I HAVE BECOME almost obsessively fascinated by the process of learning. I guess it stems from giving lectures, visiting schools, writing books that try to explain big subjects – speaking with teachers – having my own kids – living with my own thoughts! It means, of course, that whenever I have time to read I almost always immerse myself in books about the human brain. How utterly futile is fiction when the most fascinating narrative of all is to try to discover the machinations of what is going on – one moment to the next – inside my very own head!

And so, as I camp out on the banks of the river Rhine whilst my younger daughter plays in her Marimba music course about 15 minutes downstream, I am taking what time I have between projects, proposals, emails and admin, to deepen my understanding of this lump of white-grey lard inside my skull.

I have discovered two books that are completely changing my view of – well, just about everything. The first is out of print. It’s a bizarre but brilliant fusion of psychology and big history written by a now defunct psychology professor called Julian Jaynes entitled: “The Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind” (1976).  Anyone with an interest in neurology, history, ancient civilisation, schizophrenia or hypnosis MUST read this book. You don’t have to accept his theory, but just let his ideas play in your mind – as they have in mine – and then see how they fare.

The second (by the way, I really recommend reading Jaynes first) is by Cornish author Tony Wright and agriculturalist Graham Glynn called Return to the Brain of Eden (I believe it was first published in 2008 under the title Left in the Dark). I finished it yesterday over lunch.

I shan’t go into the theories of either book – that’s for you to discover if you have sufficient curiosity to take my word for it that you will NOT be disappointed!

How utterly futile is fiction when the most fascinating narrative of all is to try to discover the machinations of what is going on – one moment to the next – inside my very own head!

However, reading them both back-to-back has led to tsunami of synaptic syncopation between my own left and right hemispheres. What this thought-showers seems to have produced is a bizarre, but intriguing explanation for the dramatic rise of autism in western culture.

Let me explain.

Dominance of the left hemisphere over the right, in all our brains, is, according both Jaynes and Wright/Glynn, a product of hormonal balance and imbalance. In short, it is the prevalence of testosterone during feotal development that has, over the course of the last 1 million years of human evolution, contributed to the dominance of the left brain hemisphere over the right.

In boys, where testosterone is produced more bountifully (since it is the masculine-making hormone), the dominance of the left hemisphere can become especially pronounced. Perhaps that’s why (until this month – at last!) every single winner of the Fields Medal maths prize since its inception in 1936 has been male. Right hemisphere capacities – which involve social interaction, empathy, emotional intelligence and humour – are especially suppressed in people with ‘over masculine’ brains. Today we say such people suffer from autism. Reinforcing the narrative is the fact that by far the majority of statemented autistic young people today are boys not girls – on average the ratio is about 4:1.

Masses of research is being targeted at trying to find a cause, but so far there are no clear answers. Is it genetic? environmental? immunization? hormonal? dietary? cultural? Maybe it’s a just a myth! Apparent emergence may simply be because we now have a label and pots of people over-eager with diagnosis…

But as anyone who has an autistic child, or who teaches one, will know, these are very special people, most often with very special needs.

So now I am going to reveal the thread of connective tissue in my own corpus callosum that is germinating, at least for me, a new theory (I cannot find it articulated anywhere else) as to why the incidence of autism seems to be rising so steeply in our modern age.

It’s all to do with screens.

A stunning statistic was revealed in a survey by OFCOM earlier this month which revealed that British people now spend more time staring at screens than they do sleeping (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-28685572).

Of course, there is no link to autism in this story – but hear me through.

And the problem, by the way, has nothing to do with children – or autistic children in particular – playing too many computer games or spending all their time watching TV or surfing the net.

Rather, it’s their mums.

When you look at a computer screen – especially if viewing occurs within two hours before the body is naturally ready to shut down and go to sleep – the violent bursts of blue light (frequency 460 – 480nm) emitted from modern LCD screens are known dramatically to inhibit the secretion of the hormone melatonin by the pineal gland in the brain. This is an established fact.

The problem, by the way, has nothing to do with children – or autistic children in particular – playing too many computer games or spending all their time watching TV or surfing the net.

And melatonin, so I read, is the key hormonal suppressant for testosterone in the body. According to Wright and Glynn, it is a balance between melatonin Vs testosterone levels that will largely dictate the way in which the embryonic brain develops in a mother’s womb. Too little melatonin and runaway levels of testosterone will most likely trigger an exaggerated masculinity of the growing foetal brain. A lack of melatonin therefore sounds to me like immersing the emerging left-hemisphere of an embryonic male brain in a bath of testosterone-laden miraclegrow.

And so I put it out there. Perhaps pregnant mums staring at screens – particularly in the two hours before their bodies would naturally go to sleep – best accounts for rising levels of autism in modern society. It probably doesn’t matter so much if the baby you are carrying is a girl – but if it’s a boy…..?

Taking folic acid, cutting out alcohol, avoiding drugs – now add this to the list of well established ingredients for having a healthy pregnancy: no TV or online shopping after 7pm…

I’m sorry if it sounds harsh – akin to a kind of discriminatory curfew for those bearing sons and heirs…

It’s just a hunch.