Williams syndrome is a condition with its own “personality.” And it is not quite a way of speaking, some call it “personality of the Williams syndrome”And it is one of the features that usually characterize people with this uncommon condition.
Let’s start at the beginning: What is Williams syndrome. The origin of this can be found in the genes of the people in which it manifests itself, specifically in chromosome seven. The absence of a region that covers between 25 and 28 genes is what causes the appearance of the syndrome.
This absence can be hereditary. Although most cases are not inherited but the result of chance, who manifest this syndrome have a 50% chance of transmitting it to their descendants. This is because it is a Dominant autosomal inheritance.
The syndrome affects a person between 18,000 and 7,500and does it similarly regardless of sex.
According to Explain in The conversation Deborah Riby, expert from Durham University, this syndrome usually comes associated with some concrete facial features But also with problems that affect the health of those who are born with him, including heart problems and difficulties when feeding.
This syndrome is usually rigged with intellectual disabilities that can be between mild and moderate, but perhaps their most defining feature, and is greater extraversion and trust. The “Williams Syndrome Personality“Includes traits, Riby explains, as the greatest sensitivity and consciousness that occurs in parallel to the difficulties that people with this syndrome present.
“Many individuals are highly mad (…), some are music experts and the large majority are highly social. ‘Extroven‘,’ Over-amygible ‘, and’ emotionally sensitive ‘, are frequently used descriptions to describe (this personality), ” Riby details In your article.
People with this syndrome, very often, present hyperacusia, an extreme auditory sensitivity that can be responsible for high levels of anxiety. Levels that in turn can be disabling.
These features are rigged with A vulnerability related, and that is that people with the syndrome can be excessively confident, explained to the BBC Alyson Muotri, from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD).
Contrary to autism?
The different vision of social exchanges that characterizes people with this syndrome makes some see this syndrome as “The opposite of autism”. The idea that this disorder is an opposite to autism is also nuanceable, says Riby.
“There are several cognitive domains that are problematic in both disorders. Deficits in nonverbal behavior such as visual contact, facial expressions, interpretation of gestures, are widely documented. Additionally, we know that both disorders are associated with difficulties in sensory processing, high anxieties and repetitive behaviors or restrictive interests,” Riby adds to your article.
The existence of this type of relationship, both similarities and differences, lead to the possibility that learning more about one could lead us to better know the other. Especially, Riby proposes, knowing more details about this syndrome of such clear genetic origin can give us clues about the biological mechanisms that determine the appearance of something as complex as autism is.
And this is not the only way in which this syndrome can help us advance in the knowledge of our own species. Some experts seek how to take advantage of this to find out new data on how they evolved as human traits, trust or sympathy.
Studies on this syndrome have managed to link some of their features with the disappearance of one gene or another. Interestingly, experts They have not found the gene “Limiting sympathy” whose disappearance makes these people more extroverted and friendly.
In Xataka | The chromosome and is disappearing … What will be of men?
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