme male brain. I have a lot of female traits, IMO, and leaning heavily toward androgynous than extreme male. Maybe that's why I went undiagnosed for more than 40 years?

Very similar to you, except I wouldn't say I have a lot of female traits either, but most definitely androgynous.

I think you are on the right path, but I will say this:

whether you believe it or not, females with aspergian neurology are less likely to be diagnosed, because they have less problem, so this is why female is less prevalent in females. FEMALES ARE LESS LIKELY TO HAVE ASPERGER AND HAVE A DIAGNOSIS!

In a society which is male dominated (like before the 60s, the sexual revolution), some 'disorders' existed which were much more prevalent in females, and all males (and females believed this too) keeped saying that disorder y is more prevalent in girls.

The truth is that we are at the moment in a female dominated society, and this is probably the best explanation for autism or asperger or why geeky is WRONG, even asperger females think GEEKY is wrong, I'm not talking about gamers (that is not geeky in year 2014, almsot every male does play computer games etc.)

How many females <ith asperger don't go out much? ZERO
How many males with asperger are going out to party's? Almost ZERO!1

It's a fallacy to say that females are less likely to be diagnosed because of less recognizing in females. A more likely explantion is that females have less problems in our society, and thus, are less likely to be autistic...

Can you understand this???

^ No.

thanks female for your respons! =)

Preposition 1: females are less likely diagnosed with autism/asperger
(correct preposition) (some figures are for asperger: 1 out of 6 females are diagnosed with asperger syndrome and for all autism spectrum disorders it's 1 out of 4)

Preposition 2: people are diagnosed because they have trouble in daily life, and that(s why they are called having social problems and thus having a diagnosis of autism/asperger
(correct preposition)

(The primary goal of diagnosis is to help people who have difficulties in life, just like medicine try to to cure the human body, psychology try to help the human psychology problems)

Conclusion: Females are less likely to have trouble in daily life (social problems, autism problems) hence they are diagnosed with asperger/autism less often
(most likely conclusion, more likely thn to argue that females are less diagnosed because of other factors...)

Last edited by paxfilosoof on 07 Nov 2014, 7:08 pm, edited 3 times in total.

^ No.

Correct the logical reasoning error please?

Well, let's consider the myriad of possibilities for why women don't get diagnosed with autism.....

1. Instead of getting diagnosed with autism, women get diagnosed with BPD, anxiety, depression, ect.

2. Parents socialize males and females differently.

3. There actually is a higher occurrence of genetics in males that precipitate autism.

Ect.

There's no inherent "logic" behind the thinking "autistic women ain't got no problems."

The third scenario is not necessarily true. Hence, the logic tree is felled.