Could Autism be a Prepartory Evolutionary trait.

I had a thought in my head earlier this morning, so If this thread is in the wrong place, please move it to the proper forum. Well here we go. I went to bed last night, after checking to make sure no one was in the house. My roomate told me this morning he wandered in about 3:30 4:00 AM. Well when I woke up he was playing Super Smash Brothers Brawl. I asked him when the last time he slept was. He told me about 4 days ago, and proceeded to ask me why I wanted to know.

My roomate has higher functioning Autism. I've noticed that everywhere I go I meet more people with Autism. They all have one thing in common, its the fact that they can barely sleep, and they are still bursting with energy.

Now I remember a thread in a different forum, talking about the Web bot. How it predicts that the magnetic pole is going to get stretched. Causing Insomnia; the inability to sleep. Now I eat sleep breathe ATS. I think about all the threads and look at them from different points of views, which makes it easy for me to come up with theories that may very well be true.

Link

Now with all that said. My theory is that Autism may very well be an evolutionary trait. Debunkers, skeptics, ATS I ask you all to test this theory.

Arigato

Daniel

What do you mean by 'evolutionary trait'?

Surely we don't need autism to survive?

I mean to say autism in the fact that they would be better equipped when it comes to the Squeezing of the magnetic field due to the Earth and the suns alignment to the center of the galaxy. From what I've heared the squeeze is supposed to cause insomnia. Severe insomnia. Which led me to this hypothesis.

If this could be an evolutionary trait, then what is the evolutionary process through which it is stimulated?

As long as people without autism don't die from lack of sleep, there would be no reason to see a rise in autism?

Okie doke. Hi Semper.

The first point I would make is that it wouldn't really be evolutionary in the sense of evolutionary theory, as you are proposing some sort of preparedness. Evolutionary variation is random to the needs of the organism. That is DNA doesn't know the future. So, not really evolution in that sense.

Secondly, I'm not too sure what you mean by suggesting autism is related to insomnia (which it is for general sleep issues) and some supposed magnetic event might cause insomnia. Of course, the autistics won't be any different, as they already suffer insomnia. Along with a number of the general population. So just people who don't have chronic insomnia would join the crew.

However, given the prevalence of autism (about 6 in 1000) cf. incidence of insomnia (10-20% general for chronic, and higher for elderly), I'm not sure how that really means much specific to autism. For example, for every 6 autistics there would be between 100-200 general insomniacs.

ABE: Fixed some of my bad maths, meh.

[edit on 8-5-2009 by melatonin]

I work with autistic(aspergers) children every day. Some of them are the highest IQ children in the school. However, I dont see any way that this could be an evolutionary trade.

Most of them cannot function day to day. Communicating their intelligent thoughts is next to impossible some days. The ability to deal with stress is non-existant.

I would argue that this is de-evolution, not the opposite.

@ Melatonin
I mean to say that out of all the autistic people I know. They run on Very little sleep. They can go for days even, and still have the energy and the pep as someone like you or me who got 8 or more hours of sleep. That would mean that they would be affected less by the changing magnetic field and be more accustomed to it.
@scraze
I dont know whats going to happen. No one does. I just put my observations out there. From what I read from the web bot report. Its supposed to get pretty bad.

Such sleep issues are certainly associated with autism. A number of studies support that claim, so it's more than just anecdotal.

But, as I noted, for every 6 autistics there would be another 100-200 non-autistics who would also be 'accustomed' to any supposed magnetic anomaly-induced insomnia. So my point is that it's not really specific to autism.

And as noted by CP, not really an evolutionary adaptive trait overall. Not sure there's been studies on it, but I'm sure we'd find that autistics tend to have much lower reproductive success than the general population. If so, it would be hard for the autistics to really contribute to the gene pool.

@CautiouslyPessimistic
Ok so you could help me, since you work with Autistic children, what would you say is the ratio is higher functioning to lesser functioning autism.

@Melatonin
Thank you for your debunking of my theory, though I have to ask you something, can you find any proof on the lesser reproductive success of autistic people. I'm on a journey for the truth and I would prefer a more thorough debunking. Not that I mean to be rude. I just would like to see statistics.

@both. I thank you both for your efforts. I appreciate your time spent, helping me come closer to the truth.

If this is an Evolutionary Trait I have to ask for what ?

It does not help if survive and the people that have it sometimes seem to have higher IQ's but they also get ridiculed by the ones that don't have this trait then.

Most traits help you survive something due to the area or environment. If this is one than what does it help you to survive.

This doesn't seem like a trait more like a curse.

There isnt a ratio. There are too many different levels of autism to break it down into a ratio of function level. Each is their own.

