Monday, November 18, 2019

Autism, Heredity, Intelligence

Not all of you read Maggie's Farm, and I wanted to make sure you saw this from Slate Star Codex. My wife and I both have some Asperger-y traits, I along the OCD side of things and she along the social cue side, and this reflects in one of our sons. Whether my sleep movement disorders are related I don't know, but I have always thought so.  The odd sustained focus to the exclusion of other input while awake is very similar to the odd sustained focus of dreaming.

Of course, I may be just making up a story in explanation that has no basis in reality.

5 comments:

james said...

FWIW, I've. not observed sleep movement issues in any of the Aspies I know/knew.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

That is the beginning of data

bs king said...

Oooooooh.....we may have a great example of bidirectional causality here. My quick poke around informs me that those on the spectrum have a higher incidence of nearly ALL sleep disorders, but that autistic type traits are also more pronounced in those who don't sleep well:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4450800/

Some specific info on sleep movement disorders in there as well.

GraniteDad said...

So... lack of sleep causes autism.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

It increases autism-spectrum symptoms. Autism itself apparently has different causes, often genetic.