But Rimland also presciently suggested that in some cases the syndrome was caused by unknown environmental factors acting upon a genetic predisposition. He speculated that parents who tend to be gifted in certain fields pass this vulnerability down to their children along with the genetic factors for high intelligence. Thus, autism represented a potential for genius that had been derailed somewhere along the line—“brightness gone awry,” as Rimland put it. “We must give serious consideration to the hypothesis that an infant’s road to high intelligence lies along a knife-edged path,” he wrote,
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