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

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Hardwired does not mean, completely inflexible, and utterly unchanging forever after amen.

No one is suggesting, implying, or otherwise indicating anything remotely akin to calling us badly wired robots without prospect of change.

I totally agree. I have not concluded that any AS traits I have are only from life experience. But I have not ruled that out either. I should have mentioned that I am in my 50's and would not have been labeled AS by the school system because of that. I also should have mentioned that my traits are mild, and have diminished with time. I originally forgot to mention that I was advanced a grade at an early age which led to some anxiety which added to the effect.

fiddlerpianist: I wasn't sure who I was directing the post to. I didn't want to have to try and attach names to things I had read catching up on the thread so I just kind spit out some stuff in response to the general trend of the thread. I figured anybody who had read and integrated the things I was responding to would get some kind of gist of it. The second person shifted a couple times by the end of the post, I end up trying to explain the same things to the same posters in multiple threads. When the muse strikes me that I'm in some way translating into written english the language of my own mind I try to let myself go with it to improve my ability to communicate. I'm theoretically a communicative autistic, but I have all kinds of disorders that make it kind of a bizarro communication. I think and speak in metaphor essentially, I have a hard time explicitly directing my thoughts.

What scientific use is autism if you define it as the finger which points versus defining autism as the thing to which the finger points. If you define the conditions as the symptomatic presentation, you end up with multiple disorders that present the same symptoms for different reasons being lumped together, and start giving somebody pills because they usually work on people that present these symptoms even if it has nothing to do with what that pill targets. If you look for underlying causes and ways to cope with whatever the patient specifically wants help coping with, you end up at a more useful scientific result. It is the difference between the aspects of Good Science that should be done inductively and the aspects that should be done deductively, to end up at the most correct conclusion in the most efficient manner.

It is not in the least a stretch to think there should be some sort of physical test which yields a definitive result. It is another thing altogether to consider whether we have anywhere near the level of technology required to carry out that test and understand the result. We do the best with the lab we have, squeeze as many drops of knowledge from it as we can, and then try and build a better lab with the collected knowledge. Keeping a strong eye to always obeying the forms of proper complete rational logical reasoning, repeating tests as often as possible from new directions to keep testing the robustness of our understanding, and keeping in mind the principle of parsimony. Things should be made as simple as possible, and no simpler.

Same goes for why we can't detect signs of this hard wiring, you have to know what you are detecting first, you have to have a device capable of making that detection. You have to actually go try and detect it in people.

Genetic destiny is a myth. DNA just plain does not work that way. Your genetic map is not the description of how you will be period. It is a map of how your cellular structure is going to respond to stimuli. A still incomplete but more useful model of how to look at it follows: You have 'dominant' and 'recessive' genes. A dominant gene is the default state your physiology will develop along. A corresponding recessive gene is any gene that would act on the same aspect of your physiology, but that will only do so if specific stimuli are detected that trigger it into action. Let's say I have the dominant gene that says I will have brown hair. I have three recessive genes that would make my hair blonde black and red respectively if they were not being displaced by the presence of the blonde hair gene. They all give right of way to the dominant blonde gene.

Unless during the first trimester of gestation in the womb, my mother ate ice cream. If she ate chocolate I end up with black hair, if she ate vanilla I get blonde hair, and if she ate strawberry I get red hair. Now consider if instead of being a binary model, how much strawberry she eats and how many strawberry ice cream activated recessives I have dictates how much or how little red my hair has. If she eats a certain amount of just strawberry and vanilla together, I end up with reddish brown hair. How fresh the strawberries and vanilla are dictates how shiny my hair will tend to be.

DNA works more like that, trying to figure out which genes cause what things when the same gene can be sitting there having never been activated in somebody but getting activated in somebody else, and you have no idea how they got activated, is going to take a whole lot of work. So we resort to just finding behaviors and telling people to correct their behaviors. With no real understanding of why they even have these behaviors we are claiming need to be corrected in the first place, all because they are not 'normal'.

The conclusion of the nature versus nurture debate is: Can anybody actually define a difference that is useful to science?

All that is true, but when the genes were expressing themselves in their orgy of epigenesis and the folds were getting deeper in my brain, a sort of feedback connection through the eyes into the amygdala and back out to wherever, that's basic to normal social development, didn't make it. And that essential lack, together with complete unawareness of it, has shaped my life.

I am not yet convinced that autism is hard-wired in the brain, but I am open to proof that it is.

If autism can be identified by CT or fmri brain scans, then that would be all that is needed for a diagnosis.

The belief that autism is hard-wired could be used as an excuse for behaving badly.

