What Underlies Autism?

Historically, autism has been thought to be a disease that is defined by a social impairment. Recently, however, neuroscientists have uncovered other causes that may underlie autism. These scientists claim that it is not social impairment that is at the root of autism, but rather it is with hyper-connected neurons within the mind.

Kaustubh Supekar and his colleague, Vinod Menon, from the Stanford University School of Medicine have conducted research that provides that autism is a result of these hyper-connected neurons. The study can be found here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/11/131107123039.htm. These individuals used one of the most advanced neuroimaging datasets available today to view the neuron connections in children. The results show that individuals with autism had neurons with more connections, or synapses, than normal individuals. Furthermore, those with more severe cases of autism had even more interconnections, displaying a direct relationship with autism and the connected neurons.

Daniel Bor, neuroscientist and author of The Ravenous Brain, touches on autism in his book. Bor asserts that autism is caused by an extreme consciousness of the mind. This extreme consciousness may be attributable to the hyper-connected neurons that Supekar and Menon found in their study.

Many people and scientists believe that autism is a lack of mental ability and entails mental retardation. This is not the stance that Bor, Supekar, Menon take, however. Supekar and Menon argue that many of the children in their study were “high-functioning” and averaged IQs of above 70. Furthermore, Bor assures his readers that autistics are not mentally retarded. The Wechsler IQ test that is used in many cases is biased because it also focuses on linguistic ability, which autistics struggle with. On other IQ tests, autistics averaged 30-70 points higher. He sites the example of Albert Einstein, an autistic who is considered one of the most intelligent beings of all time. Moreover, he explains that although their over consciousness may make these individuals better at certain tasks, it impairs their social skills. It is not the bad social skills that create autism though; it is the over conscious mind and focus on patters and organization that impairs their social skills.

These hyper-connected neurons that Supekar and Menon speak of explain why many autistic individual’s, specifically those with Asperger’s syndrome, are able to preform at very high levels in certain tasks. It also goes hand in hand with Bor’s theory of an overabundance of consciousness. Bor states, “If autistics have a wider consciousness than others, from the main thesis of this book it would follow that they would then also have a more patterned, structured mind. This, I would argue, is one of the hallmark features of autism, and one of the most common symptoms, from the most disabled autistic child to the most towering genius classed as having Asperger’s syndrome” (236). Thus, since autistic individuals are more concerned with patterns and organization than others, such as organizing things or repeating certain tasks, they have developed more structured minds. This would explain Supekar’s and Menon’s theory of why the autistic participants had such hyper-connected neurons. 

All three scientists argue that current forms of treatment for autism are insufficient, because the actual cause is not popular belief. There are pharmacological methods however, such as the drug Arbaclofen, which have shown promising results. This drug would help lower the amount of consciousness in autistic individuals by restoring a balance between neuronal firing and neuronal suppression. With these findings, the former behavioral methods, used to treat the social impairment, can be forgotten and the ones that target the true issue within the neurons can be implemented more.