Watch Simon Baron-Cohen's full Wired 2012 talk about autism

  • 18 Jan 2013

Scientists are more likely to show signs of autism, explained to psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen, speaking at Wired 2012. "People with autism show a broader interest in systems," he said. "You're trying to find the system, and find the mechanism behind how it works. I'm going to explore the idea that autism is linked to minds that are wired for science."

Baron-Cohen, leader of the Autism Research Centre and trustee of the Autism Research Trust, cites an article written by Ioan James for the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, which claimed that historical scientists -- including Isaac Newton, Henry Cavendish, Marie Curie and her son-in-law Jean Frédéric Joliot-Curie, and Paul Dirac -- showed signs of autism. Albert Einstein, too, was "late to speak, and when he spoke he spoke with echolalia, where you repeat what people say back to them -- and apparently in his childhood he had no friends," Baron-Cohen says -- all characteristics on the autistic spectrum.

Wired US even published an article in 2001 discussing the anecdotal evidence that children with autism were especially common among the offspring of Silicon Valley couples. The evidence, says Baron-Cohen, is that "scientists tend to score higher in terms of autistic traits than people in the general population", and those traits -- a love of systems, and an aptitude for analysing them -- can be passed on in some way.

Looking at people in the Dutch city of Eindhoven also provided further evidence for a link -- the city's history as a centre of technical innovation (the "Silicon Valley of the Netherlands") means that around 30 percent of the jobs in the city are in IT. The prevalence of autism in Eindhoven is around twice as high as in the rest of the country.

Baron-Cohen wonders if that was perhaps merely a reflection of a gender imbalance -- boys tend to be more interested in technical systems than girls, and boys are also more likely to display autistic traits. Baron-Cohen cites a study where babies (each only a few days old) were shown both a picture of a human face and a mechanical mobile -- male babies looked at the mobile more often than the face, and vice versa for the girls. "What might males produce more of that could produce this connection?" Baron-Cohen wonders, and the answer is testosterone.

He says: "Males produce twice as much testosterone in the womb, and prenatal testosterone influences brain development. We tested fetal testosterone, and found higher levels predicted autistic traits in the child later, and also an interest in systems. So it's prenatal testosterone, not gender, that's associated with scientific talent."

That's important, says Baron-Cohen, because it means that "a good scientist is a good scientist irrespective of their gender".

It also means that people with autism, like hacker Gary McKinnon, "don't have a disease, and they need support -- they're simply fascinated with the way things work".

Autistic people, he says, "tend to be unemployed", so we as a society need to find them jobs that will value their skills and make the most of their unique talents.