 Good day, my lovely listeners! You are listening to the Forty Autie podcast. Tune in every week to explore inspiring stories and insightful information that dive headfirst into the world of autism and mental health. With all those tantalising tongue twisters out of the way, let's get into the show. Good afternoon, Forty Autie podcast listeners. Welcome back to another episode. Of course, we have only just finished up the final episode and you may be thinking, hey Tom, I thought we've been through it, we've been through the last episode, why are you releasing another one? Well, for anybody who is a diligent follower of my social media, you will know that there were some delays in the release of a particular episode. This episode was with Professor Simon Baron Cohen and the reasoning behind this was that the study that we're going to be talking about today was actually supposed to be released a couple of months earlier than now and so due to the lateness of the study. I took the initiative to maybe hold off on releasing this episode just so that it's a little bit more timely and it's a little bit more friendly with the old YouTube and podcasting algorithms. So I will preface this episode by highlighting that, yes, we are going to be talking about an autism research study. I realise that research is a little bit of a sensitive topic for a lot of autistic people, you know, things that spring to our mind when we think about autism research is, you know, finding a cure or looking into symptoms and ways to stop autism or prevent it or anything along those lines and I completely understand that notion. There's been a lot of history in terms of eugenics. To be honest, you're right to be a bit cautious around these types of research. However, I guess I would have a little bit of a personal bias towards science. I do think that it's very important and if the science is good and it's for a good cause and good and for a good reason, then I think it's a good thing to do. Obviously, if it comes from people who aren't particularly reputable companies or researchers, people trying to find a cure outwardly, then I would obviously be against that. So I do hope that you go into this episode with an open mind. I know it's a sensitive topic and having that in mind, I try to ask a lot of questions that maybe you guys would have about it just so that we can really tease out what the meaning behind this study is. So I will start rambling and let you get into the episode. I hope you enjoy it and I hope that you're pleased with this little bonus edition to the podcast. Good afternoon, good evening or good morning. It's a very nice sunny day in the lovely town of North Yorkshire, town of North Yorkshire, the lovely area of North Yorkshire. Today I am joined by the Director of Cambridge Autism Research Centre. He's a clinical psychologist and Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at the University of Cambridge. Published in 1995, he formulated the Mind-Blindness Theory of Autism and in 1997, he published the Fetal-Sexteroid Theory of Autism. He's produced many books, scientific studies and various diagnostic tests which have been applied to great effect in past and modern autism research. He's received many, many glamorous awards during his career and top all that off, he was knighted in 2021 this year. It's Professor Simon Baron Cohen. How are you doing today? Thanks very much, Thomas, for inviting me onto the show. Yeah, I'm doing fine. How are you? Not too bad. Not too bad. I thought that I was going to struggle getting up in the morning but I've recently been having some quite vivid and I guess it's a panic inducing dreams lately. So I was waking up very suddenly at about 7am this morning. Right. I think a lot of people are experiencing heightened anxiety during the pandemic but the end is in sight. It is in sight with the recent news that Boris kindly informed us on. How have you been doing since the start of the pandemic, has it got in the way of your work at all? Well, I've been very impressed at how our team has just adapted to working from home and switching the type of work that they do. So as you mentioned in your introduction, I work at the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University and we can still do lots of research but just not direct testing with autistic people. So we can analyse data, we can write papers, we can write grants which are very important for funding future research and we can do online sort of research too. So people have adjusted and I've been very impressed at just keeping things going under these very unusual conditions. Yes, of course. I actually have a little bit of experience with the Cambridge Research Centre. I've done quite a few of your online surveys that you do. Okay. Well, thanks very much. I'm starting to feel like your newsletter and stuff. Well, we depend on the autism community to participate in research and maybe we'll talk a little bit about this but certainly a big shift in the way we do research is to consult with autistic people and their families for every new study just to sort of listen to them, get their perspective on how we could improve the study or keep it relevant. So it's kind of like an element of co-production, sort of like working with people with lived experience. Exactly. So for some studies, we actually do call it co-design where we recognise that people with lived experience are just as expert if not more expert than the scientists. For other studies, perhaps in molecular biology, obviously the experts are the scientists but nevertheless it's only right for autistic people and their families get to know what research is going on and look to see in what ways the studies can be improved, perhaps to make them more autism friendly. Of course. And I guess that sort of leads us into the first thing that you wanted to talk about. When we were doing our pre-chats about a couple of weeks ago, you mentioned that releasing a new autism study called the Spectrum 10K. Could you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, so we hope that the name describes what it is, Spectrum 10K. So what we're aiming to do is recruit 10,000 autistic people into what will be the largest study of autism in the UK and we want people right across the spectrum. So hence the name. And it's an online study in terms of how you register. You just go to our website called Spectrum 10K. And for people who can't access computers for whatever reason, their parents or carers could also volunteer. And the aim of the study is to collect information about people's genetics and their experience, their environmental experience. So on the genetics side, we'll be asking people to send a saliva sample through the post and we send out a little kit. So it's all quite simple, but we want to contribute to the international effort to find genes associated with autism. And on the environmental side, we ask people to fill in lots of surveys and questionnaires about their education, their mental health, any interventions that they've participated in so that we can put all this data together to look at both genetics and environmental factors to understand the variability on the spectrum. How long is it going to take to get 10,000 people? Because I can imagine that it's quite a grand task to try and achieve. I know what you mean. So we're funded by the Welcome Trust and we hope that the whole study will take four years. Wow. I mean, it sounds ambitious, as you say. But there is a precedent for this, which is that at King's College London, they launched a study called GLAD, which is the Genetic Links of Anxiety and Depression. They managed to recruit 40,000 people, so much bigger than us, in just one year. And that's because the method of recruitment is to go directly to the public. Some people call this crowd science using all kinds of different media, including a PR company. Because I guess, generally speaking, in the past, you've approached different organisations and groups, flyer different places to get people together. