Poll: Hair color, darker, lighter, same?

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Hi all. I've seen discussion about red hair, but not hair color compared to siblings. I don't believe there is a genetic linkage. I'm a researcher who actually studies neurite pruning and clearance, not autism, but autism is a topic dear to my heart. I hope you don't mind me on your group, I don't have autism but suffer from severe treatment-resistant depression and suspect Crohn's disease.

Melanin production is regulated, in part, by serotonin via 5-HT2a receptor, which is also involved in neurite growth. Autistics are thought to have higher serotonin in blood but lower in brain (at least early in life) and some researchers suspect this leads to oversensitive 5-HT2a receptors. I first became interested in this question when my mother remarked, "your hair is darker! Did you dye it?" I hadn't seen her in several months and had stopped taking a drug called lamotrigine, which lowers serotonin in blood.

Hi greenbug. Welcome to this site.

Myself and two out of my three siblings (one sister and my brother) are blonde. My hair is much darker than my brother's, but I am unsure of how my hair compares to my sister's since she has been dyeing her hair black for many years. My hair has been getting darker over the years, to the point where my sister once asked me if I dyed it after she hadn't seen me for awhile. My hair looks almost brown in photographs even though in person you can definitely see gold in it. The gold streaks become especially noticeable during summer months when the sun is out more often.

Hair getting darker with age is pretty common among natural blondes, but the information you gave about high serotonin levels in the blood leading to darker hair would make sense, since I have been taking psychiatric medications that, among other things, boost serotonin levels ever since I was a teenager.

My older sister's hair was darker until she started going gray. She now colors it, so I don't know the current real color. My older brother's hair was also darker than mine, but lighter than my sister's, until he started going gray. Then the rest of it started to lighten. My younger brother's hair is lighter than mine used to be, but now my hair is lightening as I age, and fading into a silvery gold hue, but there is still plenty of other colors in it. My original color was a blend mostly of several shades of brown, with some blond, and a little red, all mixed together, but now there are less of the brown and red shaded hairs, and more of the blond ones, along with some silvery white ones. My father's hair used to be black or very dark brown. One of his sisters was the same, and the other was blond, unless she colored her hair, but I don't think she did, at least not until she got old. My mother had brownish blondish hair, although it was darker when she was younger, and got more blondish and faded, and grayish, once she got old. One of her brother's had light reddish hair, the other one to survive childhood had brownish blondish hair, but lighter than my mother. Her many sisters ranged from dark brown, to brown, and at least one had dark red brown hair. Another had light red brown hair. My mother had a lot of siblings, and most of them survived childhood, but several died young.

I don't know if this info will help any. The natural hair colors in my family come in quite a range, but fade with age.

My eyes are dark, and were dark even when I was born when babies usually have blue eyes. My eyebrows are thick. My brother has green eyes and my father has water clear blue eyes, which makes my dark eyes all the more unlikely, even though my mother has brown eyes. I have chestnut hair.

Contrasting to my dark dull eyes is my pasty, untannable skin. I can spend hours under the sun and I still have this lifeless white tone to my skin. This has been the object of mockery when I was younger. I used to be asked if I had spent my holidays in a cave, every late august.

Another ''Autistic trait'' I don't have.....my hair is the same colour as my brother's (he's NT).

I doubt this has anything to do with autism.

I can't answer the poll, as I have no full siblings.

Me and my brother both had blond hair until early teens or so, We both have a similar shade of brown, at least I think so

I am much lighter than my sisters, and darkening with age, as most blondes do.

My mother has light blond hair and my father has black hair. My sister has inherited the platinum blond hair of my mother. I had very light hair as well as an infant, but it turned dark blond over time. My androgenic hair (body hair) is almost black and doesn't match my dark blond scalp hair and beard.

Interestingly, I see the exact same pattern in my sister's children. Her husband has black hair (possible proof of parental imprinting of sexual preference?) and she has two children, a boy and a girl. My niece has platinum blond hair, like my sister and mother, and my nephew has dark blond hair. None of them are autistic though, as far as I can tell. I suspect my mother to have AS, but I don't think that anyone else in my family is on the spectrum.

I think this question is random and pointless.

Mine's slightly darker than my sister's.

Some people think there is a greater chance of having red hair if you were autistic, she was looking into whether or not having a lighter shade of hair has a genetic link to autism, I don't see how this is pointless

People also have a genetic link with their siblings.

Pointless maybe, but hardly random; rather specific I'd say.

Not genetic linkage, just darker hair as a result of high blood serotonin, which is a very consistent finding. There is definitely no utility, even if it turned out to be true that folks with autism have darker hair than siblings. More to the point, it would be impossible to prove cause-effect. I'm obsessed with trying to determine every reason for everything and always willing to be wrong. It's what makes me a little crazy but a good scientist.

This is definitely respectable. Testing hypothesizes and creating new ones is how science progresses.
To answer your question: all of my siblings are half siblings (two have a different mother and two have a different father), so this may skew the results a bit, but I tend to have slightly lighter hair than my siblings. We all happen to have brunette hair; my sister and brother from my mother's side have brunette hair that is nearly black and the siblings from my father's side have a bit of an ashy tint to their hair. My hair is mid-brunette during the winter and almost dark-blond during the summer.
I also have a streak of grey/white hair that has been present from birth.