At least one in every 150 children suffers from autism. We tell you eight recent discoveries about this disorder whose main signs and symptoms affect communication, social interactions and repetitive behaviors.
Bad temper. What did Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Mozart, Beethoven, Inmanuel Kant, and Hans Christian Andersen have in common? As Michael Fitzgerald, an Irish psychiatrist at Trinity College in Dublin, has concluded, all of these great geniuses in history suffered from some form of autism throughout their lives.
Big head. Children with autism have higher levels of hormones involved in growth (insulin-like growth factors types 1 and 2) than those without the disease. That would explain why the head circumference in autistics is larger, according to a recent study by the University of Cincinnati (USA) published in Clinical Endocrinology.
Reputation doesn’t matter. According to research from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), autists do not care what others think of them. To demonstrate this, the scientists compared their behavior when making financial donations to UNICEF under two conditions: when they were alone and when they were observed by someone else. Healthy subjects donated more in the presence of an observer, because they considered how it would affect their social reputation. The amount donated by autistic people, however, was identical in both situations. The findings were published in the journal PNAS.
They process better. Autistics have a greater capacity to process information than ordinary mortals, which could explain the apparently higher than average percentage of autistic people working in the information technology sector, say UK researchers. In addition to this greater ability to process information, autistics are better able to detect information that is considered essential, according to the study, which appeared in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology.
Autistic face. The faces of children with autism have distinctive features, according to a study published recently in the journal Molecular Autism. Specifically, they have wider eyes and mouths, the upper area of the face larger than usual and the middle area of the face (nose and cheeks) somewhat smaller than the average.
Premature Premature babies and those born with low birth weight are five times more likely to develop autism than those born with a normal weight, according to a study published in the journal Pediatrics and based on data obtained over 21 years.
Advantages in prehistory. Some of the genes that contribute to autism may have been selected in the past because they provided greater abilities in spatial intelligence, concentration and memory, qualities that favored those with autism when it came to hunting and gathering.
Mirror neurons. People with autism tend to have problems with social skills and it is almost impossible to show empathy when communicating with another person. According to research released in Biological Psychiatry, it is due to failures in the mirror neuron system (those responsible for understanding and anticipating the wishes and actions of others), which are not blocked but develop extremely slowly .
Source: muyinteresante.com.mx