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I mean, we'll still be doing a bit of that by contacting autism charities and support groups and clinics just to advertise the study. But as I say, we'll also be using traditional media like radio and television and newspapers, and also social media, just to get the message out that this study is open, that it's really important because we want to understand the outcomes that autistic people have, including why some autistic people have good mental health and other autistic people really struggle with their mental health. And the answer must lie in a combination of genes and environment. But that's one of the reasons why we're doing the study. I guess, within the autistic community, there is a large fear about doing genetic research. A lot of people associate genes with developing a cure or something along those lines. Yeah. So I'm aware of some of the concerns that some autistic people have about genetics research. And I've even written on this subject, I wrote a piece in The New Scientist, just kind of addressing some of these concerns. Certainly for our research group, we're very clear that we're not doing genetics research to find a cure, nor are we doing genetics research to prevent or eradicate autism. I'm pleased that it's now very outdated, but in the bad old days, there was a lot of genetics research which went under the heading of eugenics, sort of finding the genes in order to perhaps screen for autism with a view to prevention. Those are kind of unethical sorts of approaches. But we're interested in looking for genes in order to, as I say, understand why some autistic people have a very different outcome to others. And also to identify subgroups. Because at the moment, we've got this label, autism. But we don't really have a good way of subgrouping people. And it could be that once we can subgroup, based on both genes and environmental factors, we'll be able to recommend different kinds of support for different subgroups. Yeah. And I think that's a very good thing to highlight, because I guess a lot of the diagnostic tools and ways of telling if someone's autistic is based on that sort of front facing approach of looking at the different signs of autism. And it can be, for a lot of people, very vague in that sense. Because we have sort of common misconceptions about everybody being on the spectrum, just because they've done like an autism test and they've displayed those signs. So it's very sort of gray area. It is. There isn't a kind of a biological test for autism. And if people do go online and take a test of autistic traits, we developed one called the AQ, the autism spectrum quotient. It turns out we all have autistic traits to varying degrees. But that doesn't mean that you need a diagnosis. A diagnosis is really just limited to those people who are also struggling, because the diagnosis, at least in the best case, is meant to be your gateway to getting help. Yeah. Gateway to getting support. Support, exactly. Services. Yeah. I say in the best case scenario, because that's what a diagnosis should be for. But we know that in practice, a lot of areas within the NHS and within social care are underfunded. Even if you get your diagnosis, often there isn't sufficient support. I do agree with that. I think even in sort of the world of teaching, because I used to be a special needs TA. And the amount of funding that's available for a lot of the mainstream schools that I went to is very, very low, almost to the point where they couldn't afford to have me in all the time. It was a very sort of on and off basis because of the nature of the funding and so on. Yeah. I mean, that's a really sort of, dare I say it, depressing example of what we're talking about. Because a teaching assistant is not an expensive resource. I doubt you were being paid a huge amount. But you would have been making a real difference to those kids, just having an extra adult in the classroom. And yet, the funding isn't there. It is crazy. Being such a renowned researcher in the world of autism, I think it's important to ask why this area of research is important to you. What led you down the path of studying autism? What do you hope to achieve or change in the future? No, it's a great question. So, you know, if I go all the way back to when I started, this was really in the early 1980s. So it's a long time ago. I just graduated and I got a job as a bit like you actually as a teacher, a small unit for autistic kids. It was in North London up in Barnett. And there were just six kids and six teachers. And it was a sort of experimental unit because back in those days, they didn't really know, you know, what would be the best approach for teaching autistic kids. So it was experimental in the sense that they had cameras in every room of the school. So they'd be video filming all the interactions. And then at the end of each day, teachers would sit and review the videotapes to sort of see what had worked and what hadn't worked. But it was an opportunity for me just to kind of get to know autistic kids, get to know their families. And that kind of inspired me to go off and do a PhD and go into research. But in answer to the sort of second part of your question, you know, what am I hoping all this research will kind of lead to? I suppose for me, there are two broad types of autism research. There's basic research, which is kind of understanding the causes. And you know, that links back to what we were just talking about with genetics and environmental factors. And then there's applied research, applied research, which could be, you know, directly relevant to autistic people's lives and their family's lives. And that could be clinical, it could be educational, it could be related to vulnerability, or mental health, or, you know, the world of work. And we do all of these different types of research. I think they're all they're all important, but for different reasons. I guess I like your focus on the issues that autistic people have, because there are some absolutely horrific statistics. I mean, I recently tried to compile some, some statistics for my my new website. It's something that is very outstanding, you know, a lot to do is sort of suicide and severe