Autism, Schizophrenia, and genetic imprinting.

[Odin2005]

I've recently finished reading a fascinating book called The Imprinted Brain: How Genes Set the Balance of the Mind Between Autism and Psychosis and it lays out a fascinating hypothesis that Autistic Spectrum Disorders and various forms of Psychosis are opposite poles of a spectrum of brain development caused by differences in the expression of paternal and maternal genes. and that these two poles illustrate two different ways of thinking, which the author calls "mechanistic", thinking in terms of cause-and-effect and law-like patterns, and "mentalistic", thinking in terms of intentions, motives, purpose, etc. Autism is associated with dominance of mechanistic thinking while Psychosis is associated with dominance of mentalistic thinking.

The author links this to differences in the expression of paternal and maternal genes in the developing brain and a genetic tug-of-war between the genetic interest of the father's genes and the mother's genes and that many developmental genes are active when they come from either the mother or father. Dominance of paternal genes leads to Autism while dominance of maternal genes leads to psychotic disorders like Schizophrenia.

Something I found interesting is that the book connects mentalistic thinking with conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and belief in the supernatural and in a personal deity. Well, I have Asperger's, I'm an Atheist, hate the conspiracy nuts, hate New-Agey nonsense, and am one of the resident skeptics. :evilgrin:

[blue neen]

1. I'd like to read that book.

The explanation of "mechanistic" and "mentalistic" is definitely an interesting hypothesis.

[bananas]

2. So he's saying there are no people with both Autism and Schizophrenia?

[Odin2005]

3. No, he says they can occur together in certain circumstances.

According to the author the mechanistic and mentalistic thinking systems are independent from each other and that the mentalistic system doesn't start "firing on all cylinders" until young adulthood.

Maternal genes are strongly expressed in the pre-frontal cortex, which doesn't fully mature until one's early to mid 20s (the last part of the brain to do so. Schizophrenia typically develops at the same time, early adulthood, and seems to be associated with too much pruning of gray matter in the pre-frontal cortex in the final phase of brain development during that young adult period.

If the maternal genes don't get into high gear until late adolescence one will have a high-functioning autistic kid that ends up as an adult with a mixture of autistic and psychotic traits. The book uses John Nash as an example.

[semillama]

4. Sounds fascinating

but what does it have to do with Jenny McCarthy? :evilgrin: