Einstein autism myth

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I would like to dispel the notion Einstein had autism:

He displayed social abilities and cognitive empathy for one, but let us look at his brain:

-Lack of a sylvian fissure, not an autistic feature.
-Enlarged corpus callosum, autistic brains have less active or smaller corpus callousums. The most severe cases have a complete lack of it.
-Four ridges in the mid frontal lobes. Autistic people usually have 3 like regular people.
-Extensive strong connections among certain lobes with no extended length. Autistic individuals have overly long connection or poor connectivity leading to emphasis on activity in isolated regions.
-No abnormalities in the amygdala are mentioned. Autistic individuals have smaller denser neurons as a result of seizures or energy conservation. This is not a direct symptom causing feature of autism but a side effect of other differences.
-Good connection between hippocampus and rest of the brain. Autistic brains have issues with connectivity as mentioned.
-Mass was normal. Autistic individuals can have as much as 3% extra mass. The severe cases as much as 20% leading to macrocephaly among syndromic cases.

The corpus callosum size though is the smoking gun. I would like to see Temple Grandin's reply to this considering she firmly believe Einstein was on the spectrum.

I'd like to dispel it with the fact that we cannot diagnose a dead person

I wish a lot of this diagnosing of celebrities and historical figures would go away.

I do not have an objection to people doing it for fun or saying I think or suspect an adult public figure is autistic. I have done it myself. What angers me is the constant blanket statements with no caveats and usually no supporting evidence whatsoever that so and so is autistic.

I get they want to "prove" autistics are capable of doing great things and debunk stigmas. Unsupported blanket statements hurt this cause and are not needed to make this point. Saying people that think or present differently have had success and done great things makes the point effectively and is supported by lots of evidence.

I agree, and most of this is being done for patronizing purposes. Which pisses me off to no end.

We cannot rule out a developmenal condition, we could find more people with similar brains ad give it a term.

Also we shouldn't diagnose historical figures either based on evil. It is wrong to say outright Atilla the Hun had autism as well.

You can't diagnose the dead. Even some professionals don't think Einstein had autism and he was just gifted or eccentric. A doctor even coined the term Einstein Syndrome. It's not even a real condition.

Living folks can get CAT scans today.

And when living folks who have been officially dxd with autism get CAT scans they often turn out to have perfectly normal brain morphology. Just as normal as Einsteins. So brain morphology is not a smoking gun one way or the other.

This is a funny one!

So, having watched disablity pride for the last 30 years, it's a REALLY funny joke to see the lists of famous people included in just about every "Proud to have my disability!" Book ever written.

Friends, these lists always include the same people. And Einstein is on every one of them. Every single one.

He wasn't diagnosed with anything while he was alive. But he was quirky.

Einstein is claimed to have: ASD, ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalcula, NVLD, auditory processing disorder, anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder.... I'm sure I'm missing a few of them in there.

Just go to the kids section in a book store, open up any book written for kids on any kind of cognitive difference and you will see a claim that Einstein had it, too.

Yah. I didn't even read through the original post. corpus callosum size has nothing to do with autism. That's either old science or just pure baloney.

There is a disorder where the corpus callosum is malformed. Its called DCC. Kids and adults with this problem are very different than autistic kids and adults, although there is some overlap in their symptoms. You can find out more here: http://nodcc.org/corpus-callosum-disorders/

I did see a theory that people with autism actually have a thicker CC on average, but I guess that theory didn't take hold because I haven't heard anything on that subject for about a decade.

https://corticalchauvinism.com/2016/06/ ... in-autism/

This will clear some things up.

A quilt of labels he has, after his lifetime.

Unfortunately, this has already done for Adolf Hitler

Yes he did and he had numerous social relationships which greatly helped his career. Same with Bill Gates.

Two things. First off, this was probably the research I saw several years ago. There is a reason why it didn't go further. I can't say for sure what that reason is. Usually, its because there was no good scientific evidence in the first place.

This guy that's quoted, Jerzy Weigel, is ONE guy. He has a theory. In order for this theory to become a part of our understanding, his results need to be replicated. That's basic science 101. If you do an experiment yourself, it means nothing until other scientists try the same experiment and are able to replicate the results. So, my best guess is that nobody was able to replicate his results. If that's so, his theories are not going to make it into mainstream conversations. They are just going to be fringe Jerzy's weird theories.

I have also, BTW, heard theories that autistic people have MORE active/large corpus colusums. They postulated that this is why we have so many sensitivities. That theory also went away. Presumably again, it just didn't warent continued study.

Americans desperately need to understand how science works, in my opinion. We are WAY too swayed back and forth because we don't understand the process of how human beings increase our knowledge of the natural world. This leads to all sorts of problems. Crazy snake oil treatments. Crazy politians. It all goes back to people not understanding how to evaluate knowledge.

Sorry to pull that into my "America needs better science education!! !" soapbox. I get on that one at the drop of a hat.

So, I looked this dude up. And guess what? The evidence that you base your whole blog on; well, this might make me this website's biggest a-hole for pointing this out. But this guy's brain tissue research wasn't done on autistic people in general. It was done on people who have a specific genetic abnormality on dup15q.

So, his research shows that people with dup15q have smaller corpus collosums. It doesn't show that all autistic have the same. That's probably why that theory went away so quickly. This observation only holds true for 3-5% of people on the spectrum.

Here's the link: https://www.autismspeaks.org/node/11851

Thank you for correcting me about that study, but the other parts of einstein's brain are worth discussing.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22350341
This different MRI study had a small sample size though so I concede that.