Autism may carry a benefit: a buffer against Alzheimer’s
Brain plasticity of people with the developmental disorder may protect them from dementia
Having autism may protect people from Alzheimer’s. The idea, described June 17 in Medical Hypotheses, is preliminary and will require many more experiments before scientists know if it’s correct.
The concept is intriguing, says molecular biologist Cara Westmark of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Looking at connections between autism and Alzheimer’s disease is really exciting,” she says. “Both disorders are showing skyrocketing levels just in the past decade.”
Two curious trends led neuroscientists Alvaro Pascual-Leone of Harvard Medical School and Lindsay Oberman of Brown University’s medical school to the idea that autism spectrum disorders might protect against Alzheimer’s. The researchers focused on brain plasticity, the ability of the brain to change in response to incoming information. The changes can include strengthening connections between nerve cells or rewiring neural highways. Earlier studies have shown that the brains of people with Alzheimer’s have low brain plasticity, while people with autism seem to have high brain plasticity.