My Journey with Autism

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Welcome Raederie...... thank you for sharing your story and your insights . Also , your discussion on gut flora
Is very poignant , especially with Autistic people.

It isn't clear if the underlying causes definitely overlap, probably overlap, or don't overlap. However, being an HSP is definitively linked to certain genes, whereas the genes linked with autism thus far only apply to (at best) 1% of cases, which means we are still a long way from understanding underlying causes for autism. I read the links you posted, but I'm really looking for much deeper explorations. I've been having to dig through MRI studies of HSP brains and autistic brains to find out what real similarities and differences exist for my book. As far as I can tell, nobody has done this analysis yet and I can't imagine why not! Perhaps it's Dr. Elaine's fault for making the ignorant statement that autistics are insensitive and the total opposite of HSPs. *facepalm* I wish she hadn't said that. I imagine she will eventually wish she hadn't too once she learns better.

Amen to that. In my own life I am surrounded by neurodivergents. I have two husbands and boyfriend, and one of my husbands and my boyfriend are autistic. My parents, my nephew, one of my newer male friends, the only aunt I've ever been kinda close to. And my friends who aren't autistic are HSPs. The HSPs have 'normal' expressions that I learn more quickly, but everyone else in my life takes me a while to learn. My newer male friend who is autistic is still quite an enigma to me. I enjoy his company and find him entertaining, but I can never tell when he is serious and when he is joking. He, apparently, has a lot of trouble making friends, but I enjoy having him around so we've hung out nearly every week for the past few months. I still can't read his face, but I know I'll be able to eventually. For context, he's in his forties, and I'm thirty-two. We're accomplished maskers, and I'm an accomplished face-reader at this point in my life – even though I have to do much of it consciously – but even still, I just accept that I have to learn new people.

So am I thinking the same.

Do you find that you are prosopragnosic?

I would strongly question how definitive the HSP results truly are, so far. See below.


Where do you get this info?

According to Dr. Wendy Chung, in a lecture she gave in 2018, relevant genes had been identified for about 20% of autistic people at that point.

Note that Dr. Chung is associated with the only large-scale research project on autism genetics, SPARK. As she points out in the above-linked lecture, previous studies used much smaller samples and hence often contradicted each other.

There are hundreds of different genes that have been associated with autism. Researchers expect there may still be hundreds more, maybe even thousands more, that have not yet been identified.


Or at least most of the many kinds of autism.


Alas, such studies are unlikely to involve large-enough samples to have reliable results. Certainly that's true for the studies of autistic brains, and I would hazard a guess that there is far less funding available for large-scale studies of HSP brains.

Tons of money have been poured into autism research over the past several decades, by numerous funding sources including both private foundations and governments. On the other hand, I doubt that anyone is lavishing much money on HSP research besides Dr. Elaine Aron's Foundation for the Study of Highly Sensitive Persons. Indeed, it seems to me that the best way for a scientist to get more than a small amount of funding for HSP research would be by tapping into the autism research funding sources, to fund studies that compare non-autistic HSP's both to autistic people and to NT's, with the primary aim of the studies being to gain deeper insights into the sensory issues of autistic people.

Please let me know if I am wrong about the above.


See above. I doubt that it's even possible to reach any reliable conclusions on this matter yet.


By "Dr. Elaine," I assume you mean Dr. Elaine Aron, author of The Highly Sensitive Person website?

A label doesn't change who you are. Anything you knew about yourself, you still know it. Perhaps a new diagnosis or a label adds some new perspective, but it's not like it's going to change your favorite food or something. The art of defining different neurological clusters of traits is not a precise science anyhow; they can decide they were wrong about the criteria and change it any year. That's one of many reasons why I now prefer to refer to myself as a neurodivergent rather than an autistic.



I used to be, but I was cured of that. I have a chapter about it in my book on Neurodivergence.



Yes, but each individual gene is only associated with 1% or less of cases, even if 20% of people with autism have one of those individual genes.

By the way, I love Dr. Wendy Chung. I saw her TED talk. I'm now watching the talk you linked.

I liked the talk. I extracted a couple quotes from it for my book, such as this: “We have about 20,000 genes in our genome and we’ve got about eighty [a hundred now] of those with autism. This was not just a random walk through the genome; we are starting to see some convergence – some patterns – in terms of what genes are important,” says Dr. Wendy Chung.



That would be sooo freaking awesome. That probably will happen eventually, perhaps even in the next five years. Then I'll have to update my book! (I expect to publish it later this year.)



Yes.

A bit more about genes from what I've heard. Unlike something like colourblindness, whose cause can be attributed to one gene -> one protein -> one visible effect, there's no direct "social gene" or "executive functioning gene" or "sensory sensitivity gene" that's involved in ASD. Indeed, most of the genes whose mutations might lead to ASD (there are thousands of them...) are not involved directly in neural development. Most of them are actually genes responsible for general cell growth, maintenance, and reproduction. That's probably why autism affects so much more than the brain, as many on this forum can attest.

Welcome to WPea!

you go Mona , good luck with your book !

I'm not writing a book. Raederle has written a book.

ooopppss my mistake sorry .

Welcome to WrongPlanet, as no one ever fits all the criteria so to speak as being an autistic person.

Hello Raederlie, I am new to WrongPlanet. i read your introductory pieces with much interest although dealing with inanimate objects is more my thing (electronics). After reading what you had to say along with the stories of others I am beginning to wonder just how many sub-categories of mind might exist? Perhaps as many as there are people? Looking up the definitions of the of the acronyms (for want of the right word) you gave e.g. INFP there appears to be some if not significant overlap between types. I can imagine a multitude of PhD theses being written in attempts to come up with new sub-categories (and gain academic kudos in the process). What particularly interests me having designed programmable machines are the directions artificial intelligence might take - the algorithmic side. It is a very deep rabbit hole.