Is autism a sort of inborn lobotomy?

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The purpose of lobotomy is to separate frontal lobe from the rest of the brain. Yes, it also does damage to each of the lobes, but SEPARATING them (as opposed to the damage) is the intended purpose. The reason for this "separation" is that the frontal lobe controls emotions; thus, separating it out will make the person robot-like and, therefore, get rid of the alleged mental illness. Of course, the lobotomy instrument is not "smart"; so, it can't just get rid of "unwanted emotions". Instead, it turns a person into a robot, period, so the person can't feel anything at all, good or bad; all for the purpose of "getting rid" of a bad stuff. Kind of like "throwing baby out with bath water".

Now lets talk about autism. Some researchers speculate that autism is also related to the disconnection between different parts of the brain (as opposed to a delayed development of each individual part). Each part of the brain might well be quite developed, as is evidenced by high IQ as well as often very high abilities in academic and other areas. But, at the same time, social skills are lacking because this is the one area that requires the CONNECTIONS between different parts of the brain, which are missing.

Thus, autism and lobotomy damange have two things in common: both are related to broken connections between various parts of the brain, and, also, both are affecting emotions ("excessive emotions" is what lobotomy is aimed at targetting by severing connections, and emotions is what autistics lack, again due to lack of proper connections between brain parts). So this makes me think: is autism a sort of lobotomy that naturally happens by birth? Or, equivalently, a doctor who performs lobotomy, is he basically trying to make their patient autistic?

...That's one way to put it.

Introducing that theory just makes the old misconception that lobotomies cure schizophrenia that much more bizarre, especially since autism was often misdiagnosed as schizophrenia, and...well, I think you see where I'm going by now.

Can autism cure schizophrenia? o_o

...I have actually wondered about this seriously before. One of my good friends is schizophrenic and the thought had occurred to me that his symptoms would be less severe had he had some autistic traits.

Actually I have wondered about it too. When I was told that being "very logical" is symptom of Asperger, the first thing that occured to me is that it must be "opposite to schizophrenia", since schizophrenics are very irrational. And then, later, when I read that in the past people seemed to relate autism to schizophrenia, I couldn't understand how could they have possibly done it (misconception or not) given that the two are "opposites".

I do see your point that the time they performed lobotomy coincided with the time they related autism to schizophrenia; so you are basically asking me how could they use the former to cure hte latter if they saw them as "the same" rather than "opposites". Well, perhaps back then they haven't figured it out that autistics are "very logical" and they saw them as "irrational" simply because they couldn't understand their point of view. So, ironically enough, it is very possible that they WOULD have tried lobotomy on autistics in order to make them "more rational", not realizing that what they were doing is really making them "even more autistic".

By the way, here is another question that is, in fact, worth asking. Schizophrenia stands for "splitting of the mind". Well, right now people know it is misconception -- schizophrenia has nothing to do with multiple personalities. But, in the past, apparently, they related the two, enough so to make the name reflect this. In this case, why would they "split the mind" EVEN MORE thorugh lobotomy? Wouldn't this imply making a patient "even more schizophrenic"? Perhaps the answer is that they kenw they were not "healing" anything by additional damage; they simply wanted "two wrongs to make it up for right" by the effects of one "split" to block the effects of hte other one. If so, same might be their attitude for autism "we can't cure autism anyway, so lets give the patient one more autism, so that the new autism can block the effects of the old one".

But autistics don't lack emotions. Also, some of us can become "excessively emotional" at times.

The amygdala is quite far from the prefrontal lobe.

Perhaps "close enough for government work" should not apply to brain surgery.

I saw some research recently demonstrating that different parts of the brain handle social thinking in NTs than in people with ASD, so there's definitely some basis for this idea. Exactly which parts are misfiring, however, is something I don't have enough knowledge of neurology to understand. I know I was born oxygen-starved, so there's always the possibility it did some damage.

I once worked with a woman who suffered minor brain damage in a car accident about 6 months after I met her. She kept most functionality, but it dramatically changed her personality. She had been very particular and uptight, but after the accident she was much more laid-back and the way she spoke became extremely blunt. As awful as it sounds, I liked her more after. I found the incident food for thought.

I can't have aspergers then as I do have emotions. Very intense ones sometimes, although I don't always know how to show them, I can feel them. Very much so.

In my brief conversations with (I suspect) people w/ SZ, I've been left with the feeling that psychosis may not be the opposite of logical thought.  It actually seems like too much of it, in a manner of speaking.  The "crazy-talk" would always consist of intricate ideas and theories that would [i]almost[\i] make sense.  The problem didn't seem like logic so much as not terminating certain branching thought processes soon enough, due to considerations of probability.

I.e.  amphetamine, at a sufficient dose will make anyone psychotic.  And, at lower doses  amphetamines seem to rev-up a person's "left-brain"/"rational"/"logical" thought processes. And neuroleptic drugs seem to shut down that kind of thought.  So, if being on neuroleptic drugs is on the left, and amphetamine-amplified thought is on the right,  then psychosis seems even further out on the right.

