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Rewiring the Autistic Brain
sciencehabit writes "Signs of autism — such as impaired social skills and repetitive, ritualistic movements — usually begin to appear when a child is about 18 months old. Autism is thought to result from miswired connections in the developing brain, and many experts believe that therapies must begin during a 'critical window,' before the faulty circuits become fixed in place. But a new study (abstract) shows that at least one malfunctioning circuit can be repaired after that window closes, holding out hope that in some forms of autism, abnormal circuits in the brain can be corrected even after their development is complete."
Who will write our file systems??
Most symptoms of an ASD can be patched over with a little studying & practice & I know this from experience.
Great, now we'll be able to fix all of them! We really need that! /sarcasm
I for one find this very offensive. It's like telling all autistics they're malfunctioning.
...any experiments along these lines will lead to the subjects developing terrifying mental powers, leading to a series of events ending with the callous lead scientist having his head explode.
For decades it was thought that no new nerve cells could grow in the brain. In the last few years we have discovered that the nervous system is more plastic than we thought.
That said, it is obviously more flexible the younger you are, so if you can spot signs of neurological problems early and devise treatment regimens to offset, balance, or repair those problems it makes sense to do it as early as possible, even if it can be done to some degree later.
Silence is a state of mime.
Wow. How soon until the story in "The Speed of Dark" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_Dark ) becomes real life?
This might have beneficial repercussions for conditions that range inside the encephalopatic epilepsies continuum. The resulting disabilities are considered in a large part to emanate from interferences in brain development during the aforementionned critical windows.
They are curse words used by idiots to describe what used to be called "nerds" or "geeks" or "Poindexters". These fake diseases need to stop. Seriously. Stop hiding between made-up bullshit diseases. I'm probably going to be called an "ass-pie" or "assburger" now, but... no. I suck at attracting females and a bunch of other social things, but there is no need to label that with a disease. I am fully aware of it and don't try to hide it. I don't need a fictional "condition" to hide behind.
The worst, however, are people who proudly announce themselves to have these fake "diseases". They are even worse than the dumb people who use them as insults.
Asperger is a form of high functioning autism. If someone is socially awkward, but good at logic due to this, I wonder if this rewiring would have any effect, and if so if itd remove the social awkwardness but at the cost of the logic skills.
desperate parents trying to fix everything that don't suit how they want things.
this is completely unethical, it's good we research it but we should never give parents the power to make their world perfectly flawless...
the perfect world syndrome is also a disease...
Enjoy the wall of hate and despair you've built around yourself.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/12/us-australia-autism-genetic-idUSBRE88B0DH20120912
I'm surprised they found a genetic test to predict parental abuse in advance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerator_mother_theory may give more info. Basically, the idea that there's no such thing as autism is absolute bunk. There are plenty of physical comorbid conditions to the mental conditions of autism spectrum disorders.
Talk to some of the people who actually do the studies, and you might learn something.
MDMA seems to do this to me if the strong and clean enough(Tested MDMA)
However its a mix bag as lower quality and speedier chems tend to disrupt my thought process, where my brain will end up fighting the forced socialization.. and changes to thought processes.
'Autism' is simply
Wow, three words in and you've already got it wrong ;)
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
PS Should have said this in the post above, but if anyone mods the GP down, feel free to mod my posts down too so even less people see this.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Seriously, and with all due respect, fuck you very much.
Douchebag neurotypicals yet again. I'm just fine, thank you. Better than neurotypicals, certainly. Therefore, I propose that neurotypicals are "rewired" or eliminated because their mental skills are lacking.
I read the title as 'rewiring the artistic brain' and I was like 'awesome, I can explain science to my hipster friends now' and then I was thoroughly disappointed
Where do I sign up?
So you're saying that scientists who've found those genetic correlations are lying?
That the studies that showed mitochondrial malfunction (a biological disorder) correlates strongly with the presence of autism symptoms, and when treated, patients quickly improve (it's not a cure, but it can help a lot with lower functioning autistics who happen to have that as one of the root causes) are also lying?