mental health, bullying, isolation. Yeah. And it's, it's just crazy that, you know, although we have these statistics around, it's really not funded enough, and it's not known about. Yeah. So, you know, if I could just pick up on a couple of those points, you know, the first is that we did a study that was published in 2019 on vulnerability in autism. So we asked people to fill in a survey, we call it the vulnerability quotient, or vulnerability experiences quotient VEQ. And it kind of looks at different areas of people's lives, including, you know, whether they've been bullied, whether they've been exploited or manipulated, or whether they've suffered other kinds of hardship. And we were, we were really shocked at the results that we got, you know, that autistic people, it was an online study, so it's limited to adults who could use computers. But, you know, the majority of autistic adults were scoring way higher than a non-autistic group on all of these measures of vulnerability. Yeah. And the second study we did was to look at suicidality that, you know, what you just mentioned. We have a clinic here in Cambridge for adults who are seeking a diagnosis. And we'd asked them, you know, if they'd ever felt suicidal or attempted suicide. And again, the results were really shocking that two thirds of them had felt suicidal, and one third had actually attempted. And it's way higher than the rates in the general population. When we think about these things, you know, these aren't part of autism. You know, even if you're born with a genetic predisposition to be autistic, that doesn't mean that you should feel suicidal or have really poor mental health or be bullied. You know, these are kind of the consequences of not getting the right support and not getting the right safeguarding. So this is kind of going back to your earlier question, why do we do the studies? I think the research can be used to present to policymakers, you know, to the government, to the local authorities to say, look, this is, you know, these are the risks. This is the current state of how autistic people are experiencing life and put in more support. Each individual who struggles with poor mental health and each individual who ends up dying by suicide, you know, that is a total tragedy. It is. It's very scary to look at it on paper. And I mean, I've had personal experiences with many of the statistics. It's a very harsh life to grow up as an autistic person, in a lot of cases. But would you agree, Thomas, that it doesn't need to be, you know, if we changed the way society treats autistic people, I don't mean treat in the medical sense, I just mean their attitude and support, you know, that a lot of what we're talking about, the very negative aspects of autism to do with poor mental health, you know, that could be prevented. From talking to other autistic people, the ones who have grown up in a very stable environment have experienced a minor amount of bullying and maybe a little bit of struggles with their social life. They tend to be the people who are better off in later life. So I think there is a very heavy sort of experiential component. I don't think it's the, I mean, in a university, I did a project. It was a literature review on autism and mental health. And that was sort of the precursor to my documentary Asperges in Society. And there does seem to be some aspects of being autistic that sort of make us more predisposed generally, you know, with sort of the high rates of general anxiety. I think that the most of that is a lot of the experiential side. But there does seem to be some sort of genetic factors that sort of predisposes to, I guess, being vulnerable to those conditions. I think that sounds right. And again, that comes back to why we're doing the new Big Study Spectrum 10K. We want to kind of separate out the, you know, the experiential factors and the genetic factors. Because that could be groundbreaking, like if you've managed to get those experiences and show people that a lot of this is due to the structures that we have in school and workplace and social life, like that could be very impactful. Yeah. I mean, you know, we can already imagine how experiential factors could contribute to anxiety. You know, if you've directly experienced bullying, you know, you're likely to end up more anxious and with low self-esteem. So, you know, we could imagine how those social factors could contribute. But it could also be, as you say, that, you know, that some of the anxiety derives directly from just the nature of autism. You know, that if autistic people find it difficult to sort of cope in a very complex social environment, lots of interactions, lots of pressure to communicate, you know, that can also be quite overwhelming for some people. So, there may be a sort of, you know, a genetic element too. Yes. I can imagine with the, you know, all the sensory sensitivities that I have to sort of deal with on a regular basis. So, as well with, you know, things like electrophymia, it's very hard to sort of regulate my own stress levels and mood, because it's not glaringly obvious what's making me stressed or anything like that, really. Yeah. And sensory sensitivity is an interesting one you just mentioned. You know, there was a feature of autism that was sort of neglected for a long time. But actually, again, in our online surveys, we find, you know, the majority of autistic people report sensory hypersensitivity. And that's the kind of thing which probably is there for genetic reasons, that, you know, autistic people just may be much more sensitive to detail. But again, we could make environmental adjustments to make things a lot easier. You know, we can ask autistic people what kind of lighting is more comfortable and what sort of sound levels are more comfortable and just kind of modify our classroom design or our workspace design, so that autistic people feel they can manage it. And that promotes inclusion. I think that's brilliant. I definitely do think there is such thing as the autism household. Oh, yeah. I was talking to Anna. Do you know Anna Kennedy? Yes, I do. I was talking to her when I went to talk on a radio show. And it's very much like as soon as I come into my home, I almost immediately just ask if I can turn the lights down. And I've got like a special bulb in my room that I can turn into like a warmer light. And over the years, I've sort of developed very different ways of sort of making my home environment and my life outside of home more easy to cope with and more comfortable. So I've just got some blue light glasses, which have been working wonders. I've noticed that because obviously I'm on the computer a lot and doing editing and things like that, I've noticed that every time that I take my glasses off now, I get headaches. So it's like, I didn't realize it was causing me that much sensory stress. That's a really good example of how you as an individual can make adjustments in your own home to sort of make life more comfortable. But obviously autistic people, when they go out in the world, are entering lots of different environments. I think there's a responsibility on other