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Lack of 'Mirror Neurons' Linked to Autism
FruFox writes "A recent study has pointed to a possible link between autism and lack of so-called 'mirror neurons' , either physically or functionally. This provides the first solid physical evidence to back up the theory that autism's root cause is a profound lack of empathy. This probably impacts the world of Asperger's Syndrome as well. Many Slashdot readers are undoubtedly familiar with the world of Asperger's / autism."
While there are similarities in the two disorders (as well as with Asperger's) the tag "juvenile schizophrenia" is misleading, as Autism is not restricted to children.
That being said, further research into this pattern (such as to determine if there is an impact on schizophrenia) is of interest. As an aspie, I'm greatly appreciative of any information that can help me deal with the cards I've been dealt.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
It's been suggested. From the abstract to a paper by Arbib and Mundhenk, Schizophrenia and the mirror system: an essay (2005):
Interesting stuffs.Okay, so a philosopher, a philologist, and a philatelist walk into a bar...
I got to thinking though that this would mean you'd have to have some OTHER condition in which only the second of those mechanisms was present. I don't know what the research says on this, but is it possible that the second mechanism on its own is responsible for schizo-effective disorders (of which schizophrenia is the most serious)?
(This still means that Aspergers and Autism fall on the same spectrum, but would imply that HFA and LFA are Aspergers with a schizo-effective element. That doesn't sound right, but if that is NOT the case, we're looking at THREE independent mechanisms being involved in autism - at least - and I'm even less happy with the idea of having more variables than absolutely necessary to explain it.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Wouldn't lack of empathy be a symptom of autism rather than a cause?
If I recall correctly, part of the problem is that it's both. The lack of empathy causes a lack of social interaction, and the absence of social interaction means that empathic skills don't get developed. This results in a rather nasty feedback loop.
Yes, that is my objection to it. The diagnostic criteria, even when correctly applied, are questionably overbroad.
Once you count in all the self-diagnoses, it's a mess. Kuro5hin did a poll and something like 78% of the respondants claimed to have Aspergers. Not scientific but take it for what it's worth.
One has to keep in mind the psychiatrist often has no way to run a test to see if you have something, they go solely on what you tell them your problem is. Sure they can observe your behavior as you meet with them, but if you seem a little quirky or socially awkward they aren't going to second guess your self-diagnosis.
It's the same with parents and kids, the psychiatrist isn't going to often second guess someone that spends at least 8 hours a day, every day, supervising their kids, based on a 1 hour session.
That's why I think nailing down biological causes to these disorders is especially important. That way the people with real disorders get recognized, and the attack on our subculture can end.
It's not wrong to be a geek. We are not sick. Don't buy into their lies.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
"It's not wrong to be a geek. We are not sick. Don't buy into their lies."
:)
Thank GOD! Finally someone said it.
It was bad enough back in the eighties, when I had to go through High School huddled in the hallway with my three friends (all of us were physics nerds) while popular-type assholes swung by trying to one-up each other, making fun of us.
And it was annoying when all of us engineering majors in college had to put up with shit all the time because business and liberal-arts majors treated us like we were some weird other species. I mean, god forbid we crack open the hood of our car and (gasp!) change a freakin' alternator for twenty bucks at the part shop instead of laying out two hundred to have a fat, sweaty, greasy guy do it for us (and make a mess of the wire connections! Don't these people have electrical tape???).
But, these days, every five minutes some psychologist schmuck is trying to play all phony-sympathetic with us, laying some story on us about how we're all "suffering" from some weirdo "syndrome" and we're all really "autistic" and so on.
HEY! SHRINKS OF THE WORLD! I'm a programmer! I make triple the national average salary, can fix, build, or break more different types of equipment than you know the names of, and I whupped your kid's honor-roll ass at Halo II last night! I'm just fine the way I am, and if you come over here trying to take my crazy away, I'm gonna give you an atomic wedgie, drag your ass in my unkempt bathroom, and give you a swirly for good measure! And I haven't cleaned my toilet in weeks! And I eat at Taco Bell regularly! Begone, go back to bothering the neurotics whose mothers make them dress funny!
