Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!

Reply to comment

Anne Dalke's picture

Seeing from the Outside In

Also of interest to this week's discussion might be last week's NYTimes article by Benedict Carey: In a Novel Theory About Mental Disorders, Parents' Genes Are in Competition. Identifying autism and schizophrenia as "opposite ends of a spectrum that includes most psychiatric and developmental brain disorders," a biologist and a sociologist--both outsiders in the field of genetics--noticed that "problems associated with autism, like a failure to meet another’s gaze, are direct contrasts to those found in people with schizophrenia, who often believe they are being watched." Autistics don't attend to others' intentions, while schizophrenics see intention everywhere. The possibility being explored here is that these two disorders stem from disruptions of the same genetic region on a single chromosome.


Reply

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
To prevent automated spam submissions leave this field empty.
5 + 0 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.