Could This Study On Schizophrenia Shed Light on Autism?

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For years I have heard that the pruning process of neurons has gone astray in us (autistics) resulting in too many connections. They have now found a genetic link to the pruning process in schizophrenia that shows excess pruning occurs. One wonders if the defect is in the same gene or group of genes. Interesting read makes one wonder if it will have ramifications for us...

Article on Schizophrenia

Hm. I have been dx'ed as schizoaffective, I hear voices but lack what's called "anognosia", which means when a crazy person doesn't realize that he's crazy. I fully know and accept that I'm mentally ill and have to take my meds every day to keep the voices away. Also, I have obvious symptoms of HFA, and have since I was 18 months old. So, yeah I think there's a link. There have been WP members in the past who have both autism and paranoid schizophrenia.

There is a study that came out in 2014 that looked at the excess in synapses:

https://iancommunity.org/cs/understandi ... uroscience

Looking through my records, I had macrocephaly (head circumference greater than 98 percentile) at age 5, when I had presented with severe language impairment and "autistic features," leading to a diagnosis of PDD-NOS, so I probably had problems with pruning neurons.

I wonder what they expect to find in adults with regard to pruning?

I had a big head also when young, somewhat reminiscent of a bobblehead doll. anyways, that thing about the pruning hit me in that when young I was dx'ed as being on the schizophrenic side of things, but later was dx'ed with autism, so I long have thought there must be a connection there somewhere. I also heard of something primarily dx'ed in Europe, called schizotypal autism, that seemed to ring a few bells with me in terms of symptoms.