Is this one of those "there's thousands of studies, but I refuse to believe any of them" things?
Just because abuse can create autism-like symptoms doesn't mean autism doesn't exist. A pebble in the sock can create sprained ankle like symptoms (a limp, favoring one foot, etc) but it doesn't mean sprained ankles don't exist.
They're made of neurons. There's no wiring involved.
They are curse words used by idiots to describe what used to be called "nerds" or "geeks" or "Poindexters". These fake diseases need to stop. Seriously. Stop hiding between made-up bullshit diseases. I'm probably going to be called an "ass-pie" or "assburger" now, but... no. I suck at attracting females and a bunch of other social things, but there is no need to label that with a disease. I am fully aware of it and don't try to hide it. I don't need a fictional "condition" to hide behind.
The worst, however, are people who proudly announce themselves to have these fake "diseases". They are even worse than the dumb people who use them as insults.
+5, Insightful
What a brilliant, scientific rebuttal! Do you plan to get your 'rebuttal' published by a scientific journal?
See Clara Claiborne Park's own 'confession' below, of how she made her own daughter 'autistic'.
Let me see... mother beats the crap out of her daughter, and from then on, her daughter doesn't respond to her. Could they possibly be linked? No - it can't be! It must be 'genetic'! All nice and 'sciencey', none of those 'scary' emotions for you Slashdotters, right? What a joke.
And I'M the one with a "wall of hate and despair" around myself? I can FEEL, unlike the Slashdot sociopaths, you sad, pathetic tossers.
Wow, you sir or madam are a piece of work. Your entire stance is based on prejudicial opinion and a book from 1967. Your concept of the terms "fact" and "truth" is intriguing and your use of a character attack right after mentioning logical fallacies is brilliantly timed; assuming you are trolling.
At least you have the temerity to post as anonymous. It helps clarify how much we should care about your opinion, while illustrating just how serious you are about a subject you have no idea about. I thought the vaccine blaming crowd was bad...
Wow your poor monitor, smartphone, whatever you posted this on. How do you get the mouth spittle off it in order to see what your typing? You know it is actually better if you breath through your nose at it has the function of being a filter for the air you breath. Thats right teath together, lips closed, and in through the nose out through the nose. Good neandrethal.
Or... as the previous attempts at rewiring the brain did.... lobotomies.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Actually, it may be caused not by a distant father, but an old father in some cases.
Oh you pretty things (oh you pretty things)
Don't you know you're driving your
Mamas and papas insane
Oh you pretty things (oh you pretty things)
Don't you know you're driving your
Mamas and papas insane
Let me make it plain
You gotta make way for the homo superior
David Bowie 1971
You're retarded.
Posting as AC, since I don't want my employer to read this.
I have been diagnosed with aspergers. Anyone I have encountered in over 40 years on this planet that has any form of autism, mild or not, has to use their conscious brain functions to "patch" what "neurotypicals" have woven into their subconscious brain. People that think they are "superior to neurotypicals" in general don't realize what the part is they are missing. They are mistaking a high IQ for superiority while in practice, people with lower IQs as themselves but not with autism, tend to be more successful in life; in procreation, in happiness and in fortune.
Sure, their higher IQs may make them "better citizens", but their high IQ and the decisions they make because of that, are not directly because of their autism. There are plenty of people with autism that don't have a high IQ, they get diagnosed with other forms like "classical autism" because they lack the brain power to consciously pick up the lack of social adaptation. This is a classical case of correlation is not the same as causation. I'm getting tired of those autistic people thinking they are superior just because they (once again) fail to see the point of social skills. The ones claiming this are usually not independently wealthy happy fathers, but rather single male workforce people that have individualistic jobs with no leadership requirements. Very few are female, but other than the single bit, they tend to be rather unhappy and not incredibly well off.
Regarding the OT, I am skeptical about actual repair. I do hope it is possible since it takes a lot of energy to get by in normal life, even if you are "well adapted" like I classify. However, I think that if you only look at behavioral results, you may mistake conscious learning and decision making for actual instinctive behavior. Further testing will have to be done before claims should be made.