Um... Heh heh. I guess this issue gets me a bit worked up.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
I think you've summed up the problem well, what the diagnosis was intended for and what's it becoming applied to are two different things.
more of a bizarre confusion regarding what the mental disorder entails.
I agree it's a confusion, but to me it doesn't seem bizarre, I believe the diagnostic criteria are poorly written and overly broad, to the point where way too many people are getting diagnosed (the wikipedia article for aspergers cites numbers like 7 expected cases per 1000, yet diagnosis rates are shooting up, way up).
It's not just aspergers, but that one is close to my heart since my chosen lifestyle and my personality almost just fits into what they are calling diagnostic criteria.
Mental Disorders Strike Nearly Half of All Americans
Do you really think half of all americans are mentally ill? Discounting certain election-induced mass delusions, I seriously doubt it.
It's becoming a major industry to create disease where there is none, to make any nonconformity a disease. It's a dangerous cross between commercial interest in pushing designer prescription drugs, and government interest in supressing non-conformity, and removing personal responsibility. Removing responsibility removes freedom.
It also does a disservice to the truely mentally ill like your brother in law. It clouds the issue of what is and isn't a mental disorder. Him being lumped in with millions of kids with normal behavior problems, and thousands of nerdy adults that want an easy cop-out does not do him any good.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
In my case, it's a little confused since I have a mild seizure disorder AND have been diagnosed bipolar as well. However, the treatment I'm on for those does seem to mitigate the negative side of Aspergers some. However, without a baseline fMRI and an on-meds fMRI (plus an expert in this field), I have no hard data on that. It could equally well be that the other stuff aggravated whatever the Asperger mechanism is.
The extensive research going on is excellent - I'm surprised it took so long for them to use fMRI, I would have thought that one obvious, although I've been told in the past by my own doctor that fMRI couldn't possibly show anything up. Clearly they were wrong on that. (* Gloat *)
Some more information for the obsessive:
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Asperger's exists, but your sig is fine: it helps clarify that AS is not just geekiness.
I have a diagnosis for Aspergers which I got in the middle of a breakdown, and has been very useful in helping me to get the resources that I needed to get well. I am still prone to staying in the house for days on end, whereupon I get cabin fevour, although I can lie, and tell truth from fiction. My breakdown occurred because a therapist undermined me over a period of several years: over that time, I corrected what he was telling me, without realising the conclusions that he was drawing. I look at it now, and I am amazed: my therapist thought that I was a psycho because I told him that the golden rule doesn't work "because different people want different things", and because I valued freedom "but I'm not so much into equality"... My love of the subtle and the self-organising was taken for cunning and not caring...
Maybe Leo Strauss had a point with his concept of the Straussian text, which has an exoteric ("outward") meaning that wasn't necessarily the same as the meaning drawn by the careful thinker. I ignored the exoteric, and, like Nietzsche, enjoyed using terms against their usual emphasis. In Straussian terms, I was being irresponsible, and I paid for it with a major mental collapse.
Do I have Aspergers? Nowadays, having mostly pulled out of my breakdown, I barely suffer any social symptoms that I had. Certainly, there's still a trace, but prolongued analysis of many miscommunications, and the sequence of events that led to my breakdown have by and large prevented me from further major miscommunication as far as I can tell, and indeed it is common for Aspergans to aquire social skills (albiet late). I still have major problems with timeliness, and my ex- comes around once a week to help me to tidy my house, or else I wouldn't do it. It's not that I don't care: I love a tidy house; it's that I get trapped in routine and other activities...
I am nowhere near as incapable as the character described in the Grandparent post, but I definately have difficulties. I also have advantages: I studied maths at Cambridge, and although I failed through depression, I was seen as being very capable by my supervisor. So, corny and PC though it sounds, I do not consider AS to be a disease, but rather a case of cognitive specialisation.
