How many people do you think R born NT & develop into As

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Last edited by polo6068 on 25 Dec 2012, 1:28 pm, edited 2 times in total.

How do you know you were born NT? It's more likely that it was more obvious after the surgery.

I wasn't born NT, but I was wondering if you could go into more detail about differences you noticed before and after the operation. Very few people on this forum have ever experienced being NT. Without having experienced being both NT and AS, subjective differences would be very difficult to find out about.

Surely it's not Asperger's syndrome if you were not born with it. AS is genetic, (even if there might be some additional environmental cause somewhere contributing).

What you have is a brain injury/change caused by your surgery, which gives you symptoms which mimic Asperger's. There is probably a name for your condition, but I'm pretty sure it isn't Asperger's.

The only other possibility that I can see, is that you were born with AS but were the passive type so it went unnoticed and undiagnosed. There are also some extrovert Aspies. The reason I wonder this, is because people on the autistic spectrum are more likely to have epilepsy which is what you had your surgery for. Then something about the surgery slightly changed your personality and perhaps your traits came more to the fore.

Also, there are four sub types of Asperger's described by Lorna Wing, aloof, passive, active but odd, stilted, and people can veer between types during their life from what I have read. Perhaps you changed from one to the other over time which was coincidental to your surgery but not necessarily caused by it.

no... because it would of shown up in the assessments that I had which were conducted for more than a year,
and had you read everything I wrote I said that I had many friends and behaved just like everyone else
as well I didn't have any slow developmental skills when I was born, practically all people born with Autism have slow development in learning how to walk and talk
I learned to walk within 11 months which is quicker than most NTs it is a mater of fact that I was born an NT so there >:)
Also nice one you didn't even answer the question

Well I was a fairly good student as in I could keep up with what was going on not that I was an exceptional student but after developing AS I had to get an SNA this was when the slow developmental skills started to take place which had I been born with AS they would of occurred within the first few months or years.

I never was alone as a child I always had lots of friends and was perfectly capable of making them and communicating well with them but after 2002 I lost a lot of them because I had become very different some of them even became bullies to me and I was never bullied before.

My first Aspie obession or special interest only emerged at the age of 12 and my way of thinking became much more routine, lateral and structured I also became very reclusive on weekends when I would usually play with my friends I preferred to just be alone in my room, I also became very sensitive to sounds I never had any senory issues in previous years before.

lol I was also very trendy I would wear fashionable clothes as others did but that stopped after I developed AS. As many people with aspergers aren't interested in fashion styles or whatever

even the few friends I had left I would find it difficult to play imaginative games with them but in earlier years I didn't

currently these are the only main ones I can think of if I think of any others which I may I'll get back to you

Interesting.

Have heard stranger stories.

Mama Cass Eliot had some kind of frying pan fall on her head one day. And after that she could sing high notes that she couldnt before. That enabled her to join the Mamas and Papas band - which went on to great fame and fortune in the sixties.

A rail road worker in the 19th centurey had a metal rod shoot through his brain in a demolition accident. After he recovered he the same personn as before- except that his character supposidly changed- and he became an immoral cheat after the injurey to his brain. He started out morally upright- and became immoral because of a brain injurey.

So having your head cut open and your brain fixed might well have made you an aspie when you werent one before.

But to answer your question- I would guess that vanishingly few people aquire aspergers after birth.

No one who is born NT "develops" Aspergers.

So.....the answer is 0.

You're either born with it, or you're not.

I can recall being NT. I was NT right up until I was 4 years old. I have a few brief memories of being under 4, and I felt very NT back then. I remember once when I was 3 at preschool, I was playing with a dolls house with 2 other children, and I just remember interacting normally with them (to the normal 3-year-old level). I even reached all the milestones at the average stages, and in most photos I got of me as a baby I am smiling. I also remember recognising teachers from preschool when I was a bit older, so I must have made eye contact and had their faces in my head since. My mum also remembers me joining in activities with other children like easter egg hunts.

