[HN Gopher] Brain overgrowth dictates autism severity, new resea...
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Brain overgrowth dictates autism severity, new research suggests
Author : jdmark
Score : 72 points
Date : 2024-06-06 12:18 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (medicalxpress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (medicalxpress.com)
| im3w1l wrote:
| So is it in some sense similar to having a brain tumour? Some
| part of the brain is growing too much and depriving others of
| space?
| Rhapso wrote:
| I'm biased to the evolutionary argument that neurodiversity is
| a survival trait in social animals.
|
| This theory, especially if the outcome is effectively random
| bias in cognitive development, would fit that.
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| _> I'm biased to the evolutionary argument that
| neurodiversity is a survival trait in social animals. _
|
| Can you please explain what you mean by this?
| Rhapso wrote:
| https://society5.com/leadership/neurodiversity-evolution/
|
| seems a decent summary
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| But to me that reads like different statement than yours
| of neurodiversity being a survival trait, to which I have
| to disagree.
|
| Being a neurodiverse, or more commonly known "on the
| spectrum", is a guaranteed way to get bullied (or worse)
| by your peers who are not. How is that supposed to help
| with survival?
|
| Some neurodiverse kids and even adults get bullied so
| hard they commit self termination (to avoid using the 's'
| word). That's exactly the opposite of helping with
| survival.
|
| Helping with survival to me means having features that
| help you get accepted by the heard and with finding a
| mate to reproduce, not features that get you shunned and
| outcasted till you end up wirtten off the gene pool.
| hcfman wrote:
| That's a bit simplistic. They might also invent a
| personal computer the income from which very much helps
| them survive.
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| You don't need to invent something that makes you a
| billionaire to survive. Plenty of dumbass people out
| there survive just fine.
|
| Survival to me means having a happy life with friends and
| family and passing your genes on, not being a quirky,
| lonely tech billionaire.
| Rhapso wrote:
| The root misunderstanding is the "social species" part of
| my statement. Neurodiversity benefits the species, so it
| will be selected for as a survival trait for the species,
| even if it is recessive or those who express it never
| reproduce. Those "genetically adjacent" benefit and keep
| the traits alive
|
| If you think survival traits mean being healthy and
| happy, ask Darwin why the evolution of caterpillars
| killed his faith in god.
| Rhapso wrote:
| Like all variation in traits, going beyond 2 standard
| deviations tends to not be beneficial.
|
| We don't get to have variation without also having the
| potential for too much of it.
|
| Welcome to the messy stochastic search algorithm that is
| online approximator for Causal Entropic Force.
| sleepydog wrote:
| I see it more as a survival trait for a population, not
| an individual. An individual does not need to procreate
| for a population to benefit from any trait they may have.
| In that sense, the trait may be a disadvantage for the
| individual, but increase the well-being of the population
| at large. An unimaginative example would be an autistic
| individual whose condition enables them to make a life-
| saving scientific or mathematical breakthrough, but due
| to the same condition ultimately dies alone and
| childless.
| rexpop wrote:
| > Being a neurodiverse, or more commonly known "on the
| spectrum", is a guaranteed way to get bullied (or worse)
| by your peers who are not.
|
| Is it? Hardly. I have been diagnosed, but was never
| bullied. I don't bully my neurodiverse peers, and I think
| new generations are, in some cases, more kind than our
| predecessors in this particular area.
|
| I think unkindness towards neurodiversity is a particular
| facet of particular societies, and not a general aspect
| of the human organism.
| itishappy wrote:
| I feel like this overgeneralizes autism. It's not the
| guaranteed social death sentence you seem to be
| describing. It's a spectrum, and there's more to it than
| social issues.
|
| One aspect you're discounting is obsession. Imagine the
| stereotypical person who knows everything there is to
| know about trains. Now imagine they were born a millennia
| ago and focused instead on the weather or soil or
| logistics or taxes. I can see that being quite valuable,
| not just to the individual, but to society around them!
| Value can drive success (particularly if you obsess about
| it), and success is attractive.
|
| As an extreme example, Elon Musk is autistic. I'm
| positive he got bullied in school, but I'm also sure he
| has more kids than you and me.
