High Pre-Natal Testosterone Exposure & Genius, ADHD, Autism

"There seems to be some evidence that excessive prenatal exposure to testosterone facilitates increased connections in the brain, especially in the right prefrontal cortex," said Mrazik. "That's why we see some intellectually gifted people with distinct personality characteristics that you don't see in the normal population."...Mrazik's notion came from observations made during clinical assessments of gifted individuals. _SD

Genius is more commonly seen in males than females, and males certainly receive much higher pre-natal exposures to testosterone than females, on average. In addition, high pre-natal exposures to testosterone have also been associated with increased rates of ADHD and autism, two disorders more commonly seen in males than females, like genius.

ADHD has recently been associated with greater creativity:

A new study in the Journal of Personality and Individual Differences found adults with ADHD enjoyed more creative achievement than those who didn’t have the disorder.

“For the same reason that ADHD might create problems, like distraction, it can also allow an openness to new ideas,” says Holly White, assistant professor of cognitive psychology at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida and co-author of the paper. “Not being completely focused on a task lets the mind make associations that might not have happened otherwise.” _SB

Of course one would need to unravel all the different associations involved. Just as not all males are geniuses, neither are all persons with ADHD exceptionally creative. The situation cries out for extensive genetic analysis in conjunction with an analysis of hormonal history, family history, and life experience. Here's more on a particular gene, RORA, associated with autism.

"Autism has a huge sex bias, and it's been proposed that higher levels of fetal testosterone may put a fetus at risk," said study researcher Valerie Hu, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. "We've provided an explanation of how this works."

Normally, RORA's job in cells is to turn on several other genes, Hu said. When a cell has high levels of testosterone, RORA levels run low, which affects every gene that RORA is supposed to turn on. The researchers based their findings on tests of neurons growing in lab dishes.
The research does not show that low levels of RORA cause autism, only that they are associated with the condition, Hu said. But other research has suggested that a RORA deficiency could explain many of the effects seen in autism. _MSNBC

...more is known about what derails the brain’s normal development, thus charting what makes gifted people gifted is very much a new frontier. Mrazik hopes that devices such as the Functional MRI scanner will give them a deeper understanding of the role of neurobiology in the development of the gifted brain.

“It’s really hard to say what does put the brain in a pathway where it’s going to be much more precocious,” he said. “The next steps in this research lay in finding out what exact stimuli causes this atypical brain development.” _Eurekalert

Asperger's Syndrome is 9 times more common in males than females, and is also thought to be associated with male genius.

But Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, of Cambridge University, says it is more accurate to describe this creativity as "systemising" - a strong drive to analyse detail.

"This might be in mathematics, machines, natural phenomena or anatomy, to identify rules that govern a system and any variations in that system."

While those whose strength lies in rational analysis are by no means exclusively male, it is described as a male brain trait compared with the so-called female ability to empathise - a characteristic weak spot for those with Asperger's.

"The condition does tend to affect men more than women, especially among those who are high-functioning. Males outnumber females nine to one in this diagnosis," he says. _PDF BBC PDF

If politically influential feminists truly wish to eliminate the gender gap in math-intensive areas such as physics, advanced engineering, theoretical computer science, and other hard sciences and technical fields, perhaps they should legislate pre-natal testosterone levels for all fetuses. The world would lose a great deal in variety and emotional colour, but achieving such a leveling would no doubt give these feminists a tremendous sense of accomplishment.

Feminists Prefer to Abort All Male Geniuses

At the same time that prenatal screening of genes and chromosomes is becoming more common, some parents are choosing abortion for a wider range of conditions.

Just as with Down's syndrome, cystic fibrosis or spina bifida, a mother-to-be could decide whether she can cope with the strain of bringing up a disabled child. With an autistic child, it may mean a lifetime of rejection - living with someone unlikely ever to fit into the family, who responds with blank incomprehension to affection, whose behaviour may be erratic and disturbing, whose condition is permanent. Autism, and its associated condition, Asperger's syndrome, can range from virtual incapacity at one end of the spectrum to the merely strange at the other. To bring up one autistic child is a challenge to the sanity of an entire family. To bring up two might destroy it. _Times

But there is a possibility that male genius and autism follow much the same -- if not identical -- pathway in early development. Famous geniuses from Einstein to Mozart have been posthumously diagnosed as autistic.

Some people with autism have amazed experts with their outstanding memories, mathematical skills or musical talent. Now scientists have found that the genes thought to cause autism may also confer mathematical, musical and other skills on people without the condition.

The finding has emerged from a study of autism among 378 Cambridge University students, which found the condition was up to seven times more common among mathematicians than students in other disciplines. It was also five times more common in the siblings of mathematicians.

