Published on 12, July, 2020
Suppose you have the funding and technical skills to carry out autism research (e.g., questionnaires, qualitative interviews, MRI, EEG, behavioural experiments, virtual reality, etc). What kind of research question would you like to ask? What autism question do you think is still not well known, and what would be your solution to solving it, or extend current knowledge?
I'd be interested in the genetics of autism and following it through family trees.
Especially when autistic people are less likely to be in relationships so less likely to pass their genes on.
Is it just the high-functioning auties passing on the baton?
That's an interesting question. There have been studies showing for example siblings are more likely to have autism if another one already has autism. They are also studies showing that parents, relatives, and siblings of autistic people who don't have the diagnosis still show more autistic traits. I do wonder as well how genes like these are passed on if autistic people are less likely to be in relationships. I have been wondering, if autism might be passed through multiple gene inheritance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygene), such that many genes interact additively to influence a phenotypic trait. So one example might be height, i.e., tall people are more likely to have tall children, but the exact height of the child would be hard to calculate. Suppose some criteria (like autism) classifies people over a certain height e.g., 2 metres, to have a disability (not being able to walk through doors without bending over), parents who are 1.8 metres, could possibly have 2 metre children. They are also more likely to do so than 1.5 tall parents. But they themselves might not meet the criteria, even though they have traits. Not sure how much this has been studies in autism, but it would be an interesting topic.
I think it will be difficult because so many adults were never diagnosed - and practically no grandparents.
It will, however, be a growing area of research in the next few decades.
Yeah, I guess it'll be difficult, unless a nationwide screening for autism is carried out periodically for future generations, otherwise, even with increasing awareness there could still be people who are overlooked. The safest way to do the research might be to ask family members of people who have a diagnosis to come into the lab and have an assessment, but I guess that will be quite hard. Maybe a large-scale study on "autistic traits" might be more doable than "autism diagnosis" itself? Questionnaires like the AQ could be sent out to millions of people to complete, and we could see if families consistently score high or low together.