The Quest For the Roots of Autism — and What It Says About Us All

As clinicians view it, autism involves communication deficits and formulaic, repetitive behaviors that present obstacles to establishing conventional relationships. The soft borders of that definition — where does communication difficulty cross over into communication deficit? — suggest blurred margins between people who are diagnosed with autism and those who approach, but never quite cross, the line into diagnostic territory.

Those who do have diagnoses display behaviors on a continuum of intensity. Their use of spoken language ranges from not speaking at all to being hyperverbal. They can have a unique interest in the finer details of window blinds or an intense but more socially tolerated fascination with dinosaurs. As with many human behaviors, each feature exists on a spectrum, and these spectra blend in a person to create what clinicians call autism.

By pinpointing risk-associated genes and uncovering their roles, studying the roots of autism also is providing new insights into the development of all human brains, autistic or not. Here is a taste of what we now know, and what we don’t, about autism’s causes — and what that search is teaching us about everybody’s neurology.

They Know It When They See It

Read more here at Discover.