Thread by @tomaspueyo

I humbly have so many questions about #autism, esp clustering. Do you have answers?

1. Clusters
Autism is known as a spectrum, but it sounds to me like it’s not a line, rather a space. Traits don’t linearly increase or decrease. ≠ ppl have ≠ traits.

Are there trait clusters?

2. Genetic Clustering
20%-25% of autism can be traced to >100 genes. The same gene variants should produce the same traits. We know that for a few like SynGAP-1. Why don’t we for all? Why so little correlation btw gene variants and traits?

3. Non-genetic causes
Why only ~25% of autism is traced back to genes?
Is the rest too difficult to trace back? Why?
Or is it because there are other drivers?
Epigenetics?
Why don’t we know about other drivers?
(Please no antivaxxing)

4. AI classifiers
It sounds like this complexity of traits & roots would fit an AI classifier, but I haven’t found any. Why?
Is it because the data is not easily accessible?
If so, why is there no DB with the traits of millions of anonymized autists?

5. Cluster prognosis
Why all this talk about clusters? The clustering would be valuable to know how traits would evolve over time. Does something like this exist?

6. Cluster support
If a child is 5 but we know he belongs to the same cluster as a group of adults, we can ask the adults what worked or didn’t for them & apply to the kid. Does this exist?

7. Ableism
What ableist things did I say? I’m sure I did, even if I try to get better and avoid them. It’s an improvement process.