“…[S]weeping theory of brain development would change the way mental disorders like autism and schizophrenia are understood“. Essentially, the authors argue, it is competition between genes inherited from the parents which tips brain development in one way or another. A predominance of paternal genes confers autistic traits while a predominance of maternal genes a vulnerability to psychotic experience.
“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.”(New York Times )
The article goes a little overboard in calling this “perhaps [psychiatry’s] grandest working theory since Freud”, which IMHO remains to be seen.
