Chapter 5. Further Discussions on the “Relational stress” (13)

The theory of Geschwind has not been fully replicated, but recently there is another series of studies which attempts to relate male sex hormone with autism, therefore supporting Geschwind's theory. That is Simon Baron-cohen’s series of researches.
Recently Baron-Cohen's lab had a discovery that androgen-related genes are associated with autistic traits, empathy, and Asperger Syndrome (Chakrabarti, B, Dudridge, F, Kent, L, Wheelwright, S, Hill-Cawthorne, G, Allison, C, Banerjee-Basu, S, & Baron-Cohen, S. 2009. Genes related to sex-steroids, neural growth and social-emotional behaviour are associated with autistic traits, empathy and Asperger Syndrome. Autism Research, 2, 157-177.). There is another finding that a precursor to testosterone (androstenedione) is elevated in autism (Ruta, L, Ingudomnukul, E, Taylor, E, Chakrabarti, B, & Baron-Cohen, S. 2011. Increased serum androstenedione in adults with Autism Spectrum Conditions. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2011 Mar 11 [Epub ahead of print].

Baron-Cohen has been doing researches on autism and its relationship with the theory of mind (Baron-Cohen, S 1995. Mindblindness: an essay on autism and theory of mind. MIT Press/Bradford Books.) Based on this, he proposes a theory called “the empathizing–systemizing (E-S) theory” (Baron-cohen S 2004. The Essential Difference: Male And Female Brains And The Truth About Autism Basic Books）. This theory attemps to classify people on the basis of their skills in two factors; empathizing and systemizing. On the one hand, empathysing means “how easily you pick up on other people's feelings and how strongly you are affected by other people's feelings” and it uses the Empathy Quotient (EQ) to measure. On the other hand, systemizing is “the drive to analyse and explore a system, to extract underlying rules that govern the behaviour of a system” and it uses the Systemizing Quotient (SQ) to measure. Baron-Cohen hypothesizes that although both skills are seen in male an female, more females than males are “Type E”, leading this to also be called 'the female brain', whereas more males than females are “Type S”, leading this to also be called 'the male brain'. He argues that systemizing was an evolutionary advantage for male hunter-gatherers, and empathizing was advantageous for female caregivers. The E-S theory has been extended into the extreme male brain theory of autism, with a hypothesis that autism spectrum disorders are an extreme of the typical male profile.

Figure 1.

Although this theory can be a rough draft of the difference between male and female mind, it gives us a good “auxiliary line “ connecting male type of thinking and autism. I also posit here that by advancing Baron-Cohen’s theory a little further, we can postulate an extreme of the typical female profile; extreme interpersonal sensitivity with a tendency to sympathize and to be influenced excessively by the people’s mind. (Figure 1).