I feel your suffering, now if you would just let those who know what they are talking about rearrange some of your brain wiring, we would all be in a lot less pain.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
That's not valid scientific reasoning. That A anecdotally caused B in one case doesn''t prove that B* is generally caused by A. A=parental abuse, B=mutism, B*=autism.
"If you gain social intelligence at the cost of creativity, have you been improved? If you can suddenly understand the opposite sex and get them to sleep with you quickly, but no longer do (basic) math in your head, is that a good trade?" Notice the word Basic. Let's change that to "Complex".
Maybe, and this is in a sense exactly what the Autism *spectrum* is all about. A word from the New Age lit is useful here: Esoteric. Autistic people often tend to like esoteric things. The word has connotations of "obscure but with mystique wrapped in with it". Looking at the item I re-quoted, what "Creativity" are we referring to? Nice, socially understandable Creativity like a nice song? Or living in a room where the spatial layout of everything is symbolically congruent to the XOR of observed behavior in a particular bee hive and a particular ant hill that the person studied and recorded? Isn't that "Creative" too? Sure it is. But doing XOR insect calculations in your head doesn't help you in a conversation with a budding romantic partner.
So suppose the autistic person can do seven different types of that kind of creativity. None of them help with a date. He might indeed be willing to trade those kinds of calculations for "slowing down" and "magically" seeing better social results.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Yes, you sure are.
There is a huge contingent of medical practitioners, particularly nutritionists, who believe that ASD symptoms are the result of the liver being inadequate to filter toxins from the blood. Diet modifications have been documented to alleviate many ASD symptoms.
Just saying.
Here is an interesting article on Gut Bacteria in the Economist.. Autism is mentioned as well.. worth a good read.. http://www.economist.com/node/21560523
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
> Hence the refusal to look their parents in the eye, refusal to accept affection, etc. from their parents,
> tantrums if anything is changed in their environment.
We don't look *anyone* in the eye, in no small part because when we DO, people get visibly freaked out and spooked by it. And it feels weird, like trying to line up two strong identical magnets with sides of the same polarity facing each other.
We're fine with receiving affection. Where things get complicated is when socially-appropriate reciprocity becomes a requirement, and we have to try and figure out when brutal honesty is inappropriate. If somebody cries because they aren't going to see us for a week, we have no idea how to respond -- we're going to spend the next week at work, stressed and sleep-deprived, solving the world's problems and putting out fire after fire. We might think about them for 3 minutes between Monday and Friday. So in that context, crying just seems like histrionic over-reaction. Ditto, for the welcome-upon-arrival. To us, the whole week away just kind of collapses down into a few minutes. We feel as emotional about arriving as we'd have felt if we went to go pick up a pizza, returned 15 minutes later, and had someone instantly launch into "omygodImissedYousoMUCH". It's like, "WTF, I was away for ${short-time}, not stranded on an uninhabited island and presumed dead for 20years".
If I arrive at a friend or family member's house, find the neighborhood in ruins because a tornado destroyed it 5 minutes earlier, and they come climbing alive from the rubble, yes, I'll probably be tearful with joy to see them alive. Recent tornadic destruction would definitely qualify as a mitigating circumstance worthy of a tearful reunion. If I live 200 miles away and meet up with them for the first time post-disaster at their vacant lot, I'm more likely to notice the Verizon crew laying new fiber, and the conversation will probably start with an excited question about whether they're going to be able to get FIOS once their house is rebuilt.
We don't throw tantrums when something changes in our environment. We throw tantrums when something changes negatively in our environment, and we're forcibly prevented from doing anything about it (leaving, researching possible solutions, whatever). Usually, this is harmful to the Aspie's objective long-term interest... but occasionally, it results in an aspie hero saving the day in the face of some unfathomable catastrophe while the neurotypicals were cowering in fear, running around like panicked ants, or passively holding hands with a loved one and waiting to die together.
As someone with an autistic brother, you're a fucking idiot.
