Please vote before you read the post. I am curious about people's perceptions before reading this as well as people's input afterward:
Last night, I started to read about a syndrome where people have too much cortisol(stress hormone from the adrenal glands), and a lot of the psychological symptoms seemed similar to autism.
I started to wonder if autism is caused by the body having too much cortisol and experiencing an unusual amount of fear(and consequentially pessimism).
For example, I wonder if we start off as children having too much cortisol, feeling too much fear, and that people see that in our faces(or smell it), and reject us for it(creating a feedback loop, where we're more scared to try to socialize).
And fear can also cause people to not do things, because of the assumption that things won't work out.
And fear is also said to heighten your senses and sharpen your thinking.
But fear seems like it would make someone less likely to look at multiple options, or try something new, or be trying to do multiple steps.
Do you think that each item in
the DSM5 Autism criteria seems like an expression of fear or a result of fear?
Here is my theory for this.
Inference Edging
The Here and Now of Autism Spectrum Disorder
If you've ever found yourself in a split-second moment where time seems to slow down, where your senses sharpen, and you're entirely absorbed in the 'now', you've experienced what I call 'Inference Edging'. It’s a phenomenon where the brain, acting as a prediction machine, narrows its focus to the immediate present – the here and now.
But imagine living with this intensity dialed up and constant, where 'now' isn't just a moment but instead your "default setting". For individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), this isn't just a fleeting experience; it's a different experience of the world.
PREMISE
This model speculates that for individuals with ASD, temporal processing is unusually anchored in the present moment, leading to a spectrum of cognitive-behavioral manifestations that vary depending on the degree of this anchoring. Such a perspective may reflect a variation in neurotypical temporal cognition and potentially provides a novel explanatory framework for the diverse presentations observed within the ASD spectrum.
It means that ASD might find some overlaps with professions like war correspondents. Consider the chain of causation here: 1) Where they are in a high state of activation for long periods and it becomes a default. 2) Then the person's temperament and personality adjust over time and it reconfigures them to actually be more like an adapted ASD person. Differences will be present of course because they adapted as an adult vs ASD people who adapt as kids. So think of these as 2 personality types that would normally be far apart, here they might start to rhyme.
This could imply that individuals like war correspondents, through their experiences, might develop 'spiky profiles' in their cognitive and emotional processing, adapting to their high-demand environments in ways that mirror some aspects of the ASD profile.
Now consider this biologically speaking. My central premise is that ASD thinking is a permanent tensing of a set of interrelated brain abilities developed for high stress situations. This suggests that it's a muscle in normal people that is flexed during high stress scenarios people become ASD configured on purpose by design of evolution. So my hypothesis here is that they are nearly identical for this reason. This is a special combat / survival mode all humans have. ASD then is a trick evolution used like keeping us infants longer. Why not produce a special subset of humans where this muscle is tensed all the time like a fuse about to burn out. You burn hotter but shorter in a way. This suggests metabolically it could affect life span, but that it could be overcome by periods of dormancy and low function. Additionally many predispositions of our neuroanatomy can be worked around metacognitively if a stable configuration is found, this also suggests why ASD become ridgid, because with a system like that, it's easy to go off the rails and go into full rage, panic/grief, care, seeking, lust, play: basically just max out any of the core Pankseppian Affective systems in various combinations, it would present as emotionally granular for each person.
With empiricism the watchword, I suggest explorations of predictive processing in ASD sensory amplification, using Bayesian and free energy principles. Comparative studies examining specialized predator cognition across mammalian classes could substantiate evolutionary theories. And simulations based on the "Inference Edging" premise may unveil new intervention angles.
Let's analyze some implications:
Adaptive advantages of "specialist" subtype: I suggest, the persistence of ASD traits could arise from an evolutionary selection for a cognitive/behavioral subtype specialized for intense focus, vigilance, pattern recognition, and rapid response. In ancestral environments, this could boost survival odds in certain niches.
High-stress brain configuration as default setting: If ASD essentially locks the brain into a high-alert "combat state," it explains the intense world perceptions, sensory amplification, need for routines, and fragility to unpredictability reported in ASD. It also elucidates the rapid toggling between hyperfocus and exhaustion.
Risk of hyper-stimulating emotional circuits: Such a primer system risks over-stimulating limbic emotion circuits like RAGE or FEAR if stressful stimuli overwhelm regulatory capacity. This may account for meltdowns when environmental demands exceed thresholds.
Alignment with high-stress professions: The parallels in cognitive traits between ASD profiles and high-stress jobs involving danger, unpredictability, and complex data integration lend credence to an evolutionary connection specialized for threat environments.
(from a much longer paper)
