mellowtigger | of autism and time lords (Reply)

A new study casts doubt on the whole "mirror neuron" theory of autism. I think that I've never commented in my blog regarding the mirror neuron theory. It certainly sounded interesting, but I had my doubts about its influence. Now there is objective reason to question it, rather than just relying upon my subjective musings.

This autism study used 13 autistics and 10 control subjects. That's too small an example to make for a compelling overthrow of existing theory. Their results seem detailed to me (however little I'm understanding them at the moment), and they offer more than one evaluation that contradicts the mirror neuron theory.

"... we show that individuals with autism exhibited not only normal fMRI responses in mirror system areas during observation and execution of hand movements but also exhibited typical movement-selective adaptation (repetition suppression) when observing or executing the same movement repeatedly... as such, these findings argue against a mirror system dysfunction in autism."
- http://www.cell.com/neuron/abstract/S0896-6273%2810%2900237-0

That link includes a nice 5-minute video (mp4 download) that explains mirror neurons and shows examples of what movements they had people perform inside the MRI ring. The actual paper (pdf download) includes more charts and graphs than I know what to make of them. Blah, blah, blah, very convincing, yes? (Ugh, I need sleep. *laugh*)

Perhaps-not-unrelated, another study shows that humans are horny apes that have a long history of "pollinating" (to quote the fictional alien time lord, Doctor Who) their way across the frontier with any species willing and able. Besides recent stories about genetic evidence of Homo sapiens interbreeding with Homo neanderthalensis, there is new evidence of interbreeding with another lineage of extinct hominids. Scientists are still working out the details. The likely candidate at this point is Homo erectus, but they haven't yet ruled out the possibility of Homo floresiensis.

I have previously described my two theories of autism.

Autism represents not a new way of thinking but in fact a very old way of thinking based in sensory experience rather than in verbal constructions, and it is now making an unexpected comeback in newborn humans, triggered by environmental cues similar to some period of our ancient past.
Autism is a new feature resulting from epigenetic changes in our species intended to improve our data evaluation capability in response to our redesign of society into a gender-equal information processing culture.

If such neural experimentation by Mother Nature that leads to autism happened to coincide with genetic clusters of markers from "older" hominids (most recently introduced to Homo sapiens), I think it would actually boost both of my theories. I think that Mother Nature is "turning back the clock" of human evolution, reevaluating recent modifications to our genetics and redirecting them (blindly, randomly) in order to find alternative branches of development that are more suitable to our current environment.

Or so I'm willing to argue while in a sleep-deprived stupor. Homo solus for the win.