Why Autism Might Be an Evolutionary Advantage, plus Autistic Burnout, Menopause, and more

Most autism research still isn't about autistic adults. It's about children, and causes, and where autism comes from. But every so often, research surfaces that's actually about us — our health as we age, our burnout, our bodies in midlife, and even the question of why autism has been part of the human story all along. This is the first of my roundup episodes, where I bring you several of the most interesting recent findings in autism research, all in one place.

In this episode, I cover five recent findings: a Swedish study linking autism to a higher risk of early-onset Parkinson's disease; a hard look at where NIH autism research money goes, and how little of it reaches adults; a new qualitative study on what autistic burnout feels like, and why being late-diagnosed makes it worse; the emerging science of menopause and autism, and what happens when a lifetime of coping strategies stops working; and the compelling question of whether the same genetic changes that shaped the human brain also made us more neurodiverse.

If you'd like to read the research yourself, here are the sources:

The autism and Parkinson's study, "Risk of Parkinson Disease in Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorder," by Weiyao Yin et al. in JAMA Neurology (2025) and the Karolinska Institutet summary

The NIH autism research funding analysis from Autism Speaks (2026)

The autistic burnout study, "How Does 'Autistic Burnout' Feel? A Qualitative Study Exploring Experiences of Earlier and Later-Diagnosed Autistic Adults," by Dorota Ali, Will Mandy, and Francesca Happé in Autism (2026)

The autism and menopause study, "Common and Unique Menopause Experiences Among Autistic and Non-Autistic People: A Qualitative Study," by Martha A. Piper and Rebecca A. Charlton in the Journal of Health Psychology (2025)

On autism and evolution, "A General Principle of Neuronal Evolution Reveals a Human-Accelerated Neuron Type Potentially Underlying the High Prevalence of Autism in Humans," by Alexander L. Starr and Hunter B. Fraser in Molecular Biology and Evolution (2025), and the earlier "Widespread Signatures of Positive Selection in Common Risk Alleles Associated to Autism Spectrum Disorder," by Renato Polimanti and Joel Gelernter in PLOS Genetics (2017)

All episodes written and produced by Kristen Hovet.

Send in your questions to otherautism@gmail.com

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The views, opinions, and experiences shared by guests on this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the host or production team. The content is intended for informational purposes only and should not be taken as medical or professional advice. Please consult with a qualified healthcare provider before making any decisions related to your health, fitness, or wellness. 

Transcript

Why Adult Autism Research Matters

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Most of what gets called autism research isn't about autistic adults. It's about children. It often looks at causes. So genes, brains, biology, studied once again in kids, mostly to answer one question. Where does autism come from? As though the most interesting thing about an autistic person is how they came to be autistic. But every so often, research surfaces that's actually about autistic adults, our health as we age, our burnout, our bodies in midlife, even the deep question of why autism exists in the human story at all. So I'm trying something new. This is the first of what I'm calling my Roundup episodes, where I bring you several of the most interesting recent findings and stories in autism research. All in one place, so you can walk away caught up in what's actually happening that affects autistic adults. If this format works for you, let me know and I'll keep making them. Today I've got five stories for you. Five findings actually about adults that most people in your life probably haven't heard about. One will maybe surprise you, one will probably annoy you, and a couple might make you feel, well, seen. And the last one might change the way you think about being autistic at all. Hey, I'm Kristen Hovitt, and this is The Other Autism, the podcast about late-diagnosed autism, high-masking autism, and the research that keeps rewriting what we thought we knew. Story