...“It seems clear that genes play a significant role in the causes of autism and that those genes are also linked to certain intellectual skills.” _TimesOnline

For feminists, this conundrum presents an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. The more widely abortion can be applied to everyday life in the name of medical necessity, the less likely that socially conservative politicians can ever make abortion illegal or difficult to obtain. In addition, the widespread abortion of males with Asperger's or borderline Asperger's, would conceivably reduce the number of male geniuses and high math functioning males. A drastic reduction of male geniuses would narrow the gender gap, long a top goal of feminist ideologues, politicians, and academics.

Under a nationalised single-payer system of healthcare financing, abortion for specific genetic, chromosomal, or other congenital conditions might even become mandatory -- as a means of controlling costs.

The origin of genius in humans, as well as the preponderance of males within the ranks of geniuses, have never been well explained scientifically. Professor of Psychiatry at Trinity College, Dublin, Michael Fitzgerald, believes that "the genes for autism/Asperger’s, and creativity are essentially the same." That remains to be proven, but as a hypothesis it needs to be clarified and tested.

Large areas of higher education in North America have been rendered dysfunctional by militant feminist dogma in the academy. Performing overpriced academic lobotomies on the adolescents and young adults of North America is one thing. Let's make sure it doesn't go further than that.

Savantic Latency: Mind the Current

Are you a latent savant, with hidden mental powers waiting only for the proper trigger, to reveal themselves? Perhaps. A recent posting by commenter Mike led to this provocative NYT article from 2003 about the work of esteemed neuroscientist Allan W. Snyder:

If Snyder's suspicions are correct, in fact, and savants have not more brainpower than the rest of us, but less, then it's even possible that everybody starts out life as a savant. Look, for example, at the ease with which children master complex languages -- a mysterious skill that seems to shut off automatically around the age of 12. ''What we're doing is counterintuitive,'' Snyder tells me. ''We're saying that all these genius skills are easy, they're natural. Our brain does them naturally. Like walking. Do you know how difficult walking is? It's much more difficult than drawing!''

...Snyder's theories are bolstered by the documented cases in which sudden brain damage has produced savant abilities almost overnight. He cites the case of Orlando Serrell, a 10-year-old street kid who was hit on the head and immediately began doing calendrical calculations of baffling complexity. Snyder argues that we all have Serrell's powers. ''We remember virtually everything, but we recall very little,'' Snyder explains. ''Now isn't that strange? Everything is in there'' -- he taps the side of his head. ''Buried deep in all our brains are phenomenal abilities, which we lose for some reason as we develop into 'normal' conceptual creatures. But what if we could reawaken them?''____Source

Snyder, who has been publishing in the scientific literature for several decades, currently experiments with transcranial electromagnetic stimulation to bring out latent abilities mental.

The researchers think that by temporarily inhibiting activity in the left anterior temporal cortex, the TMS allowed the brain’s number estimator to act on raw sensory data, without it having already been automatically grouped together into patterns or shapes. In other words, they believe it caused the 'normal' brain to function more like an autistic 'savant' brain.___Source

Some forms of electromagnetic stimulation enhance the function of the stimulated portion of brain, and other forms of EMS suppress the function of the stimulated brain. Such a tool can function in an analogous way to a reversible "knock-out gene" in genetics research. By removing particular "instruments from the brain's symphony", we can glimpse the workings of a differently arranged brain.

It is not really a matter of whether savants have more or less brainpower than the rest of us. It is a matter of how the brain is being used. As people gain experience in life, they use forms of "mental shorthand" to speed repetitive mental functions. We do not actually read every word, but rather clump words and paragraphs into "essential meanings" to save time as we read. It seems that by taking shortcuts, we gain some time, and possibly lose something else.

"Modern" education is geared to shortcut thinking. The savants are "weeded out" by our educational system, because they make the teacher's work harder. Teachers have forgotten how to see the world in "raw" terms, without the learned shortcuts. The savants do not fit, so we toss them in with the refuse, or drug the savant out of them.

Yet, never have we needed the savants more than today, when modern societies find themselves in traps of their own making, but without any understanding of what is needed to open the cage door. Political systems are tightening the trap, and every proposed and attempted solution promises to make the situation worse. Political "change" is merely shorthand for a re-dressing of more-of-the-same. Savants have the ability to see elements of a problem that are hiding in plain sight.

An autistic savant is different from a genius savant, or prodigy. A normal person with savant-latency is a different creature still. Presumably, after the brain stimulation is turned off, the normal-cum-savant reverts back to normalcy. Autistic savants and prodigies typically retain their gifts for much longer periods of time, although not always permanently. Most of us probably wish to be polymaths, which may be possible eventually, with more advanced brain stimulation, or brain machine interfaces.