I'm not so sure that there is no scientific evidence. There is a home-based programme called "Baby Talk" which is described in a book that is widely available from public libraries. It's an early intervention programme designed to prevent speech delay, you can start from birth. This is one of the few such programmes subjected to a case/control trial and reported in a peer-reviewed journal. The trial found that almost all the children on the programme improved their speech significantly and some substantially so. Anecdotally, I know of several mothers who were concerned that they saw speech delay in their under-twos and saw immediate and continuing improvements on following the programme (and BTW the programme is far from intuitive, regardless of whether you are neurotypical or AS). It's similar to autism intervention programmes such as TEEACCH and DLR/Floortime, except that those are about 6 hours a day instead of 30 minutes. (I don't think case/control trials on either of those have been reported yet, although TEEACCH might have.)

Whether any of these programmes actually change the architecture remains to be seen. I can't quite believe that they wouldn't because if you talk then you are using some part of your brain which will therefore grow and which would not grow if you don't talk. It's not going to switch an autistic type brain into a normal type one, but I do think that is a bit academic - surely the whole point is how we can get on in life, even if our brains are a funny shape.

There are plenty of genetic disorders that cause autism. My question to you, is how do you change someones genetics via psycology or upbringing?

Let's back up a little as we move forward. There is scientific evidence that exposure to information inherently changes the brain architecture. What you know defines who you are. There is scientific evidence that certain humans are born with a genetic structure that via epigenetic force results in a differently structured brain. There is scientific evidence that these different structures that present (and any human can have any combination of the abnormal structure types and have their own unique mutations along with them) can have massive impact on the manner in which those individuals experience stimulus. What you are defines what you know.

A Neurotypical presentation of the facial fusiform area intuitively recognizes faces (even when they aren't really there) and categorizes them for identification. We have terms for specific presentations of an atypical facial fusiform area. If it isn't presenting as one of the general presentations or if there are certain comorbidities present, it is called PDD-NOS or one of the PDD-Specified. AKA we just call that stuff that is atypical that we have not categorized as a behavioral disorder "the autistic spectrum".

My computer via which I am posting this is hard wired. Unless I make specific intervention to change the hard wiring or something inside of it breaks, it continues to operate in the same underlying physical form. The software I run on it can vary greatly. No matter how awesome I am at designing software, I'm never going to figure out a way to teach my computer a program that makes it manifest more RAM. If I were able to plug it into a set of robotics that carried out the automated process of manufacturing RAM, then it could. If you are born without the ability to manifest recognition of faces, you can't just wish it so, you might be able to adapt something else that works as good as that area other people had, but assuming they SHOULD be able to do it IS being used as an excuse for behaving badly. Assuming they should understand how to do it the way you understand how to do it IS being used as an excuse for behaving badly.

The more they yelled and screamed and shouted at me, the harder it was to figure out what they meant. The more they just let me figure it out and make sure I didn't forget about sustenance, the less they need to yell and scream and shout. The less they needed to yell and scream and shout, the more they expected me to be doing. The more they expected me to be doing the more they felt the need to yell and scream and shout.

Silly mothers who think that little timmy LFA is autism have been fighting with the power of insurance companies sanctioning medical professionals who are trying to do Good Science. I hope all of you do every little thing you can to support Universal Health Care Reform you can, in all those small conversations you have with people. Sorry to bleed political in a science thread. About my own personal flavor of normal human.

You don't change the genetics somebody was born with except via radioactive forces and other entropic reactions leading to the decay of integrity within the DNA carriers themselves or via RNA retroviruses. You can change the stimuli they are receiving to help them learn a different way to respond to it before their brain loses the carriers of the ability to adapt to those changes. This is known as epigenetic force.

Doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result, is the clinical definition of insanity. Represented in its most visceral and pure form, we have classic dementia. It is a disorder of the neural pruning process, they way in which knowledge in neurons inside the cellular structure of the brain organize and collate data. An insanity is a lack of ability to apply reason. Reason is the critical thinking aspect of the mind, that which collates and assigns semantic meaning. A mind might become trapped in the reliving of an old memory because it is unable to maintain a cohesive understanding of the difference between the reality you are experiencing and encoding as memory now and the memory you experienced and encoded to memory at some past time.

There is scientific evidence supporting that the key to maintaining neural cohesiveness through late life, is interpersonal relationships. Through meeting humans who match our own difficulties in some way and sharing of our experiences and discussing in a non judgmental way, we are able to help each other be better at whatever we do. Being better at what you do is the ability to take in information that you perceive and apply it to your self. There is scientific evidence supporting that the major way in which your neurology carries out this process, is via the neural pruning process of the grey matter. If you have larger outer white matter white areas of the brain, the same sagittal and connective bridging areas, absolutely different but relatively same interior brain tissues, the grey matter you produce and the way in which you prune it is different.

