Is AS possibly something totally different than Clas autism?

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just wondering.
Is it possible that Asperger's is rather unrelated to classical autism? biologically? I read somewhere it could be for some reason but can't remember where/why (I believe they analysed the way people with asperger's and classic autism walk). I admit they share many features but I think it's worth a thought. I also admit that even if these are different things there still could be some overlap in diagnosis and such.
I'm just proposing: what if aspergers is something totally different? I mean it's similar to classical autism, but in the past people said schizophrenia is similar to autism and Asperger's and to the untrained unedjucated eye it in fact IS similar (or rather to educated eye, because I was diagnosed with both and docs are fighting about it, one say it's definitely aspergers the others say definitely schizophrenia. but that's not the point)

my point is, that the whole spectrum thing might be an oversimplification of the whole story and the genetic / biologic story behind aspergers and autism could be two completely different stories.

or whole different "autisms" could exist. like completely different "disorders" could have been wrongly put under the umbrella term of autistic spectrum and there are actually 4 or whatever different kinds of "autism" every and each a different "disorder", which could be a totally seperate thing of its own. but by puting these all under the ASD term they are missing it.

I don't think so. If you look at some people with high-functioning autism and speech delay, they showed traits of classic autism when they were younger, and now show traits of Asperger's. That suggests that the two disorders have the same cause. They're similar enough that they can be diagnosed using almost the same criteria: the only difference is in communication ability and IQ.

You should read "Elijahs Cup."

As for me, I was classically autistic until age 5 1/2, when I acquired speech. I've been Aspergian since then.

I used to lurk this forum as a teenager in the mid 2000's and I remember back then before the release of the DSM-5 (which reclassified Asperger's) people here on wrong planet would speculate about Asperger's being a totally different disorder unique from true Autism. But in recent times we know different.

There is is NO such thing as "Asperger's" - Asperger's is just high functioning autism. The spectrum is broad enough as with any syndrome to go from Bill Gates (really HFA, you can barely tell) to a person with traditional Kanners Autism with no language skills and almost totally disabled.

My problem with that is that Aspies are shooting out of the ground like nothing else but kanners are not. at least that's my impression. tell me it i'm wrong.

Can someone find me statistics about the rise of AS vs. classic autism?

The medical establishment is already ahead of you, dude. This was in the news just last month.

'Autisms' a more appropriate term than 'autism', geneticists say: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/ ... WH20150126

This doesn't mean that Aspergers is something totally different, though--it just makes it one of the autisms.

I think the rise of HFA/AS over LFA is due to the fact that LFA has always been considered a pathology (since you can't exactly ignore a non-verbal 20 year old who is banging his head and isn't toilet trained), but HFA has not because those people were just considered "quirky".

But I also wonder about multiple several autisms. NOT in the sense that AS isn't related to kanner autism. I believe they are absolutely related, but I think about it in similar terms as epilepsy. Epilepsy is an umbrella term for several different conditions. There are different types of seizures and there are different syndromes associated with different combinations/patterns of seizures. They are all epilepsy and all related, but some develop at infancy, some develop much later, some are triggered by light, some are triggered by stress, some cause convulsions, some do not, etc., etc.. I wonder if autism is a bit like that because there is that type of variation within autism.

ETA: Also, the causes of these different types of epilepsy disorders are different. For example, my son has a genetic type of epilepsy, called Dravet Syndrome- the genes have been located- my son has a mutation in the SCN1A gene, which is a characteristic of Dravet Syndrome. But are many different types of epilepsy that are not linked to that mutation at all.

I think there are multiple autisms.

It is a myth that all of Kanner's patients had no language skills. Read the original paper, you'll see for yourself.

http://neurodiversity.com/library_kanner_1943.pdf

I was making a point about the people that are the lowest of the lowest functioning. Those with the most "severe" types of Autism are indeed non verbal and many have co-morbid MR. As difficult as that is to discuss it is the way it is. Of course there are indeed people with Kanner's who have totally normal intelligence that are non verbal and communicate in a "different way" or have no desire to make contact at all - there are still many who have a profound intellectual disability.

I think few people on WP have had the opportunity to spend time with people with profound Autism in the real world - I have. And I am aware of the severe level of disabilities that go along with that.

I couldn't see that in what you wrote.



I'm aware of that.

I just mistakenly thought you meant that "traditional Kanner's autism" always referred to someone with absolutely no speech or language skills -- meaning literally not speaking a single word and having literally no comprehension of any aspect of language. (And I also know that having literally no speech and no comprehension of any aspect of language is the way things are for some autistic people -- well, I should say I assume it because it seems like something that's possible, and not super hard to imagine given that we all start out with literally no comprehension of any aspect of language....when someone is completely nonverbal and can't type, you can only make educated guesses about what goes on in their mind based on their behavior and any nonverbal attempts at communication they may make.)

I think there may be different disorders grouped under autism category, and some of the different disorders may be unrelated to each other. AS is likely to be one of the prototypical forms of autism instead of an unrelated outlier in the autism category. Other disorders like single gene types are likely to be those that are unrelated to other disorders within autism category.

I really hate the short editing window.

Should be:

"when someone is completely nonverbal and can't type , nor sign, nor use a picture-based communication system"

Classic autism or kanner's autism or whatever got associated with low-functioning + intellectual disability, even though most of children in kanner's studies were not. Many children with low-functioning autism have some genetic disorder that manifests in enough symptoms of autism/developmental delays for autism diagnosis, also have severe intellectual disability that also contributes to social/communication/language/functioning delays or lack of, additional symptoms of the genetic disorder that idiopathic autistic children don't have. What they have is not ackshuly classic autism, which ranges much in functioning and intellectual ability.

I don't understand that. I thought that the only difference between Aspies and other high-functioning Autistics is that Aspies never had any language loss-regain or delayed language.

What do you think makes you "Aspergian", not a high-functioning classic Autistic?

Once a high-functioning Autistic is talking, there is no difference between the two, or so they say. It's the past that makes for the difference.

I would say if you have two adults, one with Apergers and the other with classic, and they are both operating at basically the same level, then I don't see as how it would make any difference.

There probably isn't much of a difference.

There is the notion that Aspergians are relatively strong in the verbal realm, relatively weak visual-spatially; whereas people with classic autism are relatively strong visual-spatially and relatively weak in the verbal realm.