Could I have had brain damage before or during birth?

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This is just a matter of curiosity for me. I have a few traits apart from AS, and just about every time I look them up,"brain damage" is listed.

Here they are:

1. High muscle tone ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertonia), which I had physiotherapy and occupational therapy for as a child.

2. Problems with both gross and fine motor skills. I'm clumsy and my body doesn't always quite do what I want it to. When I'm tired or stressed it feels like the connections between my brain and body aren't working.

3. Poor balance, an impaired sense of where my body is in space, and vestibular hypersensitivity, so that if I'm sitting in a chair and someone tips it even the slightest bit backwards, I feel like I'm falling through space, which causes a wild jerk forward and a "grabbing" motion. It's apparently quite funny to watch.

4. I have the Babinski sign ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantar_re ... _responses ).

5. The left half of my face hardly moves at all when I smile genuinely and involuntarily. It does move when I put on a smile.

6. I had delayed motor skills.

7. I had speech therapy right into my teenage years for articulation problems.

8. I lost speech after I started speaking.

9. I have Asperger's.

10. I have what I'm almost certain are myoclonic seizures, which started a couple of years ago during a period of particularly nasty stress/sleep deprivation, and which now occur under conditions of stress, sleep deprivation and just before my period.

AFAIK, everything except number 10 on that list has been lifelong.

Was there any incidents during or after birth to suggest this?

2 & 3 could be dyspraxia, which is pretty normal for people on the spectrum. When you said you lost speech, was it physical or psychological? I suppose 6, 7 & 8 (if it was psychological) could be related to AS, but I'd think that is more commonly seen in classic autism.

Symptoms can often occur in a lot of different conditions, so it isn't necessarily caused by a brain damage even if it is a symptom of it.

I don't remember; I was very young. The fact that only one point on that list isn't lifelong and that I didn't have any head trauma as a child is suggestive to me.



Yeah, I know that some of them are autism-related.



I was a baby; I don't know. I'd say neurological, because there was nothing physically wrong with my speech organs, and I wasn't under any sort of stress or trauma that would cause psychological speech loss. The same thing happened to my mother, and my brother didn't speak until after the age of 3.



I'd say that 6 and 7 would be related to my general motor skills problems, and I don't know why they would be more common in classic autism, as motor skills problems are very much associated with AS. I agree with you on 8 somewhat. I was diagnosed with Asperger's rather than autism because the guy who diagnosed me thought I'd achieved too much for classic autism. I don't think my communication problems are severe enough to fulfil the criteria for Autistic Disorder. Like many people, I'm probably somewhere in between strict categories.




What are some other conditions that could cause the things I listed?

I know it's possible.

My nephew had a seizure while still in the womb. A good chunk of his brain has no activity.

I think it shows a little in his speech, but otherwise he's normal. The good thing of it happening at that stage is that the brain is still "wiring" itself. So, as he learned and grew, the brain just made pathways through unaffected tissues.

the Babinski and the increased muscle tone are the symptoms of all those listed that are most likely to be due to brain damage. seizures, too, but I don't know why they wouldn't have started sooner.

If your mother and brother also share some of the same symptoms, that would suggest a genetic component, unless all three of you had brain damage in the same area of the brain. Possible, but genetics are more likely.

Do you have sensory issues? For example, the buzz of a malfunctioning fluorescent light? Or, the bothersome smell of chemical cleaners?

Do you stim? I find stimming soothing and centering. Yes, this is an embarrassing topic, and yes, I'm usually successful in limiting this to just in private.

I know poor motor skills isn't uncommon in people with AS, it was just the delay part that seemed somewhat unusual. As with speech, AS people usually have normally developed speech, but yeah, if number seven was a result of your motor problems, it makes it a bit different, I suppose.



I was speaking more in general, to be honest. I guess it kinda depends what you consider a brain damage, because there's a lot of conditions that are caused by some form of imbalance in the brain, without typically being classified as a brain damage. I think brain damage is something one acquire after some sort of incident, normally. My neighbor got too little oxygen when he was born, which they suspect is why he is somewhat mentally challenged. He also has tics.

Have you asked your parents if you have brain damage?

I sometimes feel like I have brain damage because of what I went through as a baby and it affected my brain development so it got wired differently. I also lost speech but that was because I was deaf so there was no point in speaking if I couldn't hear. But I do wonder if NT babies would have stopped speaking too if they got hearing loss. My mom said I stopped completely. I have dealt with seizures but it was due to the medicine I was on when I was in 6th grade so it was like I had epilepsy except it was being caused by my medicine. So I was take off them and put on Depakote to calm my body down and I stopped having them. I was in speech up until I was 12, I was in occupational therapy when I was 11 and 12, I also dealt with poor motor skills and dyspraxia and my mom never gave me therapy for it until I was older. Instead I was in pottery when I was 8 and did gymnastics when I was 5-8 and did voice lessons to help with my speech when I was eight. I asked my mom if I had brain damage and she said I didn't. Symptoms overlap. My husband has brain damage and it also rewired itself and took different pathways. He has had it from birth so it gives him learning problems, he has seizures and anxiety, and it's all caused from it a doctor told him.

I think that's a really interesting question since we don't really know what Autism is or what causes it yet.

My mom had some trauma when she was 3 months pregnant with me and miscarried my twin, so I've always wondered the same thing.

Maybe I don't have Autism, maybe it's brain damage that looks like Autism. Also, there is no Autism in my family that I can think of - sure some people are a little this or a little that, but nothing like me.

I wonder if we will ever find out answers to these questions.