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Autism vs Schizophrenia: Opposite Ends of the Spectrum? What Causes Them?
In this insightful episode, Malcolm and Simone delve into the fascinating world of schizophrenia and autism, exploring how these conditions exist on opposite ends of a spectrum related to the concept of "theory of mind." Malcolm shares his extensive experience working in schizophrenia research, explaining the various subtypes of schizophrenia and their symptoms. He then presents his groundbreaking theory that schizophrenia is caused by an overactive theory of mind, while autism is characterized by a deficiency in this cognitive ability. The discussion also covers the importance of medication for those with schizophrenia, the potential dangers of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), and the evolutionary advantages of both schizophrenic and autistic traits in moderation.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] So what I think is happening with Schizophrenic is Individuals is that their theory of mind is basically hyper stimulated and activates when it shouldn't be activating.
And I think that this is what is happening with the auditory hallucinations. This happens when you see something like you know, applying a theory of mind to the way things are arranged in a store window.
Applying a theory of mind to like, world events, right? Like, oh, there's a theory of mind behind this that's directly relevant to you. Or a theory of mind creating a hallucination. Catatonia is the one counter example here, but what I suspect is really happening with Catatonia is they're just so overwhelmed with so many theories of minds operating at once that they basically become catatonic.
They're
Simone Collins: paralyzed by their thoughts. Yeah. I, that, that makes sense to me.
Malcolm Collins: So autism I think is literally defined by the exact opposite.
I think the core symptom of autism is a difficulty in running theory of minds of other people. And this is what creates problems in autism,
Would you like to
know more?
Simone Collins: Well, hello, gorgeous. I am [00:01:00] poking around the comments in our videos a while ago and I remember some people speculating on like what we sort of meant about like the autistic and schizoid spectrums and they implied that, that we were talking about something more cultural and not actually like autistic or schizoid.
And that is not true. So we should probably dig into what we're talking about more here when we're talking about people being on the autistic spectrum or being on a schizoid spectrum because they're very different things.
Malcolm Collins: This is, I should point out, this is not a cultural thing. This is shown in genetic data.
This is shown in diagnostic data. And we should probably establish our credentials here. I started one of my first jobs. I mean, I did, I have a few like origin jobs, right? Because I took a number of early jobs in various neuroscience fields. The three origin jobs was one was studying the evolution of human cognition and humanity at the Smithsonian.
And in creating an exhibit, the human origins display, I worked on that. [00:02:00] So some of the stuff I created is still on display at the Smithsonian. So that's one area. Another area is my brain computer interface work. So this was working on technology That allowed humans to control machines with their thoughts, similar to Neuralink.
The final area, and the area I worked by far the longest in, was Schizophrenia research. So this was understanding how this is specifically what I was looking at was, was going Through lots of patients and making sure that they were properly categorized. So this involved tons and tons of interviews.
Like I had to interview hundreds of people about like their deepest and keep in mind, not just because it's a prettier person, but also normal people about their deepest thoughts about the world, their lives, their daily routin
Published on 1 year, 5 months ago