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 routines, everything like that. Because we were like, wait, why were you. doing normal people.

It's because I wasn't working as a clinician. I was working as a researcher. And so we needed a control group and we needed a control group that was similar in economic status to our schizophrenia population. Now, schizophrenia population is typically not doing very well in society. You know, this is you, you know, lower income, lower middle income [00:03:00] group.

And so I really got to, to, to get a personal, like really. In your face, really high volume understanding of this section of humanity and the way they think and engage with the world. Both people within the schizophrenia population and not schizophrenia population. And I had to be really good.

Like, I had memorized the DSM at one point. People who don't know the things. Not

Simone Collins: just the schizophrenic

Malcolm Collins: diagnostic criteria. The whole thing. I could give you any, not, not memorized word per word, but I can give you any diagnosis in it with its broad, like specific diagnostic criteria. Now, it's been a long time since then, but I took a lot of pride on this at one point.

People who don't know, I might put a picture of a DSM on the screen because people who don't know what the DSM is might be hearing that, Oh, he memorized the diagnostic standard criteria. He, well, what is that? Why is that important? a monster book. It's like memorizing the encyclopedia. It's insane that I decided that that was a fun thing to do.

But I really enjoyed it. I really [00:04:00] enjoyed understanding how humans think and how humans interact with each other. And so this was important to me. And then Simone is diagnosed with autism. Yeah, I'm just defective. Our kid is diagnosed with autism. One of our kids and our other kid, very likely by the time we get to him, it's going to be diagnosed as well.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah, no, no. Torsten is Almost certainly. He's, he's getting his evaluation in April because it takes a billion months to schedule these things, ha

Malcolm Collins: ha ha. But the point being here is that I have no antagonism towards these communities and I am speaking from a perspective informed. By research and actually what we were doing was this research was genetic testing.

So we were, so we needed to clearly separate them into these different groups so we could find out what genes were correlated with this. And

Simone Collins: there's similar research with autism in which actually we had our oldest son participate. Like the whole family did cheek swabs, you, me Octavian's younger brother and Octavian.

And we all sent them in. And fill out tons of questionnaires. So that, [00:05:00] yeah, this is something that happens with schizophrenia. It happens with autism. It happens with a lot of things.

Malcolm Collins: So let's, let's talk about, I'm going to start with the schizophrenia spectrum because it's the one that I think less people are familiar with.

A lot of people are familiar with the autism spectrum. But the schizophrenia spectrum, a lot of people are unfamiliar with. So, because this might surprise people, the, like, do you know, the schizophrenia spectrum goes from schizophrenia to what other common psychiatric condition?

Simone Collins: You mean at the other end of it? Like the opposite of it? Yeah, the other end of it. Autism? No. I mean, well, what's the opposite? I mean, schizophrenia, as I understand it, is like over modeling humans.

Malcolm Collins: This means that all of these conditions are linked, genetically linked.

Simone Collins: Oh, linked. Okay. Okay. So they're, yeah, they're linked.

Okay. So yeah. Okay. Okay. I'll

Malcolm Collins: give you a hint. It's t