All took tests to confirm their exceptional skills. Each of the prodigies had received national or international recognition for a specific skill, such as math or music. The Human Heredity study involved five child prodigies and their families that Ruthsatz has been studying, some for many years. We have a strong suspicion that there's a genetic component to that, as well, and that's the focus of our future work,'' she said. What we want to know is what distinguishes them. ''We now know what connects prodigy with autism. These findings are the first step toward answering the big question, Ruthsatz said. ''We haven't identified the mutations, but we found that there's something in this region of chromosome 1 that is the same with both prodigies and their family members with autism,'' Bartlett said. While this study provides a solid basis for identifying a linkage, there is a lot more to be learned, said co-author Christopher Bartlett, a principal investigator at Nationwide Children's Hospital and associate professor of pediatrics at Ohio State. The new study appears online in the journal Human Heredity. ''Based on my earlier work, I believed there had to be a genetic connection between prodigy and autism and this new research provides the first evidence to confirm that,'' Ruthsatz said. In a previous study, Ruthsatz and a colleague had found that half of the prodigies in their sample had a family member or a first- or second-degree relative with an autism diagnosis.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |