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chook
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31 Dec 2008, 7:13 am

My neice aged 9 was diagnosed with Aspergers twelve months ago. Today she had an Epileptic fit and i was wondering if this has a link with aspergers. up to today she has never had any fits at all. My son 17 also has aspergers and has never had one but i am desperate to know if there is a link or not.



SMARTIE
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31 Dec 2008, 7:37 am

I am not sure whether there is a definate link, but there are others who have aspergers and also suffer from epilepsy.
A good book to read on this subject is "Born on a Blue Day" by Daniel Tammet.
The book details his life with both Epilepsy and Aspergers :wink:


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31 Dec 2008, 7:56 am

ive read and see it in many places that there is a link between ASD and EP, i did a quick search on yahoo and found this:

http://autism.suite101.com/article.cfm/ ... d_epilepsy

so i am guessing there should be lots of info on this out there...



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31 Dec 2008, 8:09 am

Hello. I am autistic and also have epilepsy and migraines. The two (autism/aspergers and epilepsy) more frequently co-ocurr together, much like epilepsy and migraines are more frequent to co-occure together, but the link is not causal. Least, none has been found, no plausible hypothesis far as I've seen. Though untreated seizures could cause a loss of skills sometimes dubbed regression.

Hat they been to a doctor and it been confirmed as epileptic, and has there been more? I believe there has to be two or mroe seizures for it to be considered epilepsy, and doesn't seem to clear from the post but maybe I am just tired.

However EEG can say they don't find anything unusual when seizures are in fact epileptic and it took awhile to find them, especially if they are temporal lobe epilepsy, which can be deeper in the brain i think.

I didn't take medication wheen offered fro a few years because this wasn't found out for sure, and had to deal with a lot of seizures and not even know how to explain to teachers, nurse, etc., especially when writing on forms that I inform them I have a seizure condition but then leave blank that I didn't take medication.

I take medication now; they don't all cause weight gain like I worried (especially since I was quite overweight at the time; I am less so now and on the upper end of a healthy range I think I am okay) though there are other effects to monitor like this one I hae to make sure I drink enough water which I really don't do but I should but it's so hard when I have trouble washing things.

But some people have one epileptic fit and that's all - it doesn't necessarily mean epilepsy. Or they may have multiple fits that look like epilepsy, but really it's not epileptic in nature (which is best determined by if they have a seizure while an EEG is going, or sometimes by a doctor observing them). But if she has multiple ones, or two (and they're epileptic in nature), then a doctor might reccommend medication. I know that some drug side effects can be daunting, so I would reccommend looking up a lot about the tpe of seizures, and the medications that treat those types, and the various side effects and how long they can be expected and alternative medications if one medication is not suitable (also about which medications are first-line or second-line).

Figure out which side effects are the most concerning, and which alternatives would be acceptable side effect-wise (this is if you are going to a neurologist and get to this step, I have no idea), and so can find a balance between what the doctor figures would be effective and what side effects you are most concerned about (though side effects aren't guaranteed to occur, just that it can be a pain having to switch off of meds).

Sometimes that's what you have to do, though, try one out and see if it works and then if not try an alternative. Fortunately, for me my first medication has worked out so far in terms of effectiveness and lack of negative side effects, but different people have different experiences, and so if you go this route you should be prepared.


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31 Dec 2008, 9:49 am

Modern biology has shown that it is possible to induce the symptoms of epilepsy in anyone which includes "healthy" people. For instance an electric shock to the head can cause an epileptic seizure (see ECT) in a person with no history of epilepsy. This observation has blurred the line between non-epileptics and the epileptic population which used to exist.

I am not sure how best to classify the different people in society into the two groups, for some people it is easy to make the choice. A person who has a seizure when there is no external trigger is very likely to be an epileptic while for many other cases it is more difficult to make the choice.

I know that some brains are more prone to epileptic seizure; I suspect that everybody has a different threshold. At the threshold the electrical activity of the brain will change and reduce the number of dimensions, I suspect that this change will be a catastrophic change and that in this regard the brain is a bistable with a lot of hysteresis or a monostable with a time constant of minutes. Once it is placed into the seizure state it will stay there for some time before going back to the normal state.

http://www.asu.edu/research/researchmag ... p24-29.pdf

I have read that during a seizure that the electrical activity of the brain becomes more and more ordered. This suggests that the normal chaotic behaviour of the brain which has many dimensions and is close to impossible to describe using maths is reduced into a more simple regime which can be described with a more simple mathematical expression.

I know that some people end up with a lower threshold as a result of head injury, while some people through some quirk in brain development also end up with a low threshold. I suspect that many of the wrong planet citizens have some quirk of brain anatomy or biochemistry; these quirks are what make us who and what we are. I suspect that a person whose brain is wired very differently to a NT brain could be thought of as having a different CPU to the normal person. One example of a non-NT brain might be one where a larger part is devoted to an image coprocessor, by enlarging the image coprocessor something else may have to be made smaller unless you can get a larger brain.

I think that when the recipe for the brain deviates from the NT brain that as well as autism / aspergers that it is possible that as well as the useful features of having a customised brain we do have a higher risk of some undesirable features such as being prone seizures. Also by increasing things as vision and logic coprocessors we might squeeze out things like the ability to translate thoughts into words.


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Diagnosed under the DSM5 rules with autism spectrum disorder, under DSM4 psychologist said would have been AS (299.80) but I suspect that I am somewhere between 299.80 and 299.00 (Autism) under DSM4.


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31 Dec 2008, 11:20 am

I have epilepsy and I have had my first epileptic seizure in may 1974 which was due to thinking at being considerate to over sensitive neurotypicals that bwing those in my family and perhaps stress from my violent father. I have never grown out of having the seizures and the main triggers now are either photosensitive or having to think at ways of beng considerate to oversensitive neurotypicals who could not care. I think that in this case the neurotypical who is being oversensitive should indeed think twice. :arrow:



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31 Dec 2008, 12:45 pm

I have both Epilepsy and AS. My epilepsy however,I don't believe mine is related to autism. I got a head injury. 33% of people with autism also have epilepsy. But I don't know if