people in society to just also be aware that this let's call it 2% of the population autistic people need to come into supermarkets, need to come into cinemas and restaurants when these things all reopen and workplaces and colleges and so forth. And just to sort of bear in mind, it doesn't need a lot of money, it just needs a little bit of thought that the environment could be modified to make it more comfortable. Let's move on to the next question. Today, we're going to be sort of focusing around empathy because it's something that I've always had quite an affinity to. It's a very interesting topic to sort of discuss. And I thought that you'd be one of the best people to talk about this. It was definitely something that drew me to your work. What I found particularly interesting was your work on the theory of minds and the empathizing, systemizing theories. Could you explain sort of the lay concepts behind these theories? Yeah, sure. So let's start with empathy, partly because we can also kind of talk about some of the misunderstandings around some of the research in empathy and autism. So empathy is a sort of umbrella concept, and it's got at least two different components. One of them is cognitive empathy, which also is called theory of mind, as you just mentioned. And that's the ability to imagine what someone else is thinking or feeling. But the other component is called affective empathy, which is having an appropriate emotional response to whatever someone is thinking or feeling. So there's these two kind of separate parts of empathy, and autistic people tend to struggle with the first with cognitive empathy or theory of mind. So finding it difficult to read other people's facial expressions sometimes or interpret people's tone of voice, or just kind of read between the lines to imagine what they might be thinking or feeling. But they don't seem to struggle with affective empathy, the emotional response element. So once they know the information, they show a lot of affective or emotional empathy. Just to give an example, if you tell an autistic person that somebody is suffering, it upsets them just like it would upset anybody. If you tell an autistic person that someone's just had a loss, like a bereavement, an autistic person will feel upset and will want to help. So autistic people do have empathy in terms of affective empathy, but they struggle with the cognitive aspect, also known as theory of mind. And we've sort of looked at this over many years, actually, you mentioned back in 1995, I published a book called Mind Blindness. And that was all about the cognitive part of empathy. It's very interesting, because I think a lot of the knowledge of empathy kind of looks at it as sort of a monolithic component, just a single thing that people can feel or they can't feel. Which is why I found it quite interesting with the cognitive and affective components, because there's a lot of testimonials from autistic adults who say that they experience very, very, very strong empathy. I think that in that case, it's a lot of affective empathy. And I've seen that in some of the students that I've worked with. They may not pick up that they've hurt someone, but once you make them aware that they have, then they're usually even more responsive to that particular person. So I mean, I agree with the accounts that autistic people have told you. And I suppose what we do in our research is just to go out and collect data to test if these impressions are actually supported by evidence. I know that we do struggle with cognitive empathy. I still struggle to some degree with how someone's feeling or based on those sort of subtle cues and such. And I think it's something that many of us do find harder to overcome in that sense. Right, right. So you mentioned... What about... Yeah, go ahead. This is me. I'm getting myself into a little hole of not being able to read the flow of conversation. I think you're doing great. It happens sometimes. Well, yes, what about your empathising, systemising theory? Yeah. Because that's an interesting one. Yeah, so we've talked a little bit about empathy, but that's only one aspect of the mind that might be relevant to autism, particularly cognitive empathy. Another aspect of the mind that our research is focused on is called systemising. The sort of interest in how systems work. And when we talk about systems, it could be any system. It could be a computer. It could be a natural system like the weather. It could be an abstract system like mathematics, a musical system of notes. There's lots of different types of systems out there in the world. And what our research has shown is that autistic people have a stronger interest in understanding systems and a better aptitude in understanding how systems work. We think that systemising involves excellent pattern recognition skills, being able to see very specific patterns. Yes. And we call these if and then patterns. So if you think about like a young child, a young autistic child who becomes fascinated, some people might say obsessed with light switches in the house. They might be sort of thinking about the system that if the light is off and I push the switch to a down position, then the light comes on. So it's if and then. Yes, yes. There's sort of like rules that define a system. And some systems are much more lawful than others. You know that the rule holds true every time. And you can see autistic kids kind of being strongly attracted by systems and how they work. I think this is the positive side of autism, sort of excellent attention to detail, excellent memory for detail and kind of looking for these patterns in the world. And then I've just written a new book called The Pattern Seekers, which is about the idea that autistic people right through the ages may have contributed to human invention because the invention of systems needed this pattern recognition aptitude. It's quite an interesting concept because to our modern day conditions or disorders or states of humanity, if it be, that has to be selected for in some respects by our environment and our ability to sort of reproduce and to survive. So it sort of suggests that things like autism and things like ADHD have had some sort of genetic advantage in the past. Yeah. You know, certainly, I mean, we talked about this at the beginning of this episode about how autism is partly genetic. And that's no longer in question. You know, genes have been found associated with autism. The science hasn't found all the genes yet. That's why we're doing that big spectrum 10K study. But the fact that there are any genes at all involved in autism suggests, as you say, that autism might have been subject to natural selection over time. And if the genes for autism, if we can call it that, if they were sort of only causing disability, then you might sort of wonder, would the genes still be around in modern populations? But I think what we're finding is that the genes for autism, some of them, are associated with disability. But some of them are associated with strengths or even talents, particularly in this kind of pattern recognition skill. And that could have