I don't know if that proves that I was NT right up until my first day of school. Maybe I banged my head really hard on the last day of the summer holidays.

Are there any scans of your brain before and after the surgery? This would probably be more revealing than symptoms or changes in your personality and development alone.

I remember the case of an about 40-50 yrs. old man who was extremely violent, a brutal, ruthless thug until he suffered a stroke and from that day on changed dramatically in a totally unexpected way as he became a thoroughly sensible artist. Only the stroke could have caused the change in his personality, so yes, generally I think it would also be possible in your case, depending on the parts affected by the surgery.

AS is a difference in the brain structure and not everybody is born with it. There are also children who develop normally at the beginning until they are toddlers, then regression occurs.

"A significant proportion of children diagnosed with Autistic Spectrum Disorder experience a developmental regression characterized by a loss of previously-acquired skills. This may involve a loss of speech or social responsitivity, but often entails both. ..."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18956241?dopt=Abstract

Not everyone on the spectrum has developmental delays with walking and talking.

I don't know; all the people I met in real life (even I) are "born" with it. Or, to say it better, my mother says I've always shown aspie traits, or did "weird" things, since I was a very little child (for example when I was in kindergarten I didn't like to play with other children and I prefeared playing on my own, when I was 3 I was running around the garden of my house looking for insects, because I was convinced I could put them in a cage and tame them, and I have also been unable to write the letter R until I was 7), though my traits seemed to become more evident when I was 4, that is considered from psychiatrists the age in which AS develops. But my mother thinks I'm born with it. The only autistic person I know in real life that has developed autistic traits later, when as a child was totally normal, is my brother: he could talk, interact tipically with other children, etc. until he was 3. Then he progressively regressed. However, yes, I think that in some VERY RARE cases AS (and autism in general) can be developed, and very few people are not born with it.

whirlingmind,

I'd like to believe that but the evidence says otherwise if I had even been born with as you put it "passive" Aspergers Syndrome I would of still had many difficulties
such as making friends eye contact and all the other symptoms you are familiar with but I didn't have any of them not even the slow developmental skills that usually occur in the early years
and even in hindsight looking back at the way I was I had many friends and was perfectly capable of making them and interacting with them it was only at the age of 12 shortly after the surgey that all the Aspie traits emerged.

I know already that epilepsy and seizures in many cases sometimes are lead to Aspergers such as Daniel Tammet (Aspie savant), so it is certainly possible that it was just some kind of chain reaction from the epilepsy or surgery but it is a matter of fact that before the age of 12 I wasn't in any way autistic as I said the exact same tests were carried out before and after the surgery by the exact same person I was thoroughly assessed for months and undoubtedly the speech and language therapy would of suggested the autism the first time but didn't even passive Aspergers would of shown in the original results but it didn't.
thankyou for your response although you didn't actually answer my question

Last edited by polo6068 on 23 Dec 2012, 1:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Oh I know that but I never showed any other signs at all until the age of 12 few months after the surgery I gave other example in other responses

I definitely wouldn't assume it's impossible. I mean, perhaps AS is caused by some sort of deficiency in a part of the brain that was accidentally damaged during the surgery. I guess, perhaps it doesn't fit the exact criteria for Asperger's as we've come to know it (genetic, born with it, etc.) but if the outcome is the same, then it makes sense. I'm probably one of the least qualified people to make any assumptions about this though, so don't listen to me. My guess would be, less than .1% (1 in 1,000) of Aspies developed the syndrome later in life due to some sort of brain damage.

Does whatever doctor or psychologist who diagnosed you with aspergers know the symptoms started after the surgery? It seems more likely there could be brain damage from the surgery which can look a lot like aspergers/autism. But I don't know maybe it is possible just seems like the fact it was after a surgery would rule out any developmental disorders even if whatever change happened presents like one.