In 1999, Brian Hughes, a San Antonio–based tech entrepreneur, came upon that his 13-year-old son, a super boy who had however struggled socially and in school, had Asperger's syndrome, a gentle type of autism. With this revelation, his folks and academics have been higher capable of meet his needs, and after attending a public highschool for presented children, he adopted in his mother's and father's footsteps by attending MIT after which went directly to a a hit occupation as a pc programmer.
The tale may need ended there, apart from that in a while after his son's diagnosis, Hughes changed into president of the MIT alumni affiliation. Heading a profession panel at his TWENTY FIFTH reunion, he listened, riveted, because the dialog became in a curious route: "The chairman of the MIT Employer instructed a narrative of the way he may by no means dangle a job, was all the time insulting people, and the way he'd after all given up and began his personal company," he remembers. "THE FOLLOWING speaker stated that he'd simply been recognized with Asperger's and was simply beginning to make experience of his lifestyles. Next, a a hit engineer began saying, 'I do not believe like other folks. I BELIEVE in pictures.' Right here we were, a randomly decided on pattern of MIT alums, and all of us have been at the spectrum."
In 2003, Hughes wrote an editorial for the MIT alumni website, elevating the query of whether or not "the 'abnormal' situation referred to as Asperger's syndrome" may well be "remarkably very similar to the 'normal' functioning of an engineer's mind," and was contacted by dozens of MIT alumni, many married to alums of comparable schools, who additionally had kids at the autism spectrum. Have been their kids, he wondered, getting a double dose of a few more or less autism-causing genes? (See pictures of a summer time camp for autistic kids.)
Across the Atlantic, Simon Baron-Cohen, director of the Autism Analysis Centre on the School of Cambridge, were asking himself a few very equivalent questions on the households who have been vacationing his health center. Within the overdue 1990s, he'd come to imagine that a not unusual cognitive profile — a tendency toward what he called systemizing (focusing on systems and how they work), combined with noted deficits in empathy, or the ability to relate to and read others — existed both in people with autism and, to a much lesser extent, in many of their relatives. He'd begun to theorize that this sort of brain type would be common in any population that brought people with very strong math, science and tech skills to cluster together — and to think that if these high systemizers were choosing one another as mates, they might be particularly likely to have autistic children.
Baron-Cohen, a psychologist who happens to be a first cousin of comedian Sacha Baron Cohen's, is the U.K.'s leading autism researcher. His flair for such creative if controversial theories has brought him worldwide renown. At an international autism conference in San Diego in May, he was frequently mobbed by fellow attendees and treated with near universal adulation. ("Still cranking out the books and papers?a distana bentowardknown a(specializing imethodand the wamixementionethe facilitto narratand brows?a distaneacindividuals wita fain lots oin theifamilyall startethis kind ominduch with Hughes in the early fall of 2003 — is perhaps his most seductive idea.
Assortative mating — or, in common language, the tendency of birds of a feather to flock together — has long been known to play a big role in how people choose their marriage partners. Traditionally, people have assortatively mated, or sorted themselves, by height, socioeconomic standing, religion — and psychiatric profile. People with depression, bipolar disorder, OCD, ADHD, personality disorders and substance-abuse issues are all more likely to marry other people who either have those problems or have family members who do. "People are attracted to each other based on their similarities," says Carol Mathews, a psychiatrist with the UCSF Medical Center who has studied the role of assortative mating in psychiatric disorders. "It's not necessarily a conscious choice." (See photos of a journey into the world of autism.)
Baron-Cohen and Hughes approached MIT about surveying its alumni, but the university nixed the project. So Baron-Cohen decided to go ahead with it on his own. He recently launched a survey on his research center's website that aims to poll a wide range of college graduates — not just engineering and science majors — about their occupations, favorite hobbies, talents (things like perfect pitch, unusual memory and musical ability) and possible mental-health diagnoses and then ask similar questions about their children.
Beyond certain familiar links that he expects he may find between, say, engineer parents and children with speech delays, Baron-Cohen, whose wife is a lawyer, says he's intentionally remaining hypothesis-free about what sorts of associations will come to light. "We are also collecting data on dyslexia and ADHD," he says, "but precisely which sorcan bnot unusuainhabitantintroduceindividuals witrobustechnologtalentin combinatio?a far ofsupposthoset we are wanting to discover."
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