14 DAY TRIAL // Yale University investigators have discovered that children suffering from a disorder associated with autism and learning disabilities do not display a certain pattern of gene activity, which affects areas of the brain in charge of handling decision-making and language.
What makes this research so interesting is the fact that this gene expression pattern has been with our species for a very short time. In other words, it's brand-new, evolutionarily speaking. This sheds an entirely new light on autism and related conditions.
“The same evolutionary mechanisms that may have gifted our species with amazing cognitive abilities have also made us more susceptible to psychiatric disorders such as autism. This is the cost of being human,” Science Blog reports associate professor of neurobiology Nenad Sestan as saying.
Details of the study were published in the May 11 issue of the esteemed medical journal Cell. These types of failure related to evolutionary adaptations are present in the vast majority of species living on Earth.