SchaferAutismReport: Novel Theory: Mental Disorders, Parents Genes Are in Competition

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November 12, 2008 p

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RESEARCH

Novel Theory: Mental Disorders, Parents Genes Are in Competition

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CARE

PEERS Autism Program: Child-To-Teen Transition

Expecting Longer Lives With Greater Risk, Reward

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FINANCE

Action Coming On Illinois Autism Bill?

PEOPLE

Voiceless and Abused: Woman Allegedly Raped By Caregiver May Have Been

Attacked Before

Family Finds, Returns Service Dog To Autistic Boy

COMMENTARY

Autism Speaks: Don't Rule Out Vaccines

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New Memoir Reveals Realities of Autism

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RESEARCH

Novel Theory: Mental Disorders,

Parents Genes Are in Competition

By Benedict Carey is.gd/6YaP

Two scientists, drawing on their own powers

of observation and a creative reading of recent genetic findings, have

published a sweeping theory of brain development that would change the way

mental disorders like autism and schizophrenia are understood.

The theory emerged in part from thinking

about events other than mutations that can change gene behavior. And it

suggests entirely new avenues of research, which, even if they prove the

theory to be flawed, are likely to provide new insights into the biology of

mental disease.

At a time when the search for the genetic

glitches behind brain disorders has become mired in uncertain and complex

findings, the new idea provides psychiatry with perhaps its grandest

working theory since Freud, and one that is grounded in work at the

forefront of science. The two researchers — Bernard Crespi, a biologist at

Simon Fraser University in Canada, and Badcock, a sociologist

at the London School of Economics, who are both outsiders to the field of

behavior genetics — have spelled out their theory in a series of recent

journal articles.

“The reality, and I think both of the

authors would agree, is that many of the details of their theory are going

to be wrong; and it is, at this point, just a theory,” said Dr.

Belmonte, a neuroscientist at Cornell University. “But the idea is

plausible. And it gives researchers a great opportunity for hypothesis

generation, which I think can shake up the field in good ways. "

Their idea is, in broad outline,

straightforward. Dr. Crespi and Dr. Badcock propose that an evolutionary

tug of war between genes from the father’s sperm and the mother’s egg can,

in effect, tip brain development in one of two ways. A strong bias toward

the father pushes a developing brain along the autistic spectrum, toward a

fascination with objects, patterns, mechanical systems, at the expense of

social development. A bias toward the mother moves the growing brain along

what the researchers call the psychotic spectrum, toward hypersensitivity

to mood, their own and others’. This, according to the theory, increases a

child’s risk of developing schizophrenia later on, as well as mood problems

like bipolar disorder and depression.

In short: autism and schizophrenia represent

opposite ends of a spectrum that includes most, if not all, psychiatric and

developmental brain disorders. The theory has no use for psychiatry’s many

separate categories for disorders, and it would give genetic findings an

entirely new dimension.

“The empirical implications are absolutely

huge,” Dr. Crespi said in a phone interview. “If you get a gene linked to

autism, for instance, you’d want to look at that same gene for

schizophrenia; if it’s a social brain gene, then it would be expected to

have opposite effects on these disorders, whether gene expression was

turned up or turned down. "

The theory leans heavily on the work of

Haig of Harvard. It was Dr. Haig who argued in the 1990s that

pregnancy was in part a biological struggle for resources between the

mother and unborn child. On one side, natural selection should favor

mothers who limit the nutritional costs of pregnancy and have more

offspring; on the other, it should also favor fathers whose offspring

maximize the nutrients they receive during gestation, setting up a direct

conflict.

The evidence that this struggle is being

waged at the level of individual genes is accumulating, if mostly circumstantial.

For example, the fetus inherits from both parents a gene called IGF2, which

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