Why do we believe autism is "hard-wired"?

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b9, if I may ask, what do you find so important about 'true autism'? Do you acknowledge that if there were such a test that it might show you with what may be considered an autism-like condition, an analog? Just curious, as I do not understand.


M.

Harder to be easy topic

Just saw this thread. Already 10 pages.

Autism is difference, not damage, and as for "hard", the brain is not, but the autistic brain is certainly different due to how it processes information. This is no way refutes the plasticity hypothesis. Plasticity refers to learning, not processing. Aspies are great learners and unusual processors of information. We understand in a different way, and this is frowned upon by the NT majority. Guess who is not so plastic.

Last edited by sartresue on 21 Jul 2009, 11:22 am, edited 1 time in total.

i know i am unique and i do not easily accept that others may understand me. i think they are lying to me if they say they can "understand", but not say anything further that makes me believe they do.

but everyone is unique and that includes NT's and animals and... all the way down to single celled organisms .every life that ever lived is unique. uniqueness is infinitely precious to me because it never happened before and it will never happen again.


an example is say my kookaburra friends. there are 8 of them and each one has a distinct personality. i know i will never find another kookaburra in the universe that is the same exact kookaburra with the same look and personality as any of my kookaburra friends.

"uniqueness" is every life's reality, and so "uniqueness" is as common as every life .

(to anyone who thinks i am not aware of the irony of what i just said, i am aware of it so no need to advise me of it)

i am very tired now as it is 2:20 am and i have worked hard all day so my answer may be disappointing.

i just feel very different than other people on AS forums. a lot of them say they were diagnosed at 20 or 30 or 40 etc.

i allow that they may come from countries that have shabby health care systems.

i can not imagine how an autistic person can remain unnoticed for 20 years before they get diagnosed. i was diagnosed as autistic at 3 months old, and that was after 2.5 months of testing. my parents and siblings all saw that i was a non responsive "sack of potatoes" in their arms. they referred me to be assessed for whatever caused me to be physocally flaccid in their arms. they thought it was a muscular problem, but the doctors said i had autism.

so, from the time my consciousness was formed, i was in a world of difference from others.

people who say they wondered when they were 30 whether they were autistic and then they read this site and they then self diagnosed are not extremely credible to me.

also many people who claim they are autistic use buzz words like "dude" and "pwned" etc. i can not see any reason to do that and it seems not truly autistic to me.


i just hope that one day i will meet someone who thinks similarly to me and then i will be astounded and very happy.

there seems to be a "fad" about autism at the moment, and there are many people claiming with very precarious evidence that they are.

maybe the film "rain man" or the stories about silicon valley geeks inspired a multitude of smart(ish) but dysfunctional NT's to all stampede toward the innocuous definition of "autism".

i really have no idea, and my opinion is not important so do not tire yourself trying to get an opinion of worth from me.

thanks for your support about my earlier post.

i really have to go to bed now as the room is warm and the bed is soft i am heavy and i must drop.

All the different forms of diabetes are classed as diabetes wether or not they are genetic or environmental. Although there exists many different groupings that take into account the main "cause", no single cause of diabetes has the name "true diabetes". I'm of the opinion that autism should not be treated any differently. I don't personally believe there is a "true" autism. Autism is merely when certain parts of the brain are not functioning properlly. They may be misfiring, over-functioning, under-functioning... yes, different labels can help us here. But to suggest one of them is more "true" than another seems un-neccesary. Autism is technically itself a loose group of symptoms that several different disorders have. Autism by it's nature cannot be "true" or "singular".

I am trying to understand your perspective, so bear with me if I make errors and please don't leap to offense.

I fall into the category you describe, by and large. For 30 years, I had been given a multitude of labels as doctors, teachers and others tried to define where I fit in... gifted, introverted, distracted, hyperfocused, depressed, asocial, and the list goes on. There were multiple diagnoses, none of which fit. I grew up in the US, but I was already out of high school by the time AS was recognized as a condition and there were people beginning to understand it enough to make a diagnosis. I arrived at the spectrum disorders through the official diagnosis of my son with HFA; it was through trying to understand him that I discovered that I was reading much of what I had gone through. I do not have an official diagnosis, though my doctors have agreed based on the history and examination that it is Occam's Diagnosis, as it were. At this point, I've made a lot of adaptations... I've integrated a lot of speech rhythms and patterns that I've listened to over the years. While I can see the concern relating to a dilution of intent and focus on your condition, it is still challenging to see where why the fact that someone else has a related condition diminishes your sense of self. Please help, if you will - and thank you for the insight.


M.

I thank you most graciously.

I've done a search of the term hard-wired and it is maddeningly over-used.....

Thank you for earlier reply b9. I agree very strongly with your comments about the desirability of physical and determinative tests for the various Autistic disorders.

I think there might be a misunderstanding here.

I was not diagnosed with an Autistic Disorder until my thirties, but I did not remain unnoticed. On the contrary, my peers readily identified me as different, as did teachers and family members.

I was referred to child mental health services at age 9, and my case was accepted for clinical intervention after preliminary observation in the classroom. My understanding was that it was the school who initiated this process.