| utensil4778 wrote:
| Bullying is not an evolutionary mechanism.
| natpalmer1776 wrote:
| Neurodiversity as an evolutionary survival trait is such a
| beautiful concept I haven't heard before, but it makes so
| much sense!
|
| I think the concept pairs really well with the idea of social
| selection as a derivative of natural selection in which
| social structures create natural divisions in a population's
| gene expression to disfavor traits that don't benefit the
| population even if they benefit the individual.
| emptysongglass wrote:
| We don't need to turn all pathologies into a positive trait
| to be cherished. We see this all too often today with e.g.
| ADHD (from which I suffer).
|
| They are not our superhero abilities and they often come with
| extremely debilitating consequences.
|
| I know many people on the spectrum and they _suffer_.
| Rhapso wrote:
| Oh agreed, but all "positive attributes" are problems at
| extremes.
|
| I think this is similar. Literally everything we
| pathologize around mental health (that isn't a direct
| deficit) is "normal at lower intensities"
| twojacobtwo wrote:
| I also suffer from ADD (non-H type). While I definitely
| acknowledge the validity of your point, having a view of
| the other side of the coin often helps to cope with these
| things. Not just cope, but moreso to keep in mind where we
| might best apply our efforts to have the greatest effect in
| our favor. It certainly helped me to have things reframed
| in such ways.
|
| I think it's more a matter of degrees than a wholesale one
| view vs the other.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| ADD has been renamed inattentive-type ADHD
| rexpop wrote:
| Is there _no_ environment for which you 're fit? Is there
| _no_ circumstance to which you might adapt?
| kylebenzle wrote:
| They are not similar at all really. Autism is correlated to,
| "accelerated formation of neurons"(1) and "an increase in the
| number of neural connections"(2). That partially explains some
| savant-like traits being connected to autism. Outside of that
| John Travolta movie where he got the brain tumor and got super
| smart I don't think people are evolving tumors to increase
| intelligence.
|
| [1] Article [2] https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/in-autism-too-
| many-brain-con...
| sharpshadow wrote:
| I would say no. A tumour is locally and doesn't cover the whole
| brain as they found out that autism is linked to overall more
| brain organelles.
| robwwilliams wrote:
| No. We are far from a "common cause" answer to autism or many
| other neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions.
| pieter_mj wrote:
| Overgrowth is a normal process in the development of the fetal
| brain. It is followed by a reorganization, which means the
| pruning and migration of neurons to the right locations in the
| brain.
| hcfman wrote:
| It's a shame that some media still call this a disease where it
| is clearly not a disadvantage in some contexts for some
| instances. Where's as the words disease doesn't conjure up any
| impressions of upside.
| r_singh wrote:
| What's more is that people aren't sensitive to it. Unsaid
| social rules really make the lives of some of the differently
| abled who have an eye for things the rest of us don't
| difficult. Heart goes out for all those on the spectrum dealing
| with family and social issues
| chrisknyfe wrote:
| that's because unsaid social rules are part of the structures
| that keep rich elites on top, and help them filter out
| "pretenders" to nobility.
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| Yes and no, as in any case to challenge power you'd need a
| rigorous understanding of it, which you can't get if you're
| severely autistic. The greatest works of humanity have been
| made with social co-operation.
| masfuerte wrote:
| And the greatest atrocities of humanity have been made
| with social co-operation.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Isn't that true of all diseases? What is the upside of being
| autistic?
|
| I don't think anyone who was somehow given the choice of autism
| or no autism at birth would choose autism would they?