been hugely advantageous right across human history. The people who had an aptitude for building systems, for innovation, for fixing systems, just understanding how things work. With the demphizing, systemizing theory, I guess, for sort of a lay person reading the research, it may be fairly confusing because you have people like, for example, Greta Fuenberg, you know, she's fairly sort of systematic and she knows what we need to do to fix it and sort of that kind of systematic approach to a very human, social-based way of approaching that. I don't know if I'm trying to say it, to be honest. Well, I think, I'm glad you've mentioned Greta Fuenberg because she's autistic. The world knows what an amazing contribution she's already made in terms of raising awareness about the climate crisis. And I think that she brings together two aspects of what we've already been talking about. On the one hand, she must be a very good systemizer because even as a teenager, she's been able to take in a lot of the data, a lot of the science around climate change. She's got a very good memory for the facts and she can absorb a lot of information. On the other hand, she's also, she cares passionately about saving the planet and about helping humanity, which I think shows a lot of her empathy. So when we think about systemizing, Greta is in some ways like a really nice example of how autistic people can contribute and are contributing to just helping the world. But back to the theory, the empathizing systemizing theory looks at the difference between your empathy and your systemizing. And when we went out into the population to do a big online study, we tested over half a million people. We found that people broadly fall into five different, we call them brain types, five different profiles, if you like. Some people sort of scoring higher on empathy than systemizing. Others showing the reverse profile higher on systemizing than empathy. Some people scored sort of equal on both. And then there were the extremes of people who sort of systemize much more than other people, but they struggle with aspects of empathy, or people who empathize to an extreme, but struggle with systemizing. And what we found was that autistic people tended to be much more towards the systemizing end of that spectrum. You know, the theory, I think it's quite interesting because it sort of, it locates all of us somewhere on this spectrum in terms of our differences between empathy and systemizing. But it also brings out not just the areas of difficulty, but also the areas of strength in autistic people. Before we had our preacher, I took the ES test and fizzing systemizing test. And I scored as a type S. I scored about 10 EQ and 12 systemizing. What's your opinion of that data? Yeah. So type S is where your systemizing is higher than your empathy. And your scores reflect that. And then there's another profile called extreme type S, where the gap widens, if you like, people who's systemizing is even, or the gap between their systemizing and their empathy is even bigger. But what we find is about 90% of autistic people fall in either the type S or the extreme type S profiles. So it's a sort of way of trying to summarize or describe how autistic people think and indeed how all of us think. Because as I said earlier, we all fall into one of these profiles. And a key kind of principle of neurodiversity is that these different profiles, one isn't better than another. They're just simply differences in how we kind of look at the world, how we think, how we process information, what types of information we're interested in. And that when we think about coming back to how can we improve society for autistic people, we just want to kind of bear in mind that there are these different brain types in the population. And we need to make space for all of them. So one of the things that people would in turn sort of criticize about the theory is, I mean, it's not something that I sort of apply myself to because I understand the nature of science. I know that the grouping of people together is only meant to compare the groups. And it's not necessarily you're this person, or you're that person, or all male people are going to have this and all female and autistic people are going to be in a certain setting. And I know that it's sort of an overview and it's an average and it's a statistic, but it's not reflective of each individual person. But I guess I've seen a lot of posts from feminist groups sort of criticizing us being neurogendering, that's the term. Where do you think these criticisms come from? And why do you think people dislike these theories in particular? So first of all, just to say that your earlier point about how science just compares groups of individuals to look for differences on average, that's really important. And it's kind of it shows that you've studied science. You told me in the pre-chat, I think you studied, was it medical sciences? Biomedical sciences. Yeah, biomedical sciences. Yeah, so you're sort of familiar with how scientists do research. And then sort of most important in what you were saying is that the data doesn't say anything about individuals. It's really just comparing groups on average. So if we kind of now come back to your second question, which is about gender differences and why some people, I don't know, feel uncomfortable with this kind of research. So, you know, our work, that big population study that I told you about, we looked at 600,000 people, which included people who identify as male or female. So we were able to look for sex differences on empathy and systemizing. And what we found was that on average, women in the population scored higher than men on empathy. And again, on average, men in the population scored higher than women on systemizing. And because it's such big data, we think this is probably reflecting something real. And it's been replicated in many other studies. So the, you know, the sex differences are out there. And, you know, quite what's causing them is a matter of debate, quite reasonably, because, you know, when you're looking at adults feeling in questionnaires, that doesn't necessarily tell you, you know, what are the causes of variation in their scores? It may be that there's a genetic component, but just doing a sort of online survey doesn't tell you that. We were able to work with a company called 23andMe, which is a genetics company. Oh, I've heard of that. So when people filled out our questionnaires, we could look to see whether there was a genetic association between common genetic variants that they were carrying, that we all carry, but in particular combinations, and their scores on the questionnaire. And indeed, we found that there were genes or alleles that were associated with scores on the, on the systemizing quotient, for example. So it's not that it's all genetics, but They give me back to my university days. Oh, yeah. Was it the word allele? Yes, it was. Yeah. So, you know, but, you know, back to your question about, you know, why would some feminist groups feel, I don't know, a certain concern about this kind of research? And I think, you know, the