3 ms·

The imprinted brain theory

14 points by robg 18y ago

bd 18y ago
"However, the very same excellence in mentalism would make such psychotic savants much less noticeable than their autistic counterparts, whose deficits immediately identify them as odd, socially-isolated, and eccentric. Psychotic savants, by contrast, can be expected to be deeply embedded in successful social networks, and found at the centre of excellence in such things as religious and ideological evangelism; literary and theatrical culture; litigation and the law; hypnosis, faith-healing, and psychotherapy; fashion and advertising; politics, public-relations and the media; commerce, confidence-trickery, and fraud of all kinds." This is scary.
gruseom 18y ago
This theory of a binary opposition between autism and schizophrenia, explained as a tug-of-war between maternal and paternal genes, strikes me as grossly simplistic. Notice how, in the second-last paragraph, the author evades the question of how then a single person can have both disorders. He also glosses over the well-known fact that schizophrenia (as well as autism) is more common in men. The theory is surprisingly reminiscent of older models about schizophrenia that traced its cause to mothers. Nowadays, I suppose, we reimagine the family drama in genes and call it "symbolic". The theory does have the property of being perfectly suitable for science journalism, no doubt a significant advantage for a meme.
- robg 18y ago
  I posted this because the theory has been making the rounds among neuroscientists. It came up in one of our lab meetings. And the context was provocative - brain activation patterns in neuroimaging studies of the two reflecting mirror images. Still, I agree it's simplistic. Problem is, in order to be comprehensible to mere humans, theories can only be a tad complicated. Take two main effects with an interaction. That's hard enough. A three-way interaction is near impossible to talk about.
  - gruseom 18y ago
    I didn't think you were endorsing the theory, and it was certainly worth posting. But the more I think about it the cruder it seems. I'm not sure what you mean by "mere humans", but unless it's "journalists and most of their readers", then I have to disagree. Theories are welcome to be quite a bit more complicated than this if they work. Take Maxwell's equations. Though "complicated" isn't the right word for something so elegant, they certainly encapsulate more than two or three "main effects".
    - robg 18y ago
      Bah, the limits of language. I should have said "mere neuroscientists". Maxwell had a Silver Hammer. Seriously, I agree with your criticism and your hopeful view of science. But even as Hodgkin-Huxley is elegant it's a long way from explaining how human thought and behavior arise from our wetware. We're likely to get many muddled theories in the near future. The best we can do is test them.
      - gruseom 18y ago
        I think science is an art and not a science :)
markessien 18y ago
Animals in general always tend towards two binary opposite behaviours, each of which is more successful in certain enviroments. It's a sort of hedging of the bets, in case unexpected situations spring up. As such, there will always be extremes of both behaviours - the bird that takes more risk to get the worm, and the other bird that takes less risk. Depending on the external situation, one of the two types will always dominate. It's my belief that the concentration of genetic tendencies is what is causing the increase - people from universities tend to marry people from universities, and so there is a similarity in tendency among people who are reproducing, and so there is a larger tendencies for the extremes to manifest themselves. It's like the sickle cell gene - when the population is diverse, this gene hardly shows up as a disease, but when the community is closed, the disease comes up very often.

14 points by robg 18y ago

bd 18y ago

"However, the very same excellence in mentalism would make such psychotic savants much less noticeable than their autistic counterparts, whose deficits immediately identify them as odd, socially-isolated, and eccentric. Psychotic savants, by contrast, can be expected to be deeply embedded in successful social networks, and found at the centre of excellence in such things as religious and ideological evangelism; literary and theatrical culture; litigation and the law; hypnosis, faith-healing, and psychotherapy; fashion and advertising; politics, public-relations and the media; commerce, confidence-trickery, and fraud of all kinds." This is scary.

gruseom 18y ago

This theory of a binary opposition between autism and schizophrenia, explained as a tug-of-war between maternal and paternal genes, strikes me as grossly simplistic. Notice how, in the second-last paragraph, the author evades the question of how then a single person can have both disorders. He also glosses over the well-known fact that schizophrenia (as well as autism) is more common in men. The theory is surprisingly reminiscent of older models about schizophrenia that traced its cause to mothers. Nowadays, I suppose, we reimagine the family drama in genes and call it "symbolic". The theory does have the property of being perfectly suitable for science journalism, no doubt a significant advantage for a meme.

robg 18y ago
I posted this because the theory has been making the rounds among neuroscientists. It came up in one of our lab meetings. And the context was provocative - brain activation patterns in neuroimaging studies of the two reflecting mirror images. Still, I agree it's simplistic. Problem is, in order to be comprehensible to mere humans, theories can only be a tad complicated. Take two main effects with an interaction. That's hard enough. A three-way interaction is near impossible to talk about.
- gruseom 18y ago
  I didn't think you were endorsing the theory, and it was certainly worth posting. But the more I think about it the cruder it seems. I'm not sure what you mean by "mere humans", but unless it's "journalists and most of their readers", then I have to disagree. Theories are welcome to be quite a bit more complicated than this if they work. Take Maxwell's equations. Though "complicated" isn't the right word for something so elegant, they certainly encapsulate more than two or three "main effects".
  - robg 18y ago
    Bah, the limits of language. I should have said "mere neuroscientists". Maxwell had a Silver Hammer. Seriously, I agree with your criticism and your hopeful view of science. But even as Hodgkin-Huxley is elegant it's a long way from explaining how human thought and behavior arise from our wetware. We're likely to get many muddled theories in the near future. The best we can do is test them.
    - gruseom 18y ago
      I think science is an art and not a science :)

markessien 18y ago

Animals in general always tend towards two binary opposite behaviours, each of which is more successful in certain enviroments. It's a sort of hedging of the bets, in case unexpected situations spring up. As such, there will always be extremes of both behaviours - the bird that takes more risk to get the worm, and the other bird that takes less risk. Depending on the external situation, one of the two types will always dominate. It's my belief that the concentration of genetic tendencies is what is causing the increase - people from universities tend to marry people from universities, and so there is a similarity in tendency among people who are reproducing, and so there is a larger tendencies for the extremes to manifest themselves. It's like the sickle cell gene - when the population is diverse, this gene hardly shows up as a disease, but when the community is closed, the disease comes up very often.