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| I'm sure the parents of an autistic kid who's nonverbal at
| age 10 and punches himself in the face are comforted online
| when they hear about how discourse around autism downplays
| its advantages.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I'm not sure what your point is. What _are_ its advantages?
| I wasn 't aware of any.
| rvbissell wrote:
| It seems to me that GP was using sarcasm to express
| agreement with your comment.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Very few people are incapable of communication. Mutism is
| neither exclusively nor inherently autistic, and there are
| many other communication options available beyond voice
| (though they'd have to be made available to the child -
| that includes tools, where necessary, and training). Real-
| time spoken language is a complicated skill, and we
| shouldn't require that people master it before their needs
| are respected.
|
| Punching yourself in the face is a sign of unmet needs.
| Sadly, the usual response to something like that is to (1)
| restrain the person, then (2) not try to figure out those
| needs, much less address them. I don't make a habit of
| blaming caregivers, but if an autistic kid's punching
| themself in the face enough for it to count as a character
| trait, there have been significant failures at multiple
| levels.
|
| I'll repeat that. Punching yourself in the face is _not an
| autistic trait_. It 's a caged lion trait. Put an allistic
| kid in the right (wrong) situation, and they'll do the
| same.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _What is the upside of being autistic?_
|
| A strong sense of right and wrong, ability to use the outside
| lens on allistic societal structures, a rich internal
| experience, deep interests that actually give you something
| to talk about other than "the weather" and "the football" and
| gossip.
|
| These can all, of course, be framed as downsides: difficulty
| acting immorally / being a bystander, tendency to confuse
| others in what "should" be formulaic social interactions,
| Theory of Mind(r) Deficit(tm) (#NotPseudoscience), "specific
| and limited interests" / deficit in "small talk" ability.
| squigz wrote:
| > it is clearly not a disadvantage in some contexts for some
| instances
|
| Putting aside that this isn't exactly "clear", you qualified
| this statement with "some" twice - ignoring the vast majority
| of other contexts where it is decidedly not an "advantage"
| sharpshadow wrote:
| This is a phenomenal discovery and treatment could consist of
| both increasing the space for the brain or decreasing the mass of
| the brain.
|
| Would be super cool if there could be found a way to enlarge the
| skull size during growth to have enough space for that special
| autism brains.
| orlp wrote:
| > and treatment could consist of both increasing the space for
| the brain or decreasing the mass of the brain
|
| I'll pass, thanks.
| lmz wrote:
| Or early abortion if it's detectable in utero.
| robwwilliams wrote:
| Sorry, I disagree. This is more a technical PR piece than real
| science.
| zachmu wrote:
| This reminds me of a twitter thread I read a few years ago making
| this prediction:
|
| https://www.tinygnomes.com/qwiki.cgi?mode=previewSynd&uuid=B...
|
| We had already known from autopsies that neural density in
| certain brain regions is much higher among autists.
| derbOac wrote:
| This growth pattern has been documented pretty well? I used to
| teach it in undergrad courses.
|
| Autism spectrum issues are associated with overgrowth and then
| deceleration more than normal. This seems like a
| hyperexperimental version of it. Still interesting and good to
| see corroborating evidence, also useful as a model for therapies
| and other things.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| Th predominant view in the field has been that there is early
| cerebral overgrowth followed by either normalization or
| regression of brain volume in adolescence. However, this
| conclusion is based on cross-sectional comparisons. This means,
| they look at different people at different ages, and make
| inferences on developmental trajectories based on these cross-
| sectional, age-related patterns. While this is often a starting
| point, cross-sectional research can suffer from sampling
| biases.
|
| A huge weakness in autism neuroimaging research is the un-
| representativeness of their samples. Nearly a third of
| individuals with autism have severe intellectual impairments
| (IQ's < 70) yet represent less than 1% of neuroimaging samples.
| Individuals with other immense behavioral, sensory and language
| challenges are also rarely make it through the rigors of
| imaging protocols.
|
| A rare exception has been imaging research that performed brain
| imaging in very young children during natural sleep. and thus
| can hold still enough for quality MRI images to be acquired.
| This has allowed imaging of autistic children aged 2-6 years to
| include autism over a whole range of severities, challenges,
| and intellectual abilities.
|
| This presents a problem though. The research that suggested
| there is brain overgrowth in early childhood sampled from a
| wide range of autism phenotypes and severities, while the
| normalization evidence in adolescents and adults came from
| autistic participants with normal ranged IQs and less severe
| challenges, a clear cross-sectional sampling bias that
| threatens the validity of the overgrowth normalization story.
| Moreover, research indicated that disproportionate brain size
| in autism was associated with slower intellectual improvements
| with development.
|
| I and my colleagues thus hypothesized that the discrepancy
| would be removed if we can follow the same children from
| childhood into adolescence longitudinally. Using a number of
| behavioral techniques and a lots of care and dedication, our
| team managed to acquire brain data in a broad spectrum of
| autism phenotypes and severity levels from early childhood into
| early adolescence.
|
| We reported the results of our study in Biological Psychiatry
| Lee in 2021.