answer is probably quite simple, which is we know that historically, women have been discriminated against in many different areas, including it, you know, in the workplace, economically, in terms of political rights. There's a long history of discrimination against women. And feminism, quite understandably, was a sort of, you know, a movement to end that form of discrimination. And, you know, I think I hope that all of us would identify with feminism, with wanting equality between the sexes. And that's all about what kind of world do we want? You know, that's, that's all about, you know, the social structures that we, that we want. But in terms of science, it doesn't necessarily mean that males and females, on average, are identical. We know they're not identical in terms of many aspects of their biology. And it may be that some aspects of the mind also differ, on average, between males and females. So I think we just need to kind of separate, if you like, the scientific questions from the political questions. I'm sure just like you, want to see a world, males and females, boys and girls, men and women, and those who are sort of non-binary, are all treated equally, or are all treated identically. Judged on their own merits. Exactly. You know, their gender isn't used in any way to determine what opportunities they have. I think the crossover between science and the sort of social realm is a very interesting one. Because I guess when people are sort of looking into certain topics, or they see some scientific literature, it's very hard for people who aren't in science to understand the background to that. Why we're talking in, I guess, sort of in black and whites, because it is based on data, it's not based on opinion, or your social beliefs, or anything along those lines. It's just what data has been correlated with another piece of data, and what that tells us about the general will that we have in people. Yeah, exactly. And it's quite difficult for people to not feel like there is some sort of social or political component in that. Well, I think scientists also have a responsibility to be sensitive to the history of discrimination. We don't want to inadvertently repeat or perpetuate forms of discrimination. But on the other hand, scientists are interested in how the world works. And we know that, for example, that the two sexes, if we just think about chromosomal sex, they differ in the presence of the Y chromosome, or in females, two copies of the X chromosome. So there's immediately a scientific question what's the impact of only having one X chromosome or two? We know that biologically, males produce more of certain hormones prenatally, particularly testosterone. The levels are something like twice as much as in male fetuses, as in female fetuses. And we know from animal research that these hormones change brain development, as well as other aspects of physiology. Again, it becomes like a scientific question, what is the role of prenatal hormones like testosterone? We shouldn't have to close down these sorts of research questions just because of past centuries of sexism. We just need to do the research in a very sensitive way. I completely understand that. I think it's a very difficult topic to talk about. Whenever I approach some of these socially sensitive issues, it's very hard for me to piece my words together and say things in the right way that I don't upset people. It's the same with the autistic community. Some people don't like certain words, some people are okay with them. Some people don't like to be called autistic people. They want to be called a person of autism or vice versa. It's just very exhausting sometimes. Exhausting but important. I think however exhausting it is, I think language is important and we've got to tread carefully. I think what we're both acknowledging is that the field of research that looks at sex differences is politically very sensitive because of the history. So we just have to tread carefully. It doesn't mean that we can't do that kind of research. We just have to do it in a careful way so that we're only interpreting the data based on what the data shows. We're not going beyond the data. We're being thoughtful about how it could be misused. There's a long history of people with particular political agendas exploiting science for their own purposes. Again, we just need to be aware of all this. We can't do science in a vacuum. I recently watched a TV show called Hannibal, although it's very different from the movie. Basically, there is a highly empathic autistic lead who develops the ability to put himself in the shoes of killers and psychopaths and such. And he develops quite a close friendship with the psychologist who is also Hannibal Lecter. I guess it's very well known that many autistic people question whether they're psychopaths or sociopaths in their early life. I've definitely done more tests than I can count on one hand. And furthermore, I've seen many testimonials from partners of autistic people who quote a lack of empathy and need a bit more clarification on that. I know we've talked about cognitive and affected empathy, but where do autism and psychopathy fit into those? This is really important, especially as this podcast is particularly focused on empathy. So in some of my work, I've suggested that psychopaths or people with anti-social personality disorder are the mirror image of autistic people, almost like the opposite of autistic people. Because if we think about empathy in that group, you know, psychopaths might have excellent cognitive empathy, you know, that they can imagine what the other person is thinking or feeling. And that's how they're able to sometimes manipulate or deceive another person. But they might have reduced affective empathy, so that when they are plotting to hurt another person, you know, they really don't care about the victim's feelings. So they don't have that immediate, appropriate emotional response to somebody else's state of mind. So as I say, it's almost like the mirror image of autism. It's a very interesting sort of topic. It's something that I've been wanting to make a video on my YouTube channel for a while now because it's like a lot of people that I have on the podcast actually who identify with going through multiple sociopathic and psychopathic tests. I guess that's sort of a consequence of not understanding the difference between cognitive and affective. Yeah. I mean, I hadn't heard this before. So, you know, Thomas, you're the first person who's ever told me about, if you like this pattern, that many autistic people might wonder at some point, you know, if they are sociopaths or psychopaths. Hopefully, what they discover is that they're not. And that actually what they need is an autism diagnosis. You know, it may be that this kind of searching for information, you know, why am I different or how am I different might lead them to wonder, am I a sociopath or a psychopath? But, you know, as I've said, the research shows that autistic people have a very different profile. You know, they are, as a group, caring people, even if it takes quite a lot of effort sometimes