"Soon after psychiatrist Leo Kanner first identified autism in the 1940s, he and his colleagues proposed a simple explanation for its cause: mothers' lack of genuine warmth toward their children. Being raised by refrigerator mothers, the researchers explained, was what caused autistic people's difficulties with social communication and sensory processing and their repetitive behaviors and interests. But in the 1970s studies of twins revealed that autism is highly heritable, not something that develops after birth. Thus began the search for the genes responsible."
"We had rather simple views about what it might be that caused autism, says Helen Tager-Flusberg, a professor emerita at Boston University. The idea in the 1990s, she recalls, was that we're talking about six to 10 genes. Instead researchers found hundreds. No simple theory of autism has ever panned out, and the scientific community has moved on from the search for a simple answer. Researchers now know that autism develops from a staggeringly complex interplay between genes and factors that can influence development in utero."
Early explanations blamed distant, unloving parenting for autism, but twin studies in the 1970s showed high heritability and shifted focus to genetics. Expectations of a small number of causal genes gave way to the discovery of hundreds of implicated genes. No single unifying theory explains autism; current understanding points to a staggeringly complex interaction among many genes and prenatal influences on development. Persistent single-cause claims, including disproven vaccine links and high-profile assertions of simple interventions causing autism, continue to circulate despite extensive evidence supporting multifactorial origins.
Read at www.scientificamerican.com
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