Here is more about the polymath.

More on Snyder's work here.

BTW, check out the new blog Brain Stimulant, if you are interested in brain electromagnetic stimulation.

Prodigies vs. Psychological Neoteny

The definition that we offered for the prodigy was a child (typically younger than 10 years old) who is performing at the level of a highly trained adult in a very demanding field of endeavor.Genius Denied
Child prodigies generally have IQs between 120 and 180, depending on the area of high performance. A child prodigy is different from a generally gifted child in focusing on one area of performance with a high level of motivation--far beyond its years.

This kid is special. He was practically born on a tennis court - his mother, tennis instructor Mari, was in the middle of a lesson when her waters broke. Jan started hitting balls at the age of one and now, a veteran of five, is beating kids twice his age, courtesy of his incredible all-round game.

If you thought the footage of Woods hitting golf balls as a tiny tot was impressive, wait till you see Silva's forehand volley on YouTube.

Source

Child prodigies are rarely understood, but they shine a light on a possible human future where high achievement in an adult area of expertise will not be unusual for children under the age of 14. One reason it is so rare today is the general attitude of "babying" children into lifelong psychological neoteny--often in the name of protecting them from the "harsh world."

Parents of gifted children typically have high expectations, and also model hard work and high achievement themselves (Bloom, 1985; Csikszentmihalyi et al., 1993;Gardner, 1993a). But it is logically possible that gifted children have simply inherited their gift from their parents, who also happen to be hard working achievers. Parents of children in performance domains like music and athletics are the most directive; parents of children in visual arts are the least directive; and parents of children gifted in an academic domain fall somewhere in between (Bloom, 1985). To achieve in a performance domain, one must submit to rigorous and early training; even the most gifted children might not stick to such a rigorous schedule without a directive parent, one who insists that time be spent on practice.

Source

Generally gifted children may lack the level of achievement of child prodigies, despite having the same IQ levels and enriched home environment. The prodigy displays a "single-minded" devotion to his area of high performance that acts in concert with intelligence to achieve expert level performance.

Motivation and single-mindedness incorporate the mysterious "executive functions" of the human brain/mind. Executive function may be as much as 99% heritable as opposed to the 50% to 80% heritability of IQ. Given the need to possess both at high levels for "optimal achievement", it is extremely likely that heritability plays a strong role in life success.

What if the prodigy or gifted child is not recognised as such. What if the parents are largely absent, and the school system serves as more of a prison or torture chamber than a place to learn basics and to learn to live one's dreams? Much human capital is wasted in this way. Gifted children and prodigies could make huge contributions to a better future, if they are recognised, nurtured, and gently guided.

Humans are riding a centuries-long wave of achievement--begun in Europe, but now incorporating contributions from East and South Asia, the middle east, the Americas, and the South Pacific. Given the immense challenges and dangers humans face, they cannot afford to waste human capital. It is time to say goodbye to child raising that creates lifelong "cute puppies" or psychological neotenates. It is time to treat children and teens to as much expertise and competence as they care to take up.

The Numerical Brain--Is the Parietal Lobe the Key?

Mathematical savants such as Daniel Tammet, featured in the above 48 minute video, are still a mystery to cognitive scientists. But two studies in the January 18, 2007 edition of Neuron, may offer some clues.

Both studies reveal in unprecedented detail how structures in the parietal cortex--the region of higher cognitive processing just above the forehead--activates during perception of both abstract quantities and numerical symbols.

In one paper, Manuela Piazza and colleagues showed that regions of the parietal lobe activate in response to numbers, either when they are presented as patterns of dots or as Arabic numerals.

In their experiments, the researchers asked human volunteers to pay attention to the quantities conveyed by groups of dots or numeric digits presented to them. During the process, the subjects' brains were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), in which harmless magnetic fields and radio waves are used to measure blood flow in brain regions, which reflects activity.

The researchers found that the initial presentation of the numeric stimuli activated the parietal region of the subjects' brains, which subsided as they adapted to the stimulus. However, the activation rebounded when the subjects were presented with an abrupt change in the quantity, whether it was represented in the same (dots versus dots) or different (dots versus Arabic numerals) notation as the original. This rebound indicated that the region was processing numerical information.

More at the Source.

What separates the mathematical genius from more normal folks? What makes an Euler or Gauss different from the rest of us? Why are there so many more male mathematical geniuses than female? What part does Asperger's Syndrome play? Such mysteries may remain unsolved, for reasons of political correctness. Or perhaps society will drive around such atavistic tendencies and actually try to understand why we are the way we are? One can only hope.