Question: what is schizophrenia and autism and how do they work?

Scientists think that schizophrenia and autism are caused by a persons genes but also the environment they grow up in.

We know that in identical twins, if one twin has schizophrenia or autism, the other twin is more than twice as likely to have the disorder too. They have identical genes so this tells us that genes are important. But, the other twin won’t always develop schizophrenia or autism so there’s something else we’re missing: the environment they grow up in.

Similar gene mutations have been found in people with schizophrenia and autism but they are very different disorders.

Schizophrenia usually first appears in adolescence or early adulthood and people with the illness have major disturbances in their thoughts, emotions, behaviour and perceptions and sometimes experience hallucinations (seeing hearing things that are not there).

Autism is first noticed between 1-2 years of age and is a very complicated condition and looks different in every person. That’s why it’s now called ‘Autism Sprectrum Disorder’, or ASD for short. This an important point because many people with ASD lead healthy and relatively normal lives. They still have some problems interacting socially, with language, and might have repetitive behaviours. These are the main traits of Autism. But those problems are not severe enough for the person to have difficulty in life and often people on the mild end of the spectrum are highly intelligent and do very well in school. So, there is no reason to ‘cure’ them. Temple Grandin, who has a form of ASD, talks about how her mind works (https://www.templegrandin.com/). She says that she can “think in pictures” which can help her to solve problems other people might not see a solution to.

However, some people with ASD have more severe symptoms which mean that they cannot communicate easily or at all with others, or they might experience digestive problems, hypersensitivity to lights and sound, trouble sleeping, aggressive behaviour, seizures or anxiety. These symptoms are often very disabling as you can imagine. Those are the symptoms that most scientists working on ASD are keen to cure.

I am currently working on trying to understand the cause of some of these disabling symptoms in autism and schizophrenia by understanding the way that brain cells communicate with each other. We now think that many complicated diseases of the brain such as ASD and schizophrenia are caused by brain cells miscommunicating. Once we understand how this miscommunication is occurring, it might be possible to make new drugs which can improve the communication between brain cells and help people with schizophrenia and ASD.