Neurology of Asperger's - Neurology of Autism

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Can someone please explain what is the exact part of the human brain which is believed to be:

a) Behind Asperger's

b) Behind Autism

c) Behind ADHD - ADD - Hyperactivity

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X-ref: http://www.neurologychannel.com/

It's not that simple. Nobody knows the true answer to that. Everyone finds different parts of the brain involved at different times, meaning it is some combination of different for different people, and less about which part of the brain functions a certain way, but more about how the brain functions. (Also add to that the fact that parts of the brain aren't as well-mapped-out as people think they are from pop neurology.)

The World Needs People With Asperger's Syndrome - Dana Foundation
author: Temple Grandin


... Autopsies of autistic, Asperger’s, and normal brains by Margaret Bauman and her colleagues reveal that in both autism and Asperger’s there is immature development of the cerebellum, amygdala, and hippocampus. Small cells are packed tightly in these immature parts of the brain, signifying true immature development, not damage or atrophy. Brains from people with autism are more immature in hippocampus development than are Asperger’s brains, which may help explain the cognition problems we see in low-functioning autism. The situation is reversed for the amygdala, a part of the brain that processes emotion. Here, the Asperger’s brain is often more abnormal than the autistic brain. Could the more normal hippocampus preserve the cognitive function in Asperger’s, with the less normal amygdala causing the social problems?

Corroboration comes from brain scan studies showing that people with Asperger’s or high-functioning autism process emotional information differently than do normal subjects. The British autism researcher Simon Baron-Cohen has done functional MRI studies indicating that normal people activate the amygdala to judge the expression in another person’s eyes, but people with Asperger’s call on fronto-temporal regions of the brain.

But remember that "immature development" is not the same thing as "developmental delay". After all, infants can do things that adults cannot do--learn a language fluently and without an accent, for example. Having a more "immature" region of the brain is not the same as having simply impaired functioning, like you would have if you'd had a stroke in that region. It's more like a different kind of wiring than a lesion.

There was supposed to be something about connections, wasn't there?

Yeah, something about more short-distance connections, fewer long-distance ones...

i found two sources for neurological information on Asperger brains.

1) www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJd4nLXL9Ug at the 8:30 point of this Q/A video, the speaker (an aspie heading for University to take Psychology, having maintained contacts with professional in the Danish Aspergers clinical and research communities, and who works consulting with parents and organizations overseeing Asperger and Austic children) says the following:
-- the amygdala of Asperger and Autistic people tends to be 10% larger (however immature i suppose)
this gives us more base (before thought) emotion such as anger and fear
-- fewer neurological connections between the all-important amygdala and the frontal lobes (where higher thought is centered)
this makes us less able to (thoughtfully) regulate our base emotions (affecting our lives socially and psychologically)

2) www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FihuEUSLnk Neuroscience imaging the Asperger brain: a video referring to a small organ believed to be involved with our facial recognition. Work on an epilepsy patient inadvertently discovered proof that this organ, the Fusiform Gyrus, does indeed have the sole function of enabling the human brain to recognize facial expressions, and faces in general. When the epileptic surgeon used two electrical probes to over-stimulate the fusiform gyrus the patient immediate said that the surgeon's face had "morphed" unrecognizably, a state which instantly corrected itself when stimulus was removed. The same was true for the surgical assistant's face, and face only. The patient consented to a later test which proved that this gland truly tells us only how to interpret faces.
In Aspergers, facial cues are as much a problem as body language, but this is one step to finding one more clue to another brain organ whose function is likely key to this asperger trait.
Corresponding research report: www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/24/facia ... 10192.html

http://sfari.org/news-and-opinion/blog/ ... in-changes

http://sfari.org/news-and-opinion/viewp ... y-disorder