“Nonright-handedness (NRH) has been attributed to hypoxia-induced brain changes in the fetus and associated pregnancy and birth complications (PBCs). Maternal smoking during pregnancy is known to produce prenatal hypoxia for the fetus, which may result in low birth weight and other PBCs. It was hypothesized that maternal smoking during pregnancy results in a leftward shift of handedness in the offspring. This study compared the distribution of handedness in the offspring of mothers who did and did not smoke cigarettes during pregnancy. Information on maternal smoking, handedness, and PBCs was analyzed for 803 university students. There was a significant shift to the left in the distribution of handedness scores for the offspring of smoking mothers (N = 216), as compared to those of nonsmoking mothers (N = 587). Offspring of smoking mothers also reported significantly more PBCs. Results are consistent with the hypothesis that NRH is associated with pathological neurodevelopment.” (Bakan P. (1991) Handedness and maternal smoking during pregnancy. Int J Neurosci 56 (1-4): 161)

There’s about a three-month lag from the time these pieces are written until they post. It is January 16, 2009, today and Simon Baron-Cohen is releasing another study emphasizing that high mother uterine testosterone levels influence the likelihood of autism in her children.

I’m starting to see pieces on the web suggesting that lowering a mother’s testosterone levels might mitigate the chances of autism. A piece by Baron-Cohen suggested that it would be a very bad idea to approach autism as a disease that can be prevented via foeticide. (See Autism Is Not Cancer)
I’ve outlined in essays on this website a number of different ways that testosterone is managed or manipulated by the various circumstances in our life. In 1998, I noted the connection between a mother’s uterine testosterone levels and conditions informed by maturational delay and acceleration that included autism. Then, as now, I maintain a respect and reverence for the humans that experience the world through this condition.

“The fundamental pattern of the brain thus appears to be asymmetrical, with the same pattern of asymmetries found in most adults. There are, however, influences in pregnancy that tend to diminish the extent of left-sided predominance, at least in the regions involved in handedness and language, and thus secondarily to result in larger regions on the right side. As noted earlier, our hypothesis is that some factor related to male sex, perhaps testosterone or some closely related factor, is the most likely candidate. The net effect of these intrauterine influences is to produce a shift from left predominance to symmetry, and in a smaller number of cases to modest right predominance.” (Geschwind & Galaburda 1987: 46, Cerebral Lateralization)
A discussion has not yet begun that addresses how life style changes influence hormone levels that may influence autism. I’m feeling more than a little uncomfortable with the notion that women will seek either to lower testosterone rates or abort potential autistic children. I would expect that the neurodiversity movement will violently oppose foeticide and hormone manipulation interventions. I foresee major struggles regarding these issues.

“To determine whether ethanol per se affects testosterone metabolism, alcohol was administered to normal male volunteers for periods up to four weeks, resulting in an initial dampening of the episodic bursts of testosterone secretion followed by decreases in both the mean plasma concentration and the production rate of testosterone. The volunteers received adequate nutrition and none lost weight during the study, which tended to exclude a nutritional disturbance as the cause of the decreased testosterone levels. The changes in plasma luteinizing hormone suggested both a central (hypothalamus-pituitary) and gonadal effect of alcohol. In addition, alcohol consumption increased the metabolic clearance rate of testosterone in most subjects studied, probably owing to the combined effects of a decreased plasma binding capacity for the androgen and increased hepatic testosterone A-ring reductase activity. These results indicate that alcohol markedly affects testosterone metabolism independently of cirrhosis or nutritional factors.” (Gordon, G. G., Altman, K., Southren, A. L., Rubin, E. and Lieber, C. S. (1976) Effect of alcohol (ethanol) administration on sex-hormone metabolism in normal men. N Engl J Med 295 (15): 793)

I’ve hypothesized that diet, touch and rhythm are the foundation of what is required for a child born of a mother with high testosterone levels. I estimate that the classic pre-agricultural Neolithic diet is right for the male maturational delayed, female maturational accelerated body. Constant touch keeps these unique children in constant contact. Rhythm is the lifeblood of these pattern-compulsive personalities. The rhythm ties them to the others that are engaged in the rhythms in their lives.

The idea is not to make the autistic child normal. We can seek to make it possible for the autistic child to become what they are naturally inclined to be. The evolutionary theory that this website promotes has its foundation in an understanding that the autistic are emerging in a society behaving in deeply inappropriate ways for autistic health. Our society is changing. It is my belief that it is changing in the direction of becoming a healthier environment for the autistic and the rest of us. Still, it is necessary to understand the context of autism, the ways that humans have evolved, to understand the ways the world would best nourish the autistic. The rest of us may profit handsomely from these insights. Understanding health for an autistic child is to understand foundations for human health.