There was no Asperger 's-Syndrome in the DSM then, and diagnosing_(autism_in) a child who could give seemingly endless, one sided lectures, albeit about one singular topic, was-not-even-a-consideration.

As early as 5 or 6, the same school had referred me to occupational speech therapy services, even though I had precocious vocabulary and grammatical competencies. I suspect the problem was the mono-tonal quality_of_my_speech, which was noticed by others throughout childhood and most usually described as “droning”.

My mother was pretty clueless about child development and my father more so. My elder sister was a chronic crier, and my parents were too busy being relieved at my complete silence to see what they described as exceptional passivity as being a problem. Like you, I did not engage receptive posture when held. There were other indicators.

I enjoy slang in some contexts (although in some contexts I have issues with it). I get the same kind of fun out of these things as I can derive from alliteration, and puns. Some people just enjoy playing around with words.

Also attempting to use the same language as their peers might be viewed by some as necessary to not standing out so much.


Hans Asperger described AS decades before it was included in the DSM and others described it in the interim. Clearly AS existed before it was_routinely diagnosed. How could there not be people who had this condition and were already adults before diagnosis was possible?

Surely, regardless whether or not some people are making unfounded and erroneous claims to having AS, there are people alive today who have always had AS, but were adults before diagnosis of AS occurred?

There are a number of reasons why Autistic Disorders are topical, and this will probably facilitate false identification. The same is true of any condition. When a particular cancer is topical, physicians see an increase in people turning up believing themselves ill with that cancer. But that does not make the cancer go away. No matter how many people wrongly claim to have it, some people will actually have it.

There might be large numbers of adults who mistakenly think they have an Autistic disorder, but there is also a significant number of people who became adults before diagnosis was possible, and they are not magically cured by the mistaken or the faking.


I doubt your opinion is any less important than anyone else's.At any rate, I find reading your posts is an enjoyable way to spend my time.

My parents readily identified me as different from my older brother as soon as I got to the age where I started playing. They noticed that my style of play was nothing like his. Even before that, the way I learned to talk was quite different. While my brother did the normal progression from words to phrases to sentences to paragraphs, I apparently went straight to paragraphs.


Not everyone with Asperger's has noticeably different posture. I know of several here on the forum that have been diagnosed with AS but basically started off as completely normal-looking infants, fully equipped with smiling, eye contact, decent balance, etc. The physical symptoms in some can be rather mild from what I've gathered. It seems to me, b9, that you are judging the validity of an autistic diagnosis simply by projecting your degree and presentation of symptoms. If you ask almost anyone here (and even professionals), they will tell you that autism varies wildly in its presentation, manifestation, and severity from individual to individual.


For someone whose autism seems very pronounced, I could certainly see why you might get this impression. If you are just talking about the people on WP, however, I believe those people are a small minority. Many undiagnosed people come here seeking answers or at the advice of a friend or simply out of curiosity. They had thought they were the only ones in the world that had the problems that they did, and they learn through coming here that there are many others out there that have had very similar experiences. That's a very personal journey, and it's likely that they aren't going to turn around and shout at the world, "Hey, look, world! I have Asperger's!"

I imagine on the forums many of these people seem like normal, high-functioning individuals with no problems whatsoever. The rest of the time, though, may be completely different. Remember that the forum is only provides a tiny glimpse into who we are and how we interact with the world.

Since AS/autism is a grouping of characteristics, if someone has a set of these characteristics and wants to discuss them and share life experiences with others regarding these characteristics, why does it matter if they don't have a diagnosis?

For the record, I don't have a diagnosis, nor do I plan to seek one. Enough events in my childhood lead me to believe that there certainly was a strong possibility I would have been diagnosed as a kid were they doing so back then, but I can't be certain. But then again, even many with official diagnoses aren't certain of it, either.

B9 wrote,

I can...as I have lived in this twilight world til 56 y.o.a.

Firstly, they are noticed.
Then they are overlaid by family similarities and mechanism of adaptation that have been noticed to work. These are the parenting ploys put to the ASD new one by parents who are too caught up in living to know about the finer details of seek and find and advocacy.

Sometimes the new ASD one is gender camouflaged. I have seen such ones shunned by their family when gender is no longer relevant. They suffer, with added burden of secondary mental and physical diseases that ironically, alleviate their isolation.

Reason and an evidence based world of frankness has been my harbour.
Having developed a 'debate ' approach to those who noticed and swiftly rejected or excluded me because of my differences, I gave myself a platform to stay on in common group territory. Not comfortable though, but where work was concerned, allowed me time to prove my worth and earn a living as per the NT way of 'proving your metal'.

I would also add that the parents who did not seek out factual reasons to explain the different child/teenager/adult...was not because they didn't love nor care... it was because they were too traumatised by war, hunger, deprivation and personal grief. Experiences like that take more than a life time to heal and leave little room left for figuring out a jigsaw puzzle that looks OK on the surface.

i am not sure if you are talking to me or michjo (or some even earlier poster). i will answer as if you were talking to me.
i do not get offended ever. and i do not leap to conclusions about things.

i did not describe any "categories" in my post (i thought (and think)).


i was not able to be officially diagnosed until 1994. before 1994 i was diagnosed as "HFA". i was diagnosed AS on the advice of a lawyer who was defending me against some (serious) driving offenses. it was easy, because the doctor got all my historic records and i had a 4 week course of interviews and he was happy to diagnose me with AS. he wanted to continue consultations but all i needed was the diagnosis.


before i was 5, i was thought to be "LFA", but there were reasons (exceptions in my presentation) that i was later diagnosed with HFA.

i was never thought to have any other condition than an autistic based condition.