Out of the 8 kids I have daily, 6 are Asperger's. Does that help.

OP

Your initially concept IS CORRECT

I have had two people now work for me (on the net) who are Autistic...

Coincidence perhaps...

But while face pattern recognition and emotional understanding are very low and this can make life difficult...

When you find something they LIKE and get them focused on it... the results are often stunning

One guy went on to make 40 G a month (allot more than me lately) because his skill with PPC (pay per click) dealing with key words and numbers was so ridiculous it was borderline rainman...

the second guy who as a more ADD version, seems to have now found a place for himself in gaming work...

But the COMPUTER ...poses no problem for you if your autistic..once you find an area to HYPER FOCUS on

I'd agree...

Might be coincidence but in a world of machines Autism may be around for keeps...

Hmmm... it does a lot thank you. I can't find anything about Adult autism and Insomnia. So I may just be looking for a pattern that isn't quite there.
I thank you for your time once again. I will just have to keep investigating, ill keep this thread posted for my findings.

Thank you. I just got off the phone with my roomate. he said that If everyone was autistic, there would be soo many things achieved. "Autism just means you're better at different things." He looks at things like a puzzle. A problem solver, if I givehim a problem he himself will become soo entranced, that its solved quickly, at a high quality rate.

In my experience-and again, I work only with kids-but in my experience autistic children tend to need, and get, more sleep than the average kid.

A lot of it has to do with the structure. Set times and routines are imperative in their daily lives, which usually means an earlier bedtime, and more sleep. I can't speak to adult autism, but I have NEVER seen anything in the kids that signals insomnia.

I have had a couple of students that WERE insomniacs, but they were both not only autistic, but emotionally disturbed and HIGH anxiety cases.

I'm sorry, I dont mean to badmouth anyone, but this is simply not true.
First of all, "Autism" is a blanket term. As I said earlier, there are several levels of autism. Simply saying someone is autistic, and is therefore better at different things, is a sign of not understanding what autism is.

You are correct that they tend to look at things as a puzzle, and that if you can get them to focus, they often produce incredible results, but I think that can be more chalked up to the fact that it is such an intense thing for them to actually be able to focus, they end up more dialed in.

But it also has to be something that catches their interest. Different people have different interests. So if you have a group of Aspargers, and other HFA's. if you give them all a project say design a house using the least amount of money and get the most functional house. If you have the right group you should have a pretty good design, and a great quality, am I right.
HFA1-Good at roofing
Asp1-plumbing
etc... so on and so forth. Who's to say nature isn't prepping us for whats to come.

Well, again, it is a must more likely think that getting them focused on such things takes so much effort that they simply focus on that one particular thing more than the average person.

The mass amount of disabilities that come with autism is proof that it is not evolution.

reply to post by cautiouslypessimistic

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I really don' t know where to start. I am a high functioning autistic, but I certainly can't speak for other autistics since there's such a wide range individualized behavioral and neural items that it's regarded as a spectrum instead of a specific item. For myself, when I was younger, I got around four hours of sleep a day, now at the age of 43 it seems like there are days where I can't get enough... it's probably age.

I lack empathy, although I've learned to use scripts to fake it.
I've always expected order around me, and can see the order in chaos.
During my military years, I enjoyed the regimented lifestyle. I was good at what I did, and my peers regarded me as 'scary' because I had a reputation of having a focused ruthless efficiency that served me well. But, when I got out, I discovered that I didn't truly grow at all while in that lifestyle, I had lost my self identity.

Now, 17 years later, 25 years into 'adulthood', I am where I should have been 13 years ago. I still have a very formal face to face way of manner that irritates some people that I deal with.

I don't consider the spectrum to be evolutionarily advantageous at all. Quite the contrary.

No worries. Pity others aren't so appreciative of critique. It's not rude at all to ask. As I noted, I know of no data - just really my hypothesis. I've seen such data in a study of an evolutionary relationship for schizophenia and schizotypy.

It wouldn't surprise me that ASD research has gone down similar route to current ideas about schizotypy and schizophrenia - as both are highly heritable. That would be something like - a number genes underpinning autism lead to adaptive traits (cf. schizoptypy & creativity), but too many lead to a sort of non-adaptive 'supertrait' (cf. schizophrenia). Again, wouldn't surprise to see these ideas around in the scientific literature - never looked though. People who might be worth researching are Simon Baron Cohen (Ali G's brother - booyakasha!) and Chris Frith - both study theory-of-mind (a concept associated with ASD).

I think the 'debunking' (jeez, I hate that word, lol) was thorough enough. But at least you know the sort of data you would need to find to show any sort of evolutionary advantage for ASD traits, and also potential ideas.

[edit on 8-5-2009 by melatonin]