Brain damage

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I think I have brain damage because I got hit in the head when I was little. I had to go to the hosptial. Later on I dx with learning disability. I think need stem cells treatment because I heard it can regrow parts of the brain. Maybe in the future stem cells will cure brain damage. I talk to a guy on facebook about stem cells because he went to India to get the treatment. I would also want to try neurofeedback and fish oil. Maybe I am mis dx with AS .

yeah, sure you do. AS = brain damage? of course!! Maybe you should tell a doctor

Hans Aspergers made distinctions between cases of AS caused by brain damage and those not.

The ability to detect sarcasm is a sign of a healthy brain, I have a healthy brain

Actually . . . I think there's a fair amount to the brain damage hypothesis. And it's taken me a long time to come round to this view because I always viewed myself as smarter than average. And in some ways I am. When I was a senior in high school in 1981, I got either a 1170 or a 1270 on the old SAT. And this was high enough to get me into the University of Texas even with poor high school grades my last two years.

Well, I have patchy skills, both socially and intellectually. Probably every single human being on the planet has patchy skills, but those of us on the spectrum more patchy than average.

That's quite plausible. I've read several case studies of early childhood brain damage resulting in autistic traits.



Those are all quack treatments, with no research backing them. Hence why that guy had to go to India (which has poorer regulations) to get the treatment.

Stem cell research is being done with some brain disorders, but it's a lot more complicated than most people think, and the research is very preliminary. See, brain tissue is not just some lump of flesh that needs to be in a certain spot. It has a very particular organization, and it needs to be connected the right way. Otherwise, it's just like opening up a broken machine and randomly dropping bits of wire into the broken part.

Neurofeedback is a promising area, but if you do have brain injury, it won't cure that. It can train you to have better control over your thought processes, essentially learning how to meditate. But it affects the activity of those brain areas you have - if something is damaged, neurofeedback won't fix that. And again, a lot more research needs to be done into exactly how to use it properly.

Fish oil is a nutrient important for brain growth. If you are deficient in it, that could cause cognitive issues, and those might be resolved by taking supplements. But if you already have enough fish oil, you'll just pee out the excess. It won't do anything at all.

This is really interesting - I had a serious bang of the head and concussion around age 10-11 and I have always wondered if that contributed to my autistic traits. I have always had them, but they coincidentally seemed to worsen around that age (it was also the age at which a lot of other things happened, so it's not necessarily the case, but I have had concerns about it ever since, as I had the feeling something was different afterwards).

Interesting to learn that Asperger examined this issue and that reports of it caused by brain damage are not uncommon. If anyone has any links about the subject I would be interested to see them.

I had a concussion when I was ten or was it eleven, and my social functioning improved significantly after that. I also had large amounts of vaccines when I was eight, and my communication and language skills took a huge leap from eight to nine. I mean a huge leap up, not down. I improved greatly in language and communication. I guess that the previous rounds of vaccines when I was younger had not contained enough thimerosal to cause the requisite severity of brain damage.

I fell on my head several times when I was both a baby and a little boy.
One time my Dad was using my very light weight to test a swing out when I was about 6 years old. When the swing reached the top of it's arc, the rope suddenly broke, and I wound up landing head- first even though my Dad made a serious effort to catch me.
That and other incidents made me wonder if I actually got brain- damaged, even as my Mom has asked, lately....
Oh, well. I act Autistic, therefore I am Autistic! Simple as that...

The evidence seems to say that vaccinations, with or without thimerosal, are not to blame for Autism.

Does it count as brain damage if you had chronic ear infections as a baby ans then hearing loss due to it so it effected your brain development and now you have a different brain wiring? My mother thinks this is what caused my AS.

If you payed attention to what she was saying she said that thimerosal damaged her brain and made her autism LESS severe. She's joking.

I don't get the joke.

She's being sarcastic. Ganondox, she wasn't saying it made her autism less severe. She's saying that the thimerosal content must have been too low because her autism improved. Not quite the same.

Okay, with suspected concussion, the first thing seems to be to watch and to maybe check with a doctor to make sure it's not something more serious.

The standard treatment for concussion is both physical and cognitive rest. Taking it easy, maybe going to school only half days.

And you want to be careful not to stack concussions, that is, you really don't want to get another concussion before the first has completely healed. This is where a lot of American football players run into trouble. And a good social response might be if starters stand up for other starters.

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The following is a published report from an international conference back in 2008:
http://sportconcussions.com/html/Zurich%20Statement.pdf

And here's another good article from 2010:
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/c ... 3/597.full

What is it with all these head injuries? There may be something to this. Also, I wonder why autism is so much more prevalent in the Silicon Valley where, coincidentally, there used to be a lot of mercury mines.

I split open the front of my head (cracked skull) at age 2. Also, like another person in this thread, had hearing issues due to clogged ears/allergies to everything. The water where I grew up was later found to contain high levels of mercury (think San Jose). My autism supposedly appeared at 7 months, however, according to my mother.

For atypical autism in particular, how much is actually brain damage caused by environmental factors. Maybe some people have mild symptoms and a predisposition, and environmental factors (be it mercury, head injuries, allergies, etc. make it worse). Maybe underdevelopment and damage of normal development can cause similar symptoms.

Last edited by Tyri0n on 30 Nov 2012, 12:15 pm, edited 2 times in total.