Autism And Parkinson’s Without Panic

SPEAKER_01 1:35

one is autism, Parkinson's, and the risk you should not panic about. We'll start with the one that kind of surprised me. So in 2025, researchers at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden published a study in JAMA neurology. If you're a regular listener, that name might ring a bell. Karolinska Institutet has come up before. Sweden does a lot of register studies that I have covered on the show. This time they asked a question almost nobody had asked before, and it's is there a link between autism and Parkinson's disease? They use Sweden's national registries to follow more than 2 million people. So everyone born between 1974 and 1999. They tracked them from age 20 to the end of 2022, and just under 52,000 of those people were autistic. Here's what they found. Parkinson's disease showed up in 0.05% of the autistic people. In the non-autistic people, it was 0.02%. Autistic people were about four times more likely to be diagnosed with Parkinson's. Early onset Parkinson's specifically, so every single case they found happened before age 50. So this is exactly the kind of finding that goes sideways if you don't hold it carefully, if you don't frame it carefully. Four times can sound massive and kind of anxiety-provoking. And in relative terms, it is massive. But look at the raw numbers again, we went from 0.02% to 0.05%. So these are tiny numbers. The overwhelming majority of autistic people will never develop Parkinson's disease. Four times a very small number is still a very small number. So why does the study matter? Because the link held. The researchers adjusted for sex, for socioeconomic status, for family history of both mental illness and Parkinson's. And they even adjusted for psychiatric medication use. And the association was still there. So that points to something biologically real. The researchers suggest it may run through the dopamine system, which governs movement, the thing Parkinson's attacks, also motivation, attention, and reward, which show up all over autism. The lead researcher, Dr. Yin, was careful about what it all means. She said, quote, we hope that our results will eventually help to bring greater clarity to the underlying causes of both ASD and Parkinson's disease. End quote. My personal opinion is okay, well, another thing that's talking about causes, but um you get the idea. So this isn't a verdict, it's a clue. And what it's really a clue about is something I come back to on this show over and over again. We do not know nearly enough about how autistic people age, about what life looks like for them over the entire life course. Most research starts and stops at childhood at some point. A finding like this is a flare going up over autistic adulthood, saying there's something here. And the systems meant to care for aging autistic people had better start looking. There's not as much fear, there's more curiosity, and now we actually have kind of a to-do list forming. Quick

Making Sense Of Relative Risk

SPEAKER_01 5:08

bit of added context on the autism and Parkinson's research. I was originally going to explain this in the episode, then decided to leave it out to keep things moving. And now I'm changing my mind again. So here we are. So I mentioned that Parkinson's showed up in 0.05% of the autistic people and 0.02% of the non-autistic people. And that autistic people were about four times more likely to be diagnosed with Parkinson's. That's not just my crappy math skills. Uh, those two percentages didn't divide neatly into four. And that's because the four times figure is a relative risk of 4.4, calculated with a statistical model that accounts for age and follow-up time, not a straight division of the percentages. Now that increased risk is statistically significant. It's a real effect, in other words, it's not some result of chance, but it's also small in absolute terms, and both of those things are true at the same time. There were just 24 Parkinson's cases among nearly 52,000 autistic people, and 438 among about 2.2 million non-autistic people. Okay, thanks.

Where The Research Money Goes

SPEAKER_01 6:20

Story two, follow the money. Story two kind of makes me angry. So just a fair warning, it might do the same to you. Uh earlier this year, Autism Speaks, and I know this organization has a troubled history, let's just say, but uh they did publish an analysis of how the United States National Institutes of Health, the NIH for short, which is the largest health research funder on earth, is spending its autism money this year, 2026. And the numbers tell you in cold detail exactly who autism research is for. So far in 2026, the NIH had 160 active autism research grants. And of those, 142 worth $68.1 million went to biology, genetics, and foundational research. So the science of causes, of mechanisms, and of where autism comes from. Again. And to be very clear, I love foundational science, I love genetics, I love all of these things, but I feel like it's overdone in the autism world, in autism research. How many of those 160 grants focused on adult autism? 25. That's worth $12.7 million. A good amount, but in my opinion, not enough. And I also want to be clear, I don't think it's a waste to study autism in children. Not at all. But there's just no balance. So sit with the numbers again side by side. 68 million for causes and biology, 12.7 million for the entire lived experience of autistic adulthood. And the areas closest to actual daily life, so safety, well-being, training providers who actually understand us, autism services, caregiver support got the least of all.7 million dollars in investment, focus on adult autism research, highlighting an opportunity for expanded investment in research on adulthood, aging, and long-term outcomes. End quote. As I mentioned before, foundational biology is incredibly important in the grand scheme of things, in science in general. And understanding underlying mechanisms can lead somewhere useful. There's a caveat. NIH grants are usually decided years ahead. So most of these were locked in before the Autism Cares Act, which was authorized at the end of 2024 and carried new priorities. So it might take a while for the focus to shift. So I know we'll all be watching. Every autistic child becomes an autistic adult. And still, the money chases the question of where it all comes from, instead of how the millions of us already here are actually living. If you're an adult diagnosed late or diagnosed early, navigating systems never built with you in mind, that gap isn't abstract. We all feel it in some way. It's the reason there's barely any research on autistic burnout, for example, on autistic aging, on what actually helps us hold down a job, a relationship, a life in a body that runs differently from most others. And here's the hopeful part, though, because there is one.