“Theoretical speculation in humans (S. F Witelson, Psychoneuroendocrinology 16 (1991) 131-153) and empirical findings in animals (R. H. Fitch, P. E. Cowell, L. M. Schrott, V. H. Denenberg, Int. J. Dev. Neurosci. 9 (1991) 35-38) suggest that testosterone (T) may play a significant role in the development of the corpus callosum (CC). However, there are currently no empirical studies directly relating T concentrations to callosal morphology in humans. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between free T concentrations as determined by radioimmunoassay, and the mid-sagittal area of the corpus callosum, as determined by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Subjects were 68 young adult (20-35 years), neurologically normal, right-handed males. All subjects underwent MRI and provided two samples of saliva for radioimmunoassay of T and cortisol. Anatomical regions of interest included total brain volume, left and right hemisphere volume and regional areas of the CC. CC regions were defined using two different measurement techniques, each dividing the CC into six sub-sections. Anatomical measurements were performed blind with respect to the hormone levels of subjects. A significant positive correlation between T concentration and cross-sectional area of the posterior body of the CC was found. This finding was consistent across the two measurement techniques and was not attributable to individual differences in total brain volume. All correlations between cortisol and CC sub-regions were non-significant. The results of this study are consistent with the notion that T, at an earlier stage in development, may play a significant role in modulating cortical/callosal architecture in humans.” (Moffat, S. D, Hampson, E., Wickett, J. C., Vernon, P. A., Lee, D. H. (1997) Testosterone is correlated with regional morphology of the human corpus callosum. Brain Res 767 (2):297)

There is a canary in this coal mine, a signal to society as we navigate the passageways of society’s Vast Depression and the toppling of our hierarchical conventions. That singing bird is our autistic. Understanding autism, we understand ourselves. Not only are we notified of dangerous paths by those environments deleterious to our autistic, but maybe we can allow ourselves to be guided forward by what we learn about ourselves learning about our autistic.

As Baron-Cohen noted, autism is not a cancer. Autism is not a disease. Autism is quite possibly an integral part of human illumination. Understanding our origins, we understand ourselves. In autism is an understanding of how we came to be.

I just noted the NY Times article on Somali Autism. My 1998 conjectures that this could occur are discussed in several pieces here. The piece, Somali Children in Minnesota, Autism and the Effects of Light on Uterine Testosterone supplies the best summary.

Information coming out today that I haven’t seen before include articles mentioning higher rates of autism in other countries among immigrants. The Huffington Post noted, “Higher than normal autism rates among children of immigrants have also been reported in Ireland, the UK and several cities in North America, especially Montreal.”

One article notes a Swedish study concluding autism is higher among Somali immigrants in Sweden.

I see no articles that mention my posted pieces on the subject, or the work of Norman Geschwind that inspired my hypothesis.

Ten years ago, I was exploring the possible origin of human culture in tribal societies driven by rhythmic dance and music. Tribal societies are on rare occasions characterized by paternal anonymity, or children who are unaware of the identity of their biological father. Observing that human brain size began to diminish about 25,000 years ago, I hypothesized that this reflected an emerging patrifocal emphasis on speech instead of gesture and a movement away from a selection for big-brained males. If this was the case, I suspected that there might be remnants of the old matrifocal paradigm that still exist within contemporary society. In the neurological literature, I sought humans with unusually large brains, difficulty with language, but who were also ambidextrous or left-handed. I came to find that autistic individuals commonly display these features; in addition, I discovered that individuals with autism are often obsessed with pattern replication and have perfect pitch (Brenton, Devries, Barton, Minnich & Sokol, 2008).

It appeared that hidden beneath the just-so story was a theory, which, if brought to light, could help make useful predictions and illuminate unrecognized relationships. From the beginning, the theory drew information from three different disciplines: anthropology, evolutionary biology…

I’ve talked about the effect of sunlight on the pineal gland changing testosterone levels of immigrants from equatorial regions. Equatorial people with established, normal, daily 30% fluctuations in testosterone move to northern climates and experience fluctuations that last for months, thus compelling radical changes in a mother’s uterine testosterone levels. Unusually high or low mother’s uterine testosterone levels can cause unusually high or low testosterone levels in her children, translating into exaggerated maturational delay and acceleration (depending on the season of conception) that can contribute to autism.

In previous pieces, I’ve noted these effects on Jewish and American Black populations, with a skewing of populations toward the extremes of maturational delay and acceleration evidenced by a number of diseases and disorders characterized by these hormonal extremes. I would predict that both these populations would evidence higher percentages of autism and left-handedness, perhaps higher in places like Milwaukee and Minnesota than Houston and Miami. In just the way the Somalis in Minneapolis and St. Paul are exhibiting higher rates of autism, I would suggest that this Somali population would exhibit higher rates of left-handedness.