to make sense of language, of society, of friendships and social relationships, and sort of judging what is expected of them in terms of social behavior. But that's, you know, that doesn't mean that they're bad people at all. Thank you very much for that. It's something that I wanted to ask someone for a long time, because it's like the rates of psychopathy are very similar to the rates of autism. So, people can sort of get a bit confused about, especially partners of autistic people. Yeah. I mean, you know, it touches on a related topic, which is about morality. In my experience, autistic people, if anything, are super moral. If there are rules about, you know, how you're meant to behave in society, so laws, for example, you know, a lot of autistic people will become very sort of upset if people break the laws. And at work, if there are sort of rules or regulations, autistic people might be the first to become whistleblowers. And the rules are there because, you know, we need a set of rules to regulate social behavior. And so, in some ways, that makes autistic people sort of very, very moral. And, you know, back to the question about sociopaths or psychopaths, you know, they famously don't care about the rules and don't care about morality. They're just out for themselves, even if it's at other people's expense. Definitely, when I was younger, I used to be very obsessed with rules. I had a very particular obsession with people not swearing and people not smoking or drinking underage or, you know, I had my first proper drink when I was 18. You know, I was very sort of fixated on those rules. When me breaking those rules upset my parents or upset, you know, like the teachers or people in authority, then it's sort of ingrained that in me, you know, if I do this, I will get a negative response. And it's only as I got older that I sort of teased out the fact that, you know, maybe breaking this rule with this person isn't going to produce that negative response or breaking this rule around this person is going to produce it will produce some negative response. So I'm a lot more sort of fluid in my thoughts on things like that now that I'm older. Yeah, exactly. But, you know, we talked earlier about how autistic people have a strong interest in systems, which are rule based. And obviously, like social rules are rules just like the rules of mathematics or, you know, the rules of music, whatever. Just a lot more complex. Well, the thing is, you know, in mathematics, you do want to kind of apply the rules in a very sort of precise and unambiguous way. But when it comes to the social rules, it may be that we have to be a bit more nuanced about it, you know, that it's useful to sort of know what the rules are. But sometimes you need to sort of be tolerant when other people may deviate from the rules, because there may be sort of special circumstances or whatever. But I think it's interesting that for many autistic people when they're younger, they sort of view the rules of society in many ways, just like any other set of rules. Definitely. And the new one, social rules, if you have an idea of what you should and shouldn't do, even if it's not against the law, if you're aware of these rules, then you sort of, I guess, when I was younger, I was very rigid in that sense with these social rules. But as I've got older, as I've sort of researched into psychology and learned about social behavior and sort of practiced and tested it out in my own life, you know, that that system has become more easy to understand and more nuanced. And that's very much dependent on the environment, of course. You know, if I'm introduced to an environment that I don't know, or I haven't had experience in, I can sometimes struggle a little bit more, but I can always draw upon different aspects of different social experiences that I've had and sort of test them out and see which ones fit. Sort of a systemizing approach to a very empathizing situation. Yeah. One thing I really like about your podcast, your series, is how you talk a lot about your own experience, as well as covering sort of topics that are related to autism. You know, you talk about your own experience. And I think that that will really inspire many listeners, either who have a diagnosis of autism, or who may be sort of exploring whether they need a diagnosis. You know, I think just listening to you, you've been through a lot, you've been through your own struggles, but here you are communicating and sharing your experience with others. It's really helpful. Thank you very much. There was one last question that we wanted to talk about is sort of, I guess, adaptive empathy, but I know that we're drawing very close to the time that we set. What do you mean by adaptive empathy? So like, not as a sort of scientific term as in, are you able to increase your inherent cognitive empathy? Oh, I see. Yeah. Yeah. That's a really good question. So we've done some research into, you know, whether autistic people, if they're given the opportunity to practice or learn cognitive empathy, whether they can improve. And we've done this in different ways, but one of them was giving people a DVD back in the days when people used DVDs, you know, a DVD of actors showing different facial expressions, or actors saying things with different intonations. So that autistic people, if they struggled to recognize emotions from the face or the voice, could kind of practice. And what we found was that actually, just like any skill, with practice, you improve. So if you take Italian lessons, your Italian improves, it turns out that if you kind of practice getting feedback on interpreting faces or interpreting voices, so that skill improves too. That's just one approach. I think there's lots of other approaches you've talked in your own experience about what has helped you to improve on social skills and social understanding. Some of it is just experience, just as we grow older, we get more experience. So I think there's a lot of scope for learning and adaptation. One of the key pieces of research that I've looked at is mirroring behavior. I know there's been some studies on mirror neurons. And I know that in general, as humans, we sort of practice out different sensations in our brain, and then measure the emotional components of acting those out. So like if you're in a shop and you think about eating one thing, you think about eating another thing, the one that you think will produce the best reward for you, you'll likely go for in my own life. I find myself when I see someone displaying an emotion, I almost exactly mirror it, and it's the same with videos and things like that. And so I mirror it to a very large degree, and then it allows me to feel that emotion that I've seen. Right. That's another really nice example that you're sharing with your listeners of what you found helpful, the value of mirroring or imitation. And I think the more that autistic people can talk about their experiences, I think that it just means that we can all learn from each other. Well, I'm terribly sorry about running over. No, that's fine. Stressing me out. Because I know that you're