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8089123/ (open
| access).
|
| Our conclusion: Longitudinal evidence does not support the
| notion that early brain overgrowth is followed by volumetric
| regression, at least from early to late childhood.
| robwwilliams wrote:
| Bravo. This is a critique and finding I trust.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| Thank you for the kind words.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| We are also working on IPSC's from the participants in this
| longitudinal sample, using the blood samples we've acquired
| since 2007 or so.
|
| Now if we can just find the grant money to get the DNA
| sequences read for all those samples...
| derbOac wrote:
| Thanks. Nice paper!
| danlugo92 wrote:
| Autism is a mental illness not a physical illness.
| squigz wrote:
| What is the difference, really? Our minds exist in a physical
| state, and our moods/thoughts/reactions/etc are just
| configurations of physical states.
| threecheese wrote:
| And further, these configurations are driven by chemical
| exchanges that are entirely biological in nature, regulated
| by other configurations, and all driven by a combination of
| gene expression, experiences, and the physical environment.
| llamaLord wrote:
| Ummm sorry what? It's been demonstrated more times than I can
| count that Autism has a physiological basis, not a
| psychological one.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| It's not an illness at all- it's a neurodevelopmental disorder.
| Although not well understood, it involves physically measurable
| differences in brain development during childhood like the one
| this post is about, and cannot be treated with things like
| psychotherapy.
| tenacious_tuna wrote:
| For those who's instinctive approach to autism (or other flavors
| of significant neruodivergence) is to treat it as something that
| has inherent tradeoffs, or as something that "obviously" people
| would want to manage or choose to not have when given the option:
| I highly recommend this article [1] and the book written by the
| same author, to recontextualize autism (in specific) and
| neurodiversity (in general) not as things to be managed but as
| forms of diversity in the human expression to be wholly welcomed
| in wider society.
|
| Put differently: Autism is not something to be managed away.
|
| > I don't think anyone who was somehow given the choice of autism
| or no autism at birth would choose autism would they?
|
| I test in the statistically-likely range for autism on multiple
| diagnostic tests, though I don't carry a diagnosis from a
| psychiatric professional, so grain of salt, etc; but I find this
| kind of hypothetical offensive and degrading. It rings so much of
| how we approached queer identities throughout the years: blindly
| assuming that because wider society has difficulty interacting
| with autistic or otherwise neurodivergent people that THOSE
| PEOPLE would prefer to be like those more neurotypical members.
|
| I like my brain. I don't want it to change. I don't want to be
| different. I don't want to be treated as someone suffering some
| condition, or like there's "tradeoffs" in my experience of the
| world that're any more significant or worthy of commentary than
| anyone else's experience of the world.
|
| [1]: https://neuroqueer.com/throw-away-the-masters-tools/
| llamaLord wrote:
| Just be careful with this line of reasoning though please. It's
| already hard enough for people outside of the USA to access
| treatment for things like ADHD when they want to, it doesn't
| help to have a bunch of people walking around saying "it's not
| actually a disadvantage at all... It's REALLY more of a gift".
|
| Without my ADHD meds, I have ZERO ability to actually leverage
| the "gift" part...
| outside415 wrote:
| those ADHD meds are exceptionally addictive and long term
| damaging to your body/heart/mind. be careful.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| I imagine it depends on the meds, but I haven't heard about
| any "exceptionally addictive" ones. Source?