Another population influenced by these processes are the Latino immigrants from South and Central America. Studies could…

Ten days ago we waded into what little information we have on estrogen to estimate if we know enough to inform an understanding on the influence of estrogen on human evolution and current societal formations. Eight days ago we came up with the following matrix of relationships…

Patri Female low T, low e Male high T, high e Asian
Patri Female low T, low e Male high T, low e
Hybrid Female low T, low e Male low T, high e Scandinavian?
Hybrid Female low T, low e Male low T, low e Scandinavian?

Patri Female low T, high e Male high T, high e
Patri Female low T, high e Male high T, low e
Hybrid Female low T, high e Male low T, high e Scandinavian?
Hybrid Female low T, high e Male low T, low e Scandinavian?

Hybrid Female high T, low e Male high T, high e
Hybrid Female high T, low e Male high T, low e
Matri Female high T, low e Male low T, high e
Matri Female high T, low e Male low T, low e

Hybrid Female high T, high e Male…

A child’s lifelong maturation rates are set several weeks before birth by the mother’s testosterone levels. A mother with high testosterone gives birth to low testosterone males and high testosterone females. A low testosterone female raises high testosterone males and low testosterone females. Numerous factors influence a mother’s testosterone levels, including age, stress, exercise, smoking, alcohol, drugs, touch, diet and light. Radical elevations in a mother’s testosterone level can lead to extreme maturational delay and autism.

This scheme is part of a larger picture of how humans evolve. Changing maturation rates over generations send societies in one of two directions: matrifocal or patrifocal social structures. Low testosterone males mating with high testosterone females form the foundation of matrifocal social structure. High testosterone males pairing with low testosterone females make up patrifocal social structure. When mothers today exhibit matrifocal features, high testosterone, while exposed to environmental influences that elevate their testosterone further, male children with delay tendencies may shift into extreme delay.

This theory predicts that females with autism will not exhibit maturational delay, but maturational acceleration accompanied by elevated testosterone. When a mother’s testosterone level elevates, she not only influences the maturation rates of her children, she sends them on…

When I was a kid, my sisters and I would place a marble in the middle of the dining room linoleum floor and watch it begin rolling toward the hallway. Quickly, it would pick up speed, pass through the dining room door and then start lolling back and forth (north and south), and it careened more or less westward across the house. The history of the nearly 100-year old structure, since torn down, was represented in the pathway of the marble.

Tracing the path of societal ideas is compromised by an interpretation protocol that traces only the productions, not the origins, of the mind. We don’t think of biology or genetics as informing a discussion of the evolution of ideas. Exploring the connection between physical and mental when seeking an understanding of culture is not an intuitive choice. It has a lot to do with our not consciously knowing how we evolve biologically and societally. We are left watching the marble, guessing at what might have influenced its path.

No single variable influences our evolution more powerfully than changes in the rate and timing of maturation. Neoteny, or the prolongation of infant features into the adult of descendants by the…

A child exhibits characteristics from both parents. The parents’ features in their children can complement each other in ways that reinforce and even encourage specific maturational trajectories. For example, pairing two musician parents not only increases the chance of a musically inclined child, but also increases the chance that the child will be maturational delayed. Maturational delay is a hallmark of creativity, encouraging a child with an infatuation for pattern and form. Keep boosting the maturational delay and a line gets crossed where infatuation with pattern eclipses a facility to communicate internal experience. How the environment affects the parents can determine how this line gets crossed.

“Disorders” characterized by maturational delay, such as autism and Asperger’s, are encouraged by the choices we make when we fall in love, in addition to what we expose ourselves to as we live our lives. The previous two entries outline the influence of mate selection on the origin of autism in our children. Working in cooperation with sexual selection are environmental influences that compel how children’s social and mental lives unfold.

Since the death of Darwin, little thought has been given to how the environment might influence human evolution in a single lifetime. Politics…

Anything that is understood or known consciously is understood or known unconsciously first. I can’t imagine how the reverse would be true. Knowledge has to come from somewhere, right?

I often know I know something before the answer emerges. Knowing that I know, I trust that the answer will emerge, and so it does. We don’t often consider how long an insight or understanding has already been grasped before the veil lifts. I suspect hidden knowledge can stay hidden a very long time.

Hormone levels in humans fluctuate in response to a number of environmental influences. One of the most powerful and subtle is light. Cradled in equatorial Africa, our ancestors were exposed to the diurnal cycle of day and night. Human sexual hormone levels ran 24-hour cycles, as they do today, peaking and troughing at specific times in the cycle, with evenings about 30% lower than mornings.

Six weeks before a child is born, a crucial environmental trigger tells the child at what speed he or she will mature during his or her lifetime. The trigger is the amount of testosterone in the mother’s blood. High and low levels lead to very different outcomes of maturation speed. Change in…