STUDYING AUTISM
Thinking outside the box
You’ve probably wondered why certain conditions are more or less prevalent in men. Sometimes it’s obvious — a guy won’t develop uterine cancer, or a woman cancer of the testicles. Men do get breast cancer, but it’s a hundred times less common than in females. The explanation for that difference lies both in anatomy and the effect of female hormones on breast tissue. As for autism, experts say it is four times more common in males than in females.
Now we are learning how sex hormones can shape the developing fetus, determining some lifelong characteristics, even before birth. Scientists at the University of Strasbourg in France recently showed that key genes that are associated with autism are sensitive to testosterone levels.
They used human stem cells to model the brain development process. Exposing these cells to DHT, a metabolite of testosterone, led to changes in the expression of about 200 genes. Some were up-regulated (causing increased sensitivity) and some were down-regulated. In particular, several genes that are known to relate to autism spectrum disorder (ASD), including NRCAM, FAM107A, and IGFBP5, were sensitive to testosterone levels.
Exposure to this hormone created significant biological changes including “enrichment of proteins involved in, among others, cell adhesion, extracellular matrix, interaction with receptors and signal transduction, regulation of cell growth, regulation of transcription, organ development and cell differentiation.”
Writing in the journal Behavioral Psychiatry, the researchers suggest that “individuals with autism may suffer, for a transient period during the first years of life, from an excessive brain growth which might be due to an increase in the number of neurons in some brain regions such as the frontal cortex.”
In other words, their brains grow too much in early life. Researchers believe that other factors, such as environmental ones, may also come into play here.
While they don’t speculate about using this new knowledge for therapy, there is certainly the possibility of doing that in the future, either in utero or in the first weeks after birth, when the brains of all babies are developing at a fantastic rate.
On the other hand, there’s something to be said for embracing autism, instead of trying to figure out how to treat it. Many parents of autistic children say they couldn’t imagine their children any other way, and would not want them to become what they describe as “neurotypical.”
Writing in the Wall Street Journal recently, technology researcher Alexandra Samuel notes that “it took my autistic son to wake me up to the truth.” She reports that he had been labelled as “difficult” and “oppositional” and was first diagnosed as having ADHD, then ASD.
After a while, she says she realized that her son is just “wired differently” and she “started to see the connection between his wiring and his talents, like his mathematical ability and his extraordinary vocabulary.”
Her major insight was that many people in her workplace have characteristics in common with her son. Some couldn’t sit still at the office, so she started having walking meetings. Some were reluctant to speak without first reflecting, so she started dividing sessions into two parts to allow them to process information before sharing with the group. She reports great success and has changed her management style because of this.
Her article is accompanied by a reference to an online survey of 437 adults done in 2016 that shows that “about one-quarter of adults surveyed said they had at least one neurodiverse condition.”
That study, by Minnesotabased Wilder Research, is called Neurodiversity in the Workplace. It does indeed show that 24 per cent of the adults say they have a neurodiverse condition, with the most common ones being ADHD, dyslexia, and dyscalculia (difficulty with mathematics).
While this data is self-reported and subject to biases, it does show that neurodiversity is a real factor in the work environment. It also illustrates that we have a long way to go before being wired differently is acceptable at work. The study notes that “forty-three per cent of respondents who had neurodiverse conditions had never reported their neurodiverse condition to an employer.”
For those (predominantly male) people out there with autism, there are companies which value you for who you are and seek to apply your unique talents.
Specialisterne is a great example. It was launched by Danish entrepreneur Thorkil Sonne to provide meaningful work to people on the ASD spectrum. Their skills are being applied in everything from electronics assembly to animal care.
Now, Specialisterne Canada, operating out of Toronto, has brought the same approach to this country. Their goal is to “to enable one million jobs for people with autism and similar challenges” and they are well on their way, doing projects with CIBC and tech giant SAP.
So, while a genetic fix for some brain development problems may be coming down the road, our real challenge may be to develop the wisdom to know what needs to be fixed and what needs to be appreciated. Dr. Tom Keenan is an awardwinning journalist, public speaker, professor in the Faculty of Environmental Design at the University of Calgary, and author of the bestselling book, Technocreep: The Surrender of Privacy and the Capitalization of Intimacy.