I was on the internet today and found this interesting article from our friends at the autism news wire. It makes sense and lends credence to the stories I have heard that the incidence of autism are higher in areas like silicon valley where really smart people live. Maybe asperger’s is some how more common in extremely smart people or their children.

Autism diagnoses are more common in an IT-rich region. The Medical Research Council (MRC) funded study, published today in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, has important implications for service provision in different regions and for the ‘hyper-systemizing’ theory of autism.

Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, Director of the Autism Research Centre (ARC) at the University of Cambridge, led the study (which was conducted in the Netherlands) with Dr Rosa Hoekstra, a Dutch autism researcher based at ARC and The Open University.

The researchers predicted that autism spectrum conditions (ASC) would be more common in populations enriched for ‘systemizing’, which is the drive to analyse how systems work, and to predict, control and build systems. These skills are required in disciplines such as engineering, physics, computing and mathematics.

The team had previously discovered evidence for a familial association between a talent for systemizing and autism in that fathers and grandfathers of children with ASC are over-represented in the field of engineering. The team had also previously found that mathematicians more often have a sibling with ASC, and students in the natural and technological sciences, including mathematics, show a higher number of autistic traits.

Click here for the rest of the story–>http://www.theautismnewswire.com/NewsITems.aspx?newsID=565&utm_source=Autism&utm_campaign=0feea8dbbb-201100611&utm_medium=email#