Autistic Researchers Changing The Room

SPEAKER_01 10:03

So this past April, the big international autism research conference INSAR, INSAR, met in Prague. 2,400 people, 75 countries. And according to people who were there, one of the most striking shifts was the growing presence of autistic researchers and autistic self-advocates, with sessions led by autistic researchers among the best attended in the entire conference. I think that matters maybe more than it might sound on the surface, because the single most reliable way to get research that actually serves autistic adults is to put autistic people in the room where they decide what gets studied right from the start. So the money isn't there yet, but increasingly the people are. And in my mind, that is a step in the right direction. Story

Autistic Burnout Described From Inside

SPEAKER_01 10:53

three, what burnout actually feels like. Story three is one a lot of you have asked me for directly. More content about burnout, autistic burnout specifically. And there's a brand new study on it that I think is one of the most quietly important pieces of research I've read this year. It came out in early 2026 in the journal Autism from Dorota Ali, Will Mandy, and Francesca Happei. They interviewed 20 autistic adults about their experience of burnout, but they deliberately split the group. So eight of them had been diagnosed in childhood as autistic, while 12 had been diagnosed in adulthood. Then they asked, does burnout feel different depending on when you found out you were autistic? First, what burnout actually felt like across everyone. The researchers pulled out a few core experiences. A powering down of the mind and body. Participants described being, quote, truly fried, end quote, and running on a battery that just would not recharge. At the same time, and this is the paradox, an overactivation of sorts, so the sensory filter falling away, so that bright lights got brighter, sounds got sharper, clothes got more unbearable. And out of all that, a desperate craving for solitude and sensory rest. One participant fantasized about buying a cave to live in. Relatable. But here's the part that matters most for this audience. The people diagnosed in adulthood tended to have it worse. So their burnouts lasted longer, sometimes months or years instead of days or weeks. And a huge part of what made it worse was simply not knowing, not having a name for what was happening to them. One participant diagnosed later in life said, quote, I would say the not knowing created 80% of that problem. End quote. So think about what that means. It isn't only the exhaustion, it's going through the exhaustion with zero framework, with no explanation, blaming yourself, certain that everyone else is managing the things that are crushing you. The study found that the late diagnosed participants were more likely to carry that self-blame really deeply, to feel like a failure, and in some cases to use alcohol or other substances just to make the world bearable. Understanding themselves as autistic changed the experience. One participant, once he understood he was autistic and found others like him, described burnout completely differently, not as a personal failure, but as, quote, a sensible reaction to too much pressure. The too much of everything that I've had to experience, end quote. That reframe is the whole thing. It's everything. Burnout stops being evidence that you're broken and becomes what it actually is. A reasonable response to spending years or decades running a nervous system at full mask in a world that never gave you what you needed. Maybe even not at full mask, but masking in some way. However, knowing that doesn't make the burnout go away. But it takes off the second layer, the shame part that the late diagnosed among us have been carrying on top of it all. Story four. When the mask slips in midlife. Story four is one that a lot of you have written me

Menopause And The Mask Falling

SPEAKER_01 15:11

about, and until recently, there was almost no research to point you toward. Menopause and autism. And what happens when the two collide? For a long time, this was one of the most under-researched intersections in all of autism science. But in the last couple of years, that's finally started to change, and the emerging picture is striking. Here's what the research is converging on. Menopause for a lot of autistic people doesn't just bring the usual well-known symptoms. It amplifies autistic traits. A 2025 qualitative study by Martha Piper and Rebecca Charlton and a broader body of work alongside it found that menopause can intensify autistic presentation, especially sensory sensitivities, while also introducing new difficulties that a person's lifelong coping strategies simply can no longer fix or cover. Many autistic people, particularly those who went undiagnosed for a long time, spent their lives building an elaborate scaffolding of masking and routine and workarounds just to get through the day. Menopause with its hormonal shifts can pull the scaffolding down in one fell swoop. Estrogen is involved in sensory processing, in emotional regulation, in executive function. And when it drops, the very systems that autistic people already navigate differently can get even harder to manage. The lights get louder, to borrow a phrase I've heard. The mask, it just drops. And here's the thread that connects us to our whole episode. For a striking number of women, menopause is the moment they seek an autism assessment for the very first time. The coping mechanisms fail, the traits surge, and suddenly a lifetime starts to make sense in a new way. A 2026 review in the journal Frontiers in Reproductive Health laid out how these menopausal challenges for autistic women remain critically understudied and pointed specifically to interoception, that sense of your own internal body signals as a key piece. If you already struggle to read your own body and its cues, interpreting the ambiguous shifting signals of menopause becomes that much harder and the distress that much greater. If you're in the stage of life and you felt like you're falling apart in a way you can't explain, like the strategies that carried you for maybe 40 years suddenly stopped working, you're not imagining it and you're certainly not alone. The science is finally catching up to what so many of you already knew from the inside. Story five.