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| There are a ton of different classes of ADHD medications
| that are all very different. The most popular- stimulants
| like adderall and ritalin are probably the most well
| studied psychiatric drugs in history, and not without some
| risk of adverse effects, but overall are quite safe even
| for young kids.
|
| Untreated ADHD itself is far more dangerous than any of the
| medications: high rates of mortality, suicide, addiction,
| job loss, relationship difficulties, car accidents, etc.
|
| There is also some evidence that giving children stimulant
| medications for ADHD can make it less likely that they will
| continue to have ADHD as adults.
| jauer wrote:
| Maybe addictive to people _without_ ADHD...
|
| They are so unaddictive to people with ADHD that
| remembering to take them can be challenging.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I think it has a lot to do with the dose and delivery
| method... if you take massive doses or inject/snort the
| medications like people trying to get high on stimulants,
| the rate at which the drug takes effect causes euphoria,
| which is addicting. There is no euphoria with properly
| taken low dose stimulant medications for ADHD- they
| aren't "enjoyable."
| utensil4778 wrote:
| Partly, but the main effect is simply the different
| neurology. Neurotypical people actually get a kind of
| high from amphetamines, whereas ADHD people just get
| balanced. The drug just has a fundamentally different
| effect on people with ADHD.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that is a myth, and it only appears that
| way because the circumstances are different:
|
| People with ADHD are treated on a very low dose, and
| slowly titrated up which makes you much less likely to
| feel high. People without ADHD that are illegally using
| stimulants aren't getting treated by a doctor, and aren't
| going to slowly titrate up the dose, or take it
| consistently in low doses over a long period of time.
| People with ADHD sometimes do feel a small high or
| euphoria for a short time when they first start a new
| medication.
|
| People without ADHD but using adderall illegally, e.g. as
| a "study drug" are not getting a high or euphoria if they
| consistently use a low dose like an ADHD person.
|
| I have clinically diagnosed ADHD, but even the lowest
| possible dose of adderall makes me extremely high in an
| uncomfortable way and unable to sleep for days. Most
| likely, I also have a liver enzyme mutation that causes
| me to not metabolize amphetamines properly. Ritalin I
| metabolize quickly, and don't feel a high at all.
|
| You can't diagnose ADHD by giving a medication and seeing
| how people respond. Even people with ADHD respond very
| differently to the same medications.
| utensil4778 wrote:
| No, they are not.
| appletrotter wrote:
| It reminds me of the movements that existed to push for the
| non-medication of schizophrenic patients, and to treat them
| as just differently abled. It completely ignores the quality
| of life impacts that these things can have. Obviously
| ADHD/Autism is completely different from schizophrenia, but
| it's the same principle.
| outside415 wrote:
| well said. everything needs to be diagnosed and treated with
| drugs. it is better to persevere with CBT, meditation, and self
| discipline than to cop out to some prescriptive drug regimen
| because neurodivergence is viewed as something a drug company
| can profit of off.
| cogman10 wrote:
| This is not what treatment looks like for autism.
|
| There are cases where drugs might be used, for teens with
| severe emotional problems or kids with seizures (which are
| common in people with autism). However, that's not what
| treatment looks like for everyone (or I dare say most people
| diagnosed with autism).
|
| By and large, treatment for autism is centered around
| therapy. Occupational, food, physical, and behavioral are all
| common treatment routes for someone with autism.
|
| There's no prescription drug regimen for autism.
| threecheese wrote:
| Same, -ish. I do wish I had this knowledge early in life - it's
| been unnecessarily hard. But I think that while "aut-ish" is
| difficult, severe autism has an entirely different impact and
| we must protect these people: a "cure" would have a huge
| positive impact on so many, and in order to have a cure we
| first need to admit there is a disease. I have no problem being
| perceived as "queer" (after all, I've been "weird" or "odd" for
| 40 years, and synonyms can't hurt that much).
|
| I feel almost lucky - sure, life has sucked and I've missed out
| on so much, but I have a few things that really get my juices
| flowing and I feel bad for those who don't. One of those things
| is currently in demand by society, and I am happy to take their
| money in exchange for software that came from my brain.
|
| Edit: thanks for that link, I'd never heard that term and I
| like it.
| simmerup wrote:
| Probably depends on your perspective.
|
| As someone with an autistic niece, it seems very much a
| condition that requires management
| appletrotter wrote:
| I think your ideas around 'tradeoffs' here are very confusing.