Wikileaks, no DNS
I have a daughter who falls into this category... what you might not realize is that these traits apply ALL THE TIME and they are a bit more severe than you're probably giving credit for.
For example, "lack of appreciation of social cues" does not mean that you were oblivious to how turned off your date got as you quoted Monty Python nonstop. My daughter often has trouble telling whether someone is laughing or crying, and has NO ability to figure it out from the context or any surrounding behavior.
Similarly "repetative adherence to a narrow interest" sounds like a hobby or something you might like doing a little bit more than other people consider normal. That's not even close. My daughter will watch a movie over and over and over again so many times until she can pause it before every line, recite the line, and then listen to it play on the movie.
Much of this needs to be seen in action to appreciate the actual description of the symptoms. Keep in mind that if it seems to apply to a large group of people, then the behavior that it's trying to describe is more excessive than how you've understood it.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
An excellent point well made.
;-)
;-)
I have aspergers as does my 7 year old son and we couldn't survive day to day life without a lot of support from our loved ones which we don't always acknowledge due to our lack of empathy generally. If it's hard for someone with aspergers it's harder for those that support them and I wouldn't have noticed this without a hell of a lot of help.
The inability to spot a lie makes life difficult among people who would like to take advantage of me, luckily I have learned the hard way to avoid these people but it led me to live an almost friendless existance for many years until I discovered it was certain types of people that led to my unhappiness.
I have suffered with depression for years caused by my inability to understand other people. I don't believe I or my son have a problem but the majority of people who lie and accept they are being lied to on a daily basis should probably book themselves into a facility for some care
as for the getting lost unless your friend follows the same route both myself and my son are lucky in the fact that we can 'see' maps and know the topology of the surrounding area automatically. Unfortunatly this does make it even harder than normal when we are lost. It's impossible to describe the feelings I have when I don't 'know' where I am in terms I think you could understand this makes it impossible to sleep on journeys.
Like most people with aspergers I have things that I think should be done in a certain way and my son also has things he likes done in certain ways you can't imagine the clash that happens when these two ideas clash.
On the positive side I can talk to my son like an adult on some subjects (his maths is excellent) but as a negative he is very late at developing in some areas.
Certainly in the UK part of the diagnosis is that it 'has' to affect your day to day ability to live unaided.
geeks aren't generally aspies but aspies are often geeks
blog and junk
(Note to mods whose first impulse might be to mod this Offtopic...it is relevant, but you'll need to read down a bit perhaps to find out why.)
"Your five predecessors were by design based on a similar predication, a contingent affirmation that was meant to create a profound detachment to the rest of your species, facilitating the function of the One."
-- The Architect talking to Neo, The Matrix: Reloaded. (Emphasis mine)
Most people assume that the largely detached attitude of Neo is due purely to the inability of Reeves as an actor to emote. What they don't realise however, is that said lack of emoting for the most part is an integral part of the character.
What the Architect describes above is basically the astrological sign of Aquarius, which science has labelled autism and assumed to be something neurologically anomalous...whereas the astrological perspective of course is that it is something which fits entirely into the natural order. For those bright sparks in the audience who will rush to remind me that there are autistics who aren't always solar Aquarians, that's true...but I would remind you that contrary to what Cosmopolitan might try and tell you, astrology isn't purely about sun signs...in fact that barely even scratches the surface. Show me any autistic individual with a non-Aquarian sun, and I'll show you a natal chart for the same individual with either several other planets in Aquarius, or a strongly aspected Uranus. (the planet associated with Aquarius)
My point here is that autism isn't a fluke, or something that's "wrong" with people. When the people who wrote that stupid play Hair and the song, "the age of Aquarius," they were wrong about *how* the new period would change people.
Call me a schizophrenic nut case if you like...but us going into the Aquarian period on the one hand, and autism diagnosis going through the roof on the other, is not merely some blind coincidence. It's a case of people adapting to an emerging society whose priorities, conventions, and entire way of life is going to be profoundly different to the one that is currently ending.