Autism: 8 Things You Didn’t Know About This Disorder
Almost the 1% of the child population suffers from autism. Autism impairs a person’s ability to communicate and engage in social interactions, and is identified by the presence of repetitive behaviors.
8 curiosities and things you didn’t know about Autism
In this article we will review a total of eight discoveries about this disorder.
1. Geniuses with autism
Prominent thinkers, scientists and musicians such as Isaac Newton, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig Beethoven, Inmanuel Kant and Albert Einstein have been studied by Michael Fitzgerald, a British psychiatrist. Trinity College of Dublin, who concluded that All of them suffered from some degree of autism.
2. Larger than average skull
Those affected by autism secrete higher hormonal levels involved in physical growth such as insulin-like growth factors type 1 and type 2, compared to people who do not suffer from this disorder.
This peculiarity could explain why the cranial circumference of autistic people is greater, as noted by recent research from Cincinatti University published in Clinical Endocrinology.
3. Indifference to other people’s opinions
An investigation of California Institute of Technology points out that People with autism feel a total indifference about what others think or think of them. To reach this conclusion, the researchers contrasted the behavior of financial donations to the NGO UNICEF.
It was compared with two different situations: the first when the donor made the donation without any company, and the second when he was observed by another (or other) subjects. Participants without autism donated larger amounts when another person was present, as the amount contributed was perceived as an indicator of their social reputation before others. In the case of people with autism, the amounts contributed did not differ depending on the situation. The results were published in the journal PNAS.
4. They process information more efficiently
People with autism have a superior ability to process information compared to the general population, a fact that could reveal the surprising percentage of autistic people whose occupation is in the high-tech sector according to various investigations carried out in the United Kingdom.
In addition to this better information processing, they are also more skilled at discriminating essential information from non-essential information. The study was published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology.
5. The morphology of the autistic face
The face of children who suffer from autism has some characteristics of its own, as indicated by recent research published in the journal Molecular Autism.
They have a slightly wider mouth and eyes than average. greater proportion of the forehead and the middle area of ​​the face (cheeks and nose) slightly smaller.
6. Premature babies
Low-weight and premature newborns have a chance of 500% of developing autistic disorder than those born at nine months and with average weight, as indicated in a study published in Pediatrics which collected data for more than twenty years.
Some genes that influence the development of autism could have had evolutionary effectiveness in our ancestors, since provided greater capabilities in visual and spatial intelligence concentration and memory, skills that allowed greater efficiency in hunter-gatherer individuals.
8. Mirror neurons
Those affected by autism have a greater predisposition to suffer problems in their social relationships as they have limitations in their ability to show empathy in human interactions. A study that came to light in the magazine Biological Psychiatry revealed that this condition is due to alterations in the mirror neuron system (those neurons that enable us to understand and anticipate the intentions and reactions of other people), which develop much more slowly than in people without autism.
Extra: Guinea pigs can help people with Autism
Several scientific investigations have reported that People with an autism spectrum disorder benefit from the company of this small rodent.
