I glanced at the book site linked to, and the first thing that struck me was a possible correlation between the increase in austism and changing marriage patterns.

Firstly, I assume everybody here on the forum is familiar with the term "geek" (AKA nerd, etc). It typically refers to somebody who is bright, likely to understand technology & science, but is often lacking in the finer social nuances (to say the least.... oftimes they're viewed as being socially inept). A tendency towards behavioral oddities is often sometimes noted.

A number of us here probably fall into this general catagory.

Cue background: Bluntly, back in the old days, "geeks" often didn't get married, and rarely married each other (by way of compromising only a small fraction of the population, plus poor social skills). But nowadays, with the establishment of major technological enterprise zones like California's "Silicon Valley", we see high concentrations of tech savvy people of both genders..... making good livings & socializing with people just as socially inept as themselves (where it's no longer such a handicap)..... with a resultant high incidence of geek-geek marriages.

Enter Ausbergers' syndrome, which has been characterized as a mild form of Austism. There is a VERY high incidence of Ausbergers (& autism proper) in Silicon Valley, to the point that it's been nicknamed "Ausbergers' Alley". It has been theorized that a genetic condition exists, which in mild form (partially recessive? multiple genes?) results in valued engineers & techies, in a stronger form gives you Ausbergers syndrome, and in the strongest form results in autism. Such theorists do NOT claim that all autism has the same causes, just that there is at the very least a genetic propensity towards autistic related behavior in certain people.

It strikes me that such things as Silicon Valley, or the rise of the Information Age (Coed academia, coed college system, the internet, etc), might be altering marriage patterns by bringing a high incidence of people with certain genetic traits together (under relatively favorable conditions, involving financial security & positive social status).... and resulting in both a larger number of children born to such parents than was previously the case, as well as a larger number of children who inherit a double whammey of the genes in question due to inheriting them from BOTH parents, thus raising the incidence of Ausbergers AND autism.

Does anybody have relevant data, such as high resolution distribution maps for autism or ausbergers?

(For the record, lest anybody be offended by my use of the geek/nerd terminology, etc, I first heard of all this from my aerospace engineer brother...... in conjunction with himself & his son..... and involving a suggestion that I had a number of the traits myself).

Kenuchelover.