Last night I saw Temple Grandin here at the Free Library.  She is autistic and also has a PhD.  She works with animals and talked a bit about animal emotions and instinct and learning to separate the two.  She did a lot of design work in slaughterhouses for farm animals because she could detect and understand what the animals would find upsetting and redesign things to eliminate the problems. 
  She gave an interesting talk.  I noticed her manner of speech reminded me of some people I know, who I suspect might have some degree of Asperger's syndrome.  It is probably widespread in science fiction fandom. 
  As it happens, I have a brother who is autistic, but not in the same sense. He probably has Kanner's syndrome or pervasive developmental disorder.  He is non-verbal, secondarily retarded and lives in a group apartment with round-the-clock caregivers.
  Autism is an umbrella term for a number of different disorders, which may be along a spectrum or may be unrelated.  Until we understand the underlying causes, we can only group conditions like this together based on superficial similarities.