The usual conception of "logical" doesn't allow for such a thing as "too logical," but perhaps on a neurological level what we think of as "logical thought" requires a balance of brain functions that aren't all about "logic." Sort of like how conspiracy theories are often implausible, but not logically impossible.  

So, perhaps we fool ourselves by thinking that we judge psychotic thought by logic alone.  The sense that something is off seems to arise from feelings about probability, and wariness about stacking too many shaky premises on top of each other (which isn't strictly about logic).

Perhaps like Apple_in_my_ey said, my impression is that schizophrenics are not exactly irrational; the strangeness of the ideias of schizophrenics has more to do with being disconected from reality, not with being irrational (an example of a disconected from reality but perfectly logical reasoning: "my neigbour is in reality a demon who eats human children, then I should not give authgorization to my son to go his home play with his son" - this reasoning is bizarre, but is perfectly logical and rational). In many ways, perhaps the worst bizarre ideias are exactly the "rational" bizarre ideas - when your delusions are integrated in a consistent logical system .

A point - there is some reasons to suspect that mathematical hability and schizophrenia have some genes in common (2 examples - John Nash and the son of Albert Einstein); and indeed mathematics the example of the logical reasoning working almost without inputs from observabable reality. Perhaps there is some connection in that?

I'm not so sure. It's a huge misconception that autistic people don't know how to feel emotion. Read Sean Barron's book for a complete picture. I feel alot of emotion, it's just that I don't express emotion. I often come off as tough and robot-like, but that's not indicative of how I feel. I think there are just as many autistic people on either end of the emotional spectrum. There might be a weakened or reduced corpus callosum, which is the part of the brain that connects the two halves. This would cause a lack of communication between the right and left hemispheres. I'm not sure I'd choose the word lobotomy though.

I don't think you can really say any one thing about schizophrenia because schizophrenia is not a condition, it's a word given to people with lots of conditions that often have absolutely nothing to do with each other (and don't even require psychosis technically for several kinds).

I've seen a lot of different reasons people are diagnosed with it, and sometimes there is something wrong with the logic (in particular, it seems like a tiny little twisty little fault somewhere in their thinking that makes big problems on the whole), sometimes it's just a communication issue, sometimes it's other things entirely.

I posted two articles in another thread the other day with research into the neuroscience - not from an autism perspective but from a brain hemisphere dominance perspective. They many have found the recessive genes that cause alternate brain wiring. They were looking specifically at lateralization but this has vast implications for autism research.

I'm not sure i'm comfortable with the lobotomy analogy. A lobotomy is essentially damaging and permanent a removal of healthy tissue. Autism may not be damage, per se, but faulty wiring. Finding ways to help the brain rewire itself back into a functioning state might be the more - positive - way to look at it.

I guess I just don't see autism as permanent, unchangeable and hopeless. A lobotomy is hopeless.

Well, with AS, HFA, and even some LFA, it seems like the whole brain is there and functional, but it is just sort of remapped! Even some LFA kids can do some remarkable things. It's silly how, if there is something you can't do WELL, people may think you are an idiot, even if you could do almost anything else better. 386DX machines could access about 4GB, and do MANY things, but most O/S were CRIPPLED so you would be lucky if you could use even 2GB. Some only used EDITORS! IMAGINE if someone in 1950 saw JUST that! They might think "NEAT", but THOUSANDS of dollars for THAT!?!?!? FORGET IT! BIG DEAL!

Maybe they only saw a TEXT editor in UNIX! BIG DEAL! TOO COMPLEX! Typing is better!

Show it to their boss, SAME reaction! Show how you can hook dozens of system up, WOW!! I'LL BUY IT! Show how other programs can do things like accounting, they'll think they are in HEAVEN! *****CHEAP***** Show them networking? Well, you get the idea. They never really considered that stuff to be real, never would have asked for it, but it is there.

And as for the 4GB limitation, UNIX didn't have it.

As has already been said earlier in this thead, we with autism do have emotions---the challenge can be in communicating those emotions to others. I have had to write my emotions on paper before because the challenge to discuss my feelings was too awkward. I misread other people's emotions. But I don't agree with it being like a lobotomy---because we with autism do have emotions.

You are sort of right, but you are also sort of wrong. It is likely that autistics usually have somewhat looser integration between emotions and intellect, but the vast majority still have some integration, and we certainly aren't emotionless robots (however, I suspect that most autistics have a considerable reduction of complex social emotions, and don't usually experience mixed emotions simultaneously). In fact, I might have a wider range of emotions than most NTs, because my emotions are part of a larger continuum with "typical" emotions on one end and sensory experiences on the other, and several kinds of phenomena in the middle (closer to the emotional side are "one-off" emotions associated with specific people, places, objects, or situations, and closer to the sensory side are various kinds of meta-sensory phenomena associated with sensory patterns, but there are really no distinct lines separating any of these categories for me).