* i did not suffer depression. i was always "complacent".

* i was not introverted, but my displays of communication were devoid of reciprocality. i was like a "talking machine".

* i was distracted. i was distracted by sensations of mind and body. my attention was not able to be held for more than a few seconds in conversation before i started wondering about irrelevant things that were out of context.

* i was hyperfocused on my own avenues of interrogation that were not related to progress in the human world.

* i was not depressed because i had no deep sensation of failure related to the real world.

* i was asocial (not antisocial) because i had no desire for things i did not understand. also i never needed affection or attention. i rejected it actually if i got it.

so i was not thought to have things like OCD or anxiety disorder or psychosis etc.
i was thought to be clearly autistic in the classical sense.

(however i was aslo diagnosed with ODD as an unrelated condition)



well obviously no one could be diagnosed before 1994, and i was not suggesting that people that are not diagnosed AS until later life are suspect. but AS is only a refinement of the diagnosis of standard autism. i was saying that if you are autistic to a clinically significant degree, then it would seem unlikely that even a general practitioner would miss it all throughout your life.
my concern is that autism is relatively easy to determine in people who have significant autism.

with asperger syndrome, it is very difficult to determine the difference between socially dysfunctional NT's and real AS people.

if there is no underlying predetermined autistic nature of a person who is 30 who suddenly reads about AS and says "yup!! ! that's me dude!! !" then i do not accept their self diagnosis.

that is what i was trying to say. i may be wrong and totally out there, but that is where i am and i talk from where i am.

i was saying that most people in western societies that are sufficiently touched by autism are seen from an early age to be different, and they are not hard to assess as basic autistic. whether it is AS or not requires more money and resources to determine, and so i am not bothered by the lack of AS diagnoses, but i am surprised at the lack of earlier "autistic" diagnoses when they suddenly report they found they are AS.


i hope your son does well in his pursuit through life. you seem like you would be a very smart and well guiding father. that is all i can say about that because i am hopeless at talking about children.



i am not prepared to change the way i want to express myself for any reason in the universe. i will not adopt "styles". if peoples ears can not accept my words, they need to change their ears. my voice is adequate. if they do not want to hear me, i go silent and i do not care at all. they are just lumps of meat as far as i am concerned if they do not like me.




i do not want "focus" on my condition. by "intent"* do you mean "attention"?

the reason i am disappointed is that i have never seen any one who thinks and believes as i do, and if i suddenly find a crowd of people (like this site) who are supposedly like me, and they are as foreign to my heart as NT's are, then i just feel that i am lost in a world where i will never find anyone who is really like me.

all "niches" get filled quickly with pretenders and well.......whatever. i am squeezed out of my own identity by forceful young people who want the territory of my identity for their own. they all coalesce in agreement and they decide i am too "weird" to be "autistic".

i will always be the only one who really understands how i am, and i will always be the only one who cares.

i am happy enough with that, but i would like to see someone who is similar to me before i die.



i was also going to respond to "pandd" and "bunny", but sonia just came to my door and she is not in a well state of mind, so i will respond in 2 days time (if i remember). my gf named "tammy" is coming here tomorrow night and i will not be posting then.

sonia is wanting my attention so i will go for now.

I was writing to you, b9 - sorry for not being more clear, but lack of sleep is beginning to affect my writing style at this point.

As a side note, I also grew up in Alaska... which during the 70s and 80s was remarkably behind in student services [edit] and even more so in diagnostic knowledge. [/edit] My differences were not so staggering, but I did have speech therapy and special classes (some advanced, some remedial) to help me achieve some balance. My depression stems from early loss, and from an acute sense of being out of place without really understanding what the 'place' was to begin with. I do not agree that a practitioner would likely not miss it - depending on adaption (one of my earlier interests was examining other people) and degree, many people go unnoticed and undiagnosed until the situation builds to a crushing point.

You don't have to accept their self diagnosis; just remember that you are also not in a place to debase or negate their beliefs either. Children are a challenge for me; I've always taught high school or older because of the challenges I have dealing with small kids. Don't feel bad, and I too share your hope for him.

The choice of expression has something to do with it; while I remain myself, I've also decided that there are things I want to do (music) that entail a level of involvement that demands that I learn, to adapt. There is nothing wrong with either path, only different results.

There is no one out there who is 'just like you'... have learned that from my own experience, at least. But by looking at aspects or facets instead of wholes, I have found more to relate to in other people.

Take care, and talk more in a couple days.


M.

Last edited by makuranososhi on 23 Jul 2009, 11:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Well, I guess it's a good sign that so many of you are posting that you like yourself just the way you are. It's quite the change from I can't get a girlfriend and I'm in misery.