There is a huge contingent of medical practitioners, particularly nutritionists, who believe that ASD symptoms are the result of the liver being inadequate to filter toxins from the blood. Diet modifications have been documented to alleviate many ASD symptoms.
How is that colon cleanse going? Solved your heavy metal problems yet?
Holy fuck, apparently LowRentEntertainment trolling on Slasdot now.
Hey LowIQEntertainment. What's next, are you going to say cancer is fake?
http://www.youtube.com/user/LowRentEntertainment
So suppose the autistic person can do seven different types of that kind of creativity. None of them help with a date. He might indeed be willing to trade those kinds of calculations for "slowing down" and "magically" seeing better social results.
He might, one definition/distinction I read between autism and Aspergers was that a true autistic wouldn't care, where an aspie would give anything to be "more normal."
Diversity is strength, suppression of diversity has led to some dark places.
> a true autistic wouldn't care, where an aspie would give anything to be "more normal."
I agree, and disagree. When I was 20, I would have given just about anything to be "more normal"
Now, in my 30s, I don't really care anymore. I've carved out my niche, figured out what makes me happy, and I'd have to think about any trade-offs involved with becoming "more normal". I wouldn't mind having slightly better organizational skills, and would probably be better off if I didn't get totally caught up in obsessive special interests that randomly change from week to week or month to month, but there are limits to what I'd trade for improvement.
Some psychiatrists might say I've become schizoid ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizoid ) in my old age. I'd disagree vehemently, and point out that I'm neither anhedonic nor avolitional... then grudgingly concede that I'd probably be both without dextroamphetamine, but remind them that my childhood was so stereotypically "aspie" (backed up by abundant video, photographic, and comments-in-my-yearbooks proof), it almost hurts. Nevertheless, I'd argue that the remainder of traits on the SPD list could be equally argued as traits of a well-adjusted adult aspie who's come to terms with his AS & figured out what really makes him happy, societal & parental expectations be damned.
But you did such a nice job of putting him in his place!
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
You sound jealous! It's just too bad not everyone can be HFA.
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
I would have to consider this a form of genocide. It's a peculiar form of genocide, perhaps, but it comes down to the nonvoluntary modification of minds to force conformity based on the current categorization of Asperger's as a disability. I would resist this nonsense.
Great, now we'll be able to fix all of them! We really need that! /sarcasm
I for one find this very offensive. It's like telling all autistics they're malfunctioning.
Parent of ASD-diagnosed kid here.
You raise a good point. My wife and I recognize that we're walking a bit of a line in treating him. There are definitely those who subscribe to "The Einstein Syndrome", arguing that when you have a son of a computer geek and a banker, he just may be a little reclusive (I use that word, because it goes beyond being introverted), and that's fine. He's not broken. I see their point.
On the other hand, humans are social animals. Reclusive people are mostly unhappy, and Einstein was ridiculed mercilessly as a child. Maybe that's why he spent so much time reading physics texts and not interacting with his peers? The happiest and most content people seem to be to be the ones who have warm relationships with family and friends. Not the smartest or richest or anything else.
We decided to treat our son, from about age 1.5, with some pretty intense play therapy (no medication or anything like that). We immersed his entire life in progressively more abstract symbolic thought, under the guidance of his behavioral therapist. The entire process was amazing to watch. It really did seem to be building a part of this brain that he wasn't using before.
Some observations:
Looking back, I believe that we did the right thing for him. Like I said, humans are social creatures. It was important to us to try to make him more balanced.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Being a person with autism I know that no matter what I do there will be no cure, I can change my behaviour but a spinning thing will always capture me in its thrawl. I will never be able to recognise a face like normal people do, I will never understand what people are thingking even though I have a very good map of how they get from one thought to another and how they are willing to change their moral code to to fit their current wants. To constantly confuse their wants with their needs. No matter how normalised I become I will never be accepted because I am an alien amoung my own species. I like who I am. Some people fear me purely because I am different and therefore cannot predict my thoughs therefore I am a threat to their limmited understanding of my existance. No matter how hard I work I will always be on the outside and I don't care.