|
| Tradeoff is such an intrinsically correct term to use here.
| People with autism/adhd are worse at some tasks, and better at
| others. That's what a tradeoff is.
|
| There are similar discussions around deafness. Deaf people
| often don't like to see their deafness as a disability, but as
| something that defines their culture and experience. That's
| still a tradeoff. You can decide to give your child cochlear
| implants, and integrate them into mainstream schooling - or you
| can opt out of that, and integrate them into the deaf
| community. That's the very definition of a trade off, and it's
| a very valid and difficult question.
|
| The issue I have with your take is that its adoption can reduce
| people's feelings of agency around their way of life. What
| works for you isn't necessarily universal. The idea of a
| tradeoff is that the same decision can have different meaning
| to people in varying contexts. You might suggest that people
| have been conditioned to want to be 'normal,' but that is an
| oversimplification that ignores individuals' agency, and again,
| unique contexts.
| reuben_scratton wrote:
| I have two severely autistic children who cannot talk and who
| need lifelong care. That's the REAL autism, the one Leo Kanner
| identified in 1943. Not the rebranded Aspergers with extra
| rainbows.
|
| I wouldn't wish real autism on my worst enemy.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Yeah, I also have a severely autistic child.
|
| Unfortunately, I feel like the autism community's search for
| acceptance often puts on blinders to such individuals. That
| is particularly frustrating because those vocal about autism
| acceptance often do it while castigating therapy as if it's
| always a horrible thing aimed at hiding their true selves. We
| are working as hard as possible so that our child can
| hopefully advocate for themselves when we are worm food. If
| that means "breaking" their true selves to teach them to
| communicate (speech therapy), or using behavioral therapy to
| get them to brush their teeth (even though they hate
| everything about it), so be it.
|
| I get why the DSM widened the definition, but what it means
| to have severe autism is very different from what it means to
| have mild autism. If my child has deep thoughts, they have
| very little ability to express them.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > If my child has deep thoughts, they have very little
| ability to express them
|
| I'm sympathetic to much of your comment, but the "if" in
| this sentence really made me wince. Seems to me there's a
| lot of evidence that almost everyone with autism (including
| those with very "severe" autism) do indeed have deep
| intelligent thoughts and just can't communicate them (i.e.
| that autism is primarily a sensory disorder rather than a
| cognitive one). The best example I have of this is someone
| who was entirely non-verbal their entire life, but managed
| to write an entire book when taught to communicate via
| pointing at letters on a printed "keyboard" (perhaps
| someone else can find the reference- it was on HN a few
| years ago)
|
| Which also points to something which I think is really key
| to helping those with autism: that often it is not about
| pushing past their boundaries to get them to do things in a
| "normal" way, but about working around them and finding
| other ways for them to engage with the world productively.
|
| That might mean writing instead of speaking. Or using
| mouthwash instead of brushing their teeth. You might well
| have tried all of these kind of things, but if you haven't
| then please consider it!
| CobaltFire wrote:
| As a father of a child in the same situation as yours, who
| has been personally diagnosed with Aspergers:
|
| 100% agree. It's not something you want. I'm completely over
| being polite to the people who spout this "I have the
| symptoms but no diagnosis" line then try to speak about it.
| eslaught wrote:
| I'm reading NeuroTribes by Steve Silberman, and while I'm not
| all the way through, the narrative of there being a "real"
| autism (and specifically as identified by Kranner) is very
| problematic at several levels. First, Kranner hired multiple
| staff who had worked under Asperger and therefore there are
| questions about priority. But putting that aside, Asperger
| was actually aware of the more serious autism cases and
| intentionally hid them to protect his patients from Nazi
| concentration camps (or just straight up murder in their
| "psychiatric" facilities), which in the early days targeted
| many children who would today be diagnosed with autism (with
| horrible consequences, obviously).
|
| Kranner also intentionally set up his referral network to
| filter _out_ the lower end of the spectrum of cases, such
| that he missed what Asperger has correctly identified before
| him: that is, that it 's a spectrum.
