Few days ago there was a documentary on BBC "How The Brain Works: why Kevin cannot help being an outsider". I found a commentary article by Clive Cookson in Science & Technology column in Financial Times which made me to write something about this topic as well. I love psychology and, to do research on human behaviour is being my passion since my dissertation research. Such topic always attracts me, so I thought it would be useful to make a note for future reference.
The discovery of brief but marked deterioration at puberty in the ability to recognise some emotions was the by product of a large study taken at the institute of Child Health, looking at different in social intelligence between boys and girls. It was designed to investigate the causes of autism and its milder manifestation Asperger's syndrome, represent extreme forms of normal male brains.
The temporary dip in social intelligence "followed by recovery and acceleration to adult levels of achievement", turned out to affect both sexes. The loss of ability to detect emotions in other people was most marked for anger and sadness. Prof. Skuse said the Kevin phenomenon "probably reflects the rewiring of the brain that occurs due to genetic and hormonal changes" during puberty.
Nine out of 10 people with autism and Asperger's are male. According to the popular "extreme male brain" theory, promoted particularly by Simon Baron-Cohen at Cambridge University, the reason boys are so vulnerable is simply that syndrome represents the extreme form of male (as opposed to female). As prof Baron-Cohen said in his recent book "The essential Difference", "the female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy. The male brain........... for understanding and building systems."
Inability to decipher facial expressions is characteristic of autistic disorders. Autism also impairs the ability to remember faces and to work out which way people are looking. If extreme male brain theory is correct, boys as a whole should be significantly worse than girls at recognising emotion, prof Skuse believes.
Prof Skuse said that the results of study did not strongly support the extreme male brain hypothesis. He began by supporting the theory however he also stressed that he is very sceptical at this moment. A lot of evidence for it comes from questionnaire-based methods, which may jut be reflecting cultural expectations.
At the age of six, female performance was indeed significantly better: 70 percent of boys were worse than the average for girls at recognising emotion. But the differences diminished with the age and by lat adolescence boys and girls were very similar, although a small female advantage persisted for some emotions (recognition of disgust, for example). The overlap between the sexes is more than 90 percent by t he age of 17.
Prof Skuse stress his view that whatever the ultimate "cause" of autism, the male preponderance "must implicate the sex chromosome, directly or indirectly," Females may be protected in some way from the complex risk factors by the fact that they have two X-chromosomes while male have only one.
Prof Skuse is beginning to think that the hunt for causes of autism in the way people handle social information may be misguided: "There may be something else going on" he says.
So autism remains mysterious, but the scientific drive to explain it is throwing up fascinating observations-such as insights into the teenage mind.
The discovery of brief but marked deterioration at puberty in the ability to recognise some emotions was the by product of a large study taken at the institute of Child Health, looking at different in social intelligence between boys and girls. It was designed to investigate the causes of autism and its milder manifestation Asperger's syndrome, represent extreme forms of normal male brains.
The temporary dip in social intelligence "followed by recovery and acceleration to adult levels of achievement", turned out to affect both sexes. The loss of ability to detect emotions in other people was most marked for anger and sadness. Prof. Skuse said the Kevin phenomenon "probably reflects the rewiring of the brain that occurs due to genetic and hormonal changes" during puberty.
Nine out of 10 people with autism and Asperger's are male. According to the popular "extreme male brain" theory, promoted particularly by Simon Baron-Cohen at Cambridge University, the reason boys are so vulnerable is simply that syndrome represents the extreme form of male (as opposed to female). As prof Baron-Cohen said in his recent book "The essential Difference", "the female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy. The male brain........... for understanding and building systems."
Inability to decipher facial expressions is characteristic of autistic disorders. Autism also impairs the ability to remember faces and to work out which way people are looking. If extreme male brain theory is correct, boys as a whole should be significantly worse than girls at recognising emotion, prof Skuse believes.
Prof Skuse said that the results of study did not strongly support the extreme male brain hypothesis. He began by supporting the theory however he also stressed that he is very sceptical at this moment. A lot of evidence for it comes from questionnaire-based methods, which may jut be reflecting cultural expectations.
At the age of six, female performance was indeed significantly better: 70 percent of boys were worse than the average for girls at recognising emotion. But the differences diminished with the age and by lat adolescence boys and girls were very similar, although a small female advantage persisted for some emotions (recognition of disgust, for example). The overlap between the sexes is more than 90 percent by t he age of 17.
Prof Skuse stress his view that whatever the ultimate "cause" of autism, the male preponderance "must implicate the sex chromosome, directly or indirectly," Females may be protected in some way from the complex risk factors by the fact that they have two X-chromosomes while male have only one.
Prof Skuse is beginning to think that the hunt for causes of autism in the way people handle social information may be misguided: "There may be something else going on" he says.
So autism remains mysterious, but the scientific drive to explain it is throwing up fascinating observations-such as insights into the teenage mind.
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