14 DAY TRIAL // Researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) recently made a proposition that shocked the international scientific community, and that is likely to cause controversy even among evolutionary biologists and paleontologists. They say that autism may have actually bee a good thing at times.
The investigation the team conducted focused on the hunter-gatherer societies of the prehistoric era. In a paper published in the latest issue of the esteemed scientific journal Evolutionary Psychology, the group details the reasons why it made such an interesting claim.
At this point, people with autism are generally considered as suffering from a medical condition, not as having a set of genetic mutations, or feature a specific type of brain connections that served an useful function long ago. Regardless of whether that is the case, that function is now invalid.
In the modern world, autism patients have to deal with multiple challenges, stemming from the particularities of their condition. Someone would be hard-pressed to call the affliction useful. Still, this is exactly what the USC team is suggesting.
The study was conducted by investigators at the university's Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences' Department of Psychology. They say that certain groups of ancestors suffering from autism spectrum disorders (ASD) may have formed minority groups, Science Blog reports.
USC brain science researcher Jared Reser, a PhD candidate for the Department of Psychology, believes that some of the genes currently underlying ASD may have once served as beneficial mutations causing beneficial behaviors inside these minority groups.
This is an entirely new perspective on autism and related disorders, commentators agree. Increased abilities for spatial intelligence, increased concentration and improved memory are just some of the factors that would have given our ASD ancestors an edge in the evolutionary race.
In some modern-day autistic people, cognitive abilities remain mostly unaltered by their condition, with their autism manifesting itself when it comes to social cognition. In prehistoric time, this would have allowed ASD hunter-gatherers to become self-sufficient.
These ancestors may have been responsible for learning and refining hunting and gathering skills, driven by their penchant for obsessive actions, and by their hunger and thirst. In such a scenario, these group had to adapt or perish.
In modern times, kids with autism stack blocks and perform other tasks that may seem trivial because they are receiving food from their parents. There is no way to know how they would behave if left unsupported.