|
| Being a spectrum means that there is an extreme end where
| things are really, really difficult. I'm sorry to hear you're
| experiencing that, but that's not to say the spectrum isn't
| real or there hasn't been a battle to get to the point of
| recognizing that it exists.
|
| As to the GP's comments specifically, NeuroTribes provides a
| lot of evidence that searches for autism "cures" have almost
| universally hurt autistic people, and I mean this is a very
| practical, and frankly horrifying, sense, not in the "my
| feelings are being hurt" sense. The piercing irony of a lot
| of these cases was that Kranner's own follow up to some of
| his methods indicated that his own techniques were actually
| making children's lives worse, not better. Some of the
| children who did the best were frankly just left alone---
| which says a lot about what we've done for them.
|
| So, I don't know what the answer is, but I think it's worth
| being at least aware of the history, because a lot of it is
| frankly really dark.
| cogman10 wrote:
| The history of all psychiatry is dark. The problem with
| pointing at the history and saying, "Look at the terrible
| history of autism treatment!" is it often treats all
| current treatments as being equally as horrible as the
| "Let's try and shock the autism out of these kids".
|
| Modern treatment and therapy are not focused on "curing"
| autism. It's pretty much all about building out life
| skills. It doesn't do that by slapping the kids for doing
| the wrong thing.
|
| For example, part of my kid's therapy has been around
| tolerance for brushing teeth. Are you seriously going to
| try and argue that my kid would be better off if they never
| went through that therapy? Even though they can now
| tolerate teeth brushing and even having the dentist poke
| around in their mouth.
|
| Autism is a spectrum and so are the therapies for it.
| Certainly, kids with more mild forms of autism don't need
| as much therapy, but it's really frustrating to see "Look
| at the time a guy tried slapping kids with autism, all
| therapy is this bad".
| o11c wrote:
| > neurodiversity (in general) not as things to be managed but
| as forms of diversity in the human expression to be wholly
| welcomed in wider society.
|
| > Put differently: Autism is not something to be managed away.
|
| That's an abominable take. It only makes sense if you're
| willing to ignore the massive suffering and ongoing trauma.
|
| I'll refrain from explicitly invoking Godwin but the comparison
| is obvious.
| utensil4778 wrote:
| This is a remarkably privileged take.
|
| Maybe you can go about daily life and relationships with no
| major hurdles, but plenty of us have gone though a lifetime of
| suffering to barely scrape through daily life on our own. Even
| more _cannot_ live an independent life and require a caretaker
| _forever_. Some can 't talk, can't feed or dress themselves.
| petercooper wrote:
| Also macrocephaly is significantly more common in autistic people
| than the general population (that is, macrocephaly is a head
| circumference at the 97th percentile or higher, but ~20% of
| autistic people have it).
| SteveNew wrote:
| This essentially can become a blood test for autism, or at least
| to identify babies at risk of autism, right?
| tezza wrote:
| This is the best I could find of the actual paper
|
| _This research has a very small sample size_ (n=31)
|
| Also indicated by the scatter plots too.
|
| From the research: "total of 10 toddlers with ASD and 6 controls
| ... In a 2021 batch, we measured BCOs from 10 ASD and 5
| controls."
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/380876463_Embryonic...
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| lol The sample size in induced pluripotent stem cell research
| is often like this because of how laborious it is, and cutting
| edge. Moroever, while the parent sample is small, it doesn't
| mean that number of samples per individual is small.
|
| I haven't read the paper yet, but if its like what our team is
| doing, we take blood, and turn the cells there into neurons,
| then organoids.
| robwwilliams wrote:
| These summary is just wrong wrt this study:
|
| >"Now that Courchesne and Muotri have established that brain
| overgrowth begins in the womb, they hope to pinpoint its cause,
| in a bid to develop a therapy that might ease intellectual and
| social functioning for those with the condition."
|
| There is a slight difference between "beginning in the womb" snd
| beginning in some odd organoid derived from blood cells.
|
| Autism research imho tends to be flaky and this type of press
| release does not help.
| frithsun wrote:
| I've been trying to tell everybody for decades that my problem is
| that my brain is too damn big, but they all laughed at me!
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