I'm not sure how much simpler I can make it than that. It is in the blood. We change what is in the blood every day. Why does anybody assume that hard wire means lacking plasticity? My computer is hard wired. I can go buy new components and slip them in. Copper is a Hard Wire with excellent conductivity, I can melt it down and stretch it into threads of whatever diameter I want. My biological neurochemistry is capable of transmitting and reacting to information faster than the most powerful supercomputers on the planet. Too much heat to dissipate transmitting signals across the silicone and copper and gold.

The brain has a processing ability so complex that if you were able to understand how it worked, it wouldn't work that way anymore. One Can Not Contain One, Until One Equals Two. How does a system contain a complete map of itself?

And what if that area of the brain is malfunctioning because of a genetic channelopathy disorder that can be fixed with drugs? Although the gates in the cell-wall are hard-wired to fail, the voltage could be fixed via drugs and/or diet so it would be a little inaccurate to say we are "hard-wired" to be autistic. In such an individual their wiring would be NT, but they'd still be autistic without treatment.

I agree that these things can't be changed via psycological means. I just think the community needs to realise that there are many different forms of autism, some are hard-wired, some aren't.

Autistic explicitly means "the difference is in the wiring" when we identify something that is the issue that is not wiring based, in neuropsychiatry we don't call that issue autism. Autism is the stuff in the wiring. Everything that is not in the wiring is not Autism. That is the way it works out on the frontiers. Old and Busted. New Hotness. Do you want to hang out with a dirty old man with a cigar fetish on a busted couch, or do you want to join the cool kids club where we talk about New synaptic pathways and hormones and nutrients and the Hotness of respiratory health and viral and bacterial infections and the epigenetic affect of chronic inflammation upon autistic wiring and the way that OCD is a reaction to viral infections played out across thousands of chromosomes. A Path Opens Before You, A Rabbit Asks You What Color Pill You Want. Don't worry about bringing along your looking glass, we're through the looking glass now alice.

Are you prepared to confront the truths of metaphysical reality and the nature of man? Are you prepared to open that box and see the infinite states of schrodinger's cat?

But by diagnosing them as PDD-NOS, you diagnose them as autistic. Just because you move OCD out of PDD-NOS, doesn't mean it wasn't still autism because autism is the whole spectrum. Just because you move ADHD out of PDD-NOS, doesn't mean it isn't still autism. Just because you figure out the right drug for one person's presentation and the right therapy for another's to help them deal with things, doesn't mean they weren't all a Pervasive Developmental Disorder, just because you find a specific way to approach it.

The conductivity of the wiring is still a difference and problem with the wiring. It's just a problem that in some cases can be fixed. Such an individual is no less autistic than some who has receptors out of place, or malfunctioning receptors.

I'm not sure what you are saying, receptors are not part of the hard wire?

Receptors are part of the hard-wire. My point is, there are many things that can cause autism. The voltage between the inside and outside of nerve cells not being maintained or not being maintained within a "normal range". The receptors being over-sensitive/under-sensitive/out of place, or the proteins that hold them in place being faulty. The production of neurotransmitters themselves being off or out of place. Proteins that help guide the development of the brain being non-functional/partially functional or missing. Actual physical damage sustained to the brain at young ages of development, autoimmune disorders in which the immune system attacks the brain and/or neurons.

These are all genetically hard-wired, but some of them with drugs, treatment or specific diets could be totally reversed. So to suggest the neurology itself is always hard-wired in autism would be incorrect. As i said, you can't change said neurology via thought or via psycological avenues, but some forms of autism are not neurologically hard-wired as such.

The different forms of ADHD are an example of this, some people have disorders of dopamine receptors; whereas some people with ADHD have hypokalemic sensory overstimulation, which is a channelopathy disorder. People with HSO's wiring is in all the right places, however the voltage of the nerve cells is not being kept within "acceptable" levels.

I may have been mis-interpreting 'hard wired'. To me, it means a solid un-changeable condition. Autism is a physical difference in our brains, and perhaps in our bodies. But a physical difference in the brain can be overcome by various means.

As i was saying, some forms of autism are not hard-wired; whereas other forms are. Psycologically however, it is not possible to cure autism, not even the non-hard-wired versions... although it may be possible with medication/time. Most people in this forum seem to be focused on 100% hard-wired and 100% non-hard-wired, they are failing to see the big picture. Put simply, autism is always neurological and we should all be open to learning more about ourselves instead of making baseless statements.

I do understand that "hard wired" is a confusing and imprecise term. I used it because I have heard it used here quite a bit, even though I wasn't really sure of what it meant. Kind of like "brain architecture."