probably very busy and such. No, it's been a real pleasure talking, actually. It's not at all an issue about the time. Would you like to give us some takeaways from the podcast, free main things that you want to highlight for people listening? I will try to do that. I mean, I think that some of the important things we've talked about, how research in autism is shifting a lot from not just looking at the disability angle, but also areas of strength, how autistic people are different. And some of those differences do lead to disability, but others lead to areas of strength. And we need to kind of keep both of them in mind when we think about autistic people. Because I suppose the second take home message is that on the disability side, a lot of those disabilities can be minimized by how society supports autistic people. With the right environmental support, a person may experience the world very, very differently. And those might be quite sort of affordable sort of environmental changes. Maybe the biggest take home message that I would say is that autistic people have been sort of in some ways left outside of society for a long time. We talked about the suicidality, the feelings that life isn't worth living. We've touched on areas of vulnerability. A big one for me I think is unemployment, very high rates of unemployment. For me, what I'm hoping is that podcasts like this be listened to by all sorts of people, by teachers, by employers, by social workers, by GPs, families, and that we can all play our part in making sure that society is more inclusive, that we can help autistic people to have the same opportunities which currently they're being denied. Thank you very much for those. Very good takeaways. No, I think you're playing your part in helping to make the world a better place for autistic people. So thank you. We've got the very last question, which is an open question that I ask. Nearly every single person that comes on the podcast, what does autism mean to you? Seems like a small question, but it's probably a very big one. But I suppose my short answer is that autism is just one form of neurodiversity in the population. We're all familiar with the related word of biodiversity. There are many different ways to be a plant or an animal, and we don't expect all plants or animals to be the same. And I think this more contemporary concept of neurodiversity is just a way of reminding us that autism is one form of neurodiversity that brains come in many different types, they develop in different ways. Autistic people, even if they might struggle with social skills and with aspects of communication, they think differently. They look at the world differently, may become fascinated with patterns, as we've talked about, with rules. They may have a strong need for structure, but autistic people, they're different. They deserve respect for their difference. Brilliant. Thank you very much for that. It's always a very difficult question. You'd think that a podcast that usually has autistic people on wouldn't have such an open question, but every person that I've had on manages to answer that one, so it gives us a summary of a person's angle on autism and belief about it. So this comes to the absolute end of the podcast. Simon, thank you so much for coming on. I very much idolise a lot of the work that you've done, and I know that there have been some controversies. It's something that I appreciate you coming on to talk about, because I know it can sometimes be a very difficult issue to talk about. And I hope that anybody else out there who's listening understands what we mean about the difference between science and generalities as opposed to individuals and political agendas and social agendas. I think it's always important to make that distinction when it comes to science. Would you like to give out some links for people to follow? Sure. Where can they find the Spectrum 10K? Yeah. If anyone wants to find out about our research, including the Spectrum 10K study, just come to our website, which is www.autismresearchcenter.com. And I will put some of your social media links down in the description. Thank you very much, Simon. Thanks, Thomas. Stay well. Stay safe. See you later, everybody. So I really do hope you have enjoyed this episode. I definitely enjoyed speaking to Simon about this. Despite a lot of the controversies around him, he is a very interesting person to me. Not least in the fact that he is related to Sasha Baron Cohen, one of my favorite comedy writers and actors, of course. This episode is by no means an advertisement for the study. If you don't want to do it, don't do it. If you want to do it, do it. I'm very impartial and very unbiased when it comes to people giving away their data specifically around genes. So I would just encourage you to do a bit more reading into the study and just figure out if it's something that you want to do. As I explained in the last final episode of the four-duty podcast, I am going to be taking a little bit of a break. And I'm going to be working on my YouTube channel. I know that just recently, my podcast has actually overtaken my YouTube channel. So I would encourage anybody who does enjoy my content to head on over to YouTube. Maybe give me a subscribe if you like the videos. It always really helps me because being able to sort of switch and shift my focus really helps me stay focused on my task. I find that although I love talking to people, and although I love podcasting, sometimes it can become a little bit monotonous over long periods of time. I'm also going to be doing a lot more work with other podcasters, other news sources, media sites. I'm going to be trying a little bit of public speaking, and I'm going to be putting a lot more effort and energy into my social media. So if you haven't followed me already, type in Asperger's Growth and you'll be able to stay up to date with all the juicy things that go on behind the scenes. Lastly, I just want to give a little mention to a new brand deal that I've got. I've been creating some autism fitness t-shirts with a company called Born anxious. They're a really great company. They produce a lot of sensory friendly materials. They cut out the labels for you. The idea behind it is to produce an autism related fitness brand of t-shirts, things that you can wear on the streets, things that you can wear when you're at the gym, pumping iron or running on the treadmill, just things to raise awareness of autism. And let other autistic people know that, you know, there are people like you in the world. And although it may not seem like it, actually me going out there having strong, powerful autistic on my tank top while I'm at the gym, I've had quite a few people come up to me and compliment me on it. And that's where I got it from. So there are a lot more people out there. And I think the more that we can rep the group, rep the brands, body power, the better. Take it easy. And if you want to get in contact, Asper just growth at gmail.com. My email address is always the best place to go. And with all that said and done, I hope you have a lovely day. And I hope to speak to you very soon.