Why Autism Might Persist

SPEAKER_01 18:19

Doesn't the fact that autism persists tell us something? Maybe. I think so. It's a wonderful question. Before I answer it, I need to be really clear about something because accuracy matters. This is the most speculative segment in today's episode. The evolutionary science of autism is an active, genuinely debated and theory-driven area of research. That's a door dash notification. There are real studies here. I'll tell you about them, but there's no settled consensus. And anyone who tells you evolution has definitively explained autism is overselling it. So hold what follows as fascinating, evidence-informed possibility, not established fact. With that said, here's what some real genetic research suggests. Suggests. There's a concept in evolutionary biology worth knowing. Traits generally don't persist across a species over vast stretches of time unless they're doing something important. Either the trait itself confers some advantage or it's genetically tied to something else that does. And autism has a strong genetic basis with heritability estimates that run quite high. So the persistence question is a real one. In 2017, so going back a bit, researchers at Yale, working with data from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, found that inherited genetic variants linked to autism showed signals of positive selection, meaning they appeared to have been favored during human evolution in greater numbers than chance would predict. Their suggestion was that these variants may be linked to enhanced cognition, brain stuff. The very same genetic material associated with autism may also be associated with things like memory and certain kinds of intelligence. Then, more recently, in 2025, a study led out of Stanford looked at autism-linked genes and human brain evolution and found evidence that some of the same genetic changes that made the human brain distinctively human also made humans more neurodiverse. The researchers are suggesting that neurodiversity, including autism, may be woven into the very changes that made our species what it is. Now the caveats, because that's really important to name those. Autism spans an enormous range, and treating it as one single thing for evolutionary analysis is an oversimplification. On average, autistic people have fewer children, which by strict Darwinian logic should push these genes down over time, and yet they've persisted, which is exactly the puzzle these researchers are wrestling with. The leading explanations involve indirect mechanisms. So the idea that autism like genes are maintained because in different combinations and doses, they carry real advantages, like enhanced pattern recognition, deep focus, systematic thinking, the kind of mind that notices what others might miss. Very important when you're trying to survive in the dangerous world of hungry animals and other people. For a long time, the story of autism has been told as a story of absolute deficit, like something's wrong, something went wrong, something went missing, and everyone is sad. This body of research points tentatively toward a much different story. That autistic traits may have persisted across the entire span of human history because they were valuable. Because a group of humans that included minds like ours, minds that focus intensely, that see patterns better, that refuse to stop until they understand something, may have been stronger for it. Not in spite of autism, but partly at least because of it. You're not an accident that evolution forgot to correct. You may well be part of why we made it this far. So congratulations. In closing, so those were five stories, all comprising a surprising signal about how autistic people age

The Thread Across All Five Stories

SPEAKER_01 22:48

and what we experience. A hard look at where the research money goes and the autistic researchers slowly prying that open and making a new path. A study that finally names what burnout feels like and why not knowing you're autistic makes it so much heavier. The emerging science of menopause, pulling down a lifetime of coping strategies, and the deep, still unfolding question of why autism has been part of the human story all along. If there's a thread tying all five together, it's this. The science is finally, slowly, and evenly turning to look at autistic adults. Our health, our aging, our burnout, our bodies, our place in the human story. There's a long way to go for sure. The funding numbers say that plainly. And the direction is still real. And more and more autistic people are the ones helping steer. I'll link all the studies and information that I talked about in the show notes so you can read those for yourself.

Thanks And Closing

SPEAKER_01 23:49

I want to take a moment to thank Justin and the Turning Towards Life podcast for buying me five coffees and Steffi for buying me two coffees. Thank you both so, so very much. I really appreciate you, and I really appreciate your kind words as well.

SPEAKER_00 24:07

Well, that's all I have for you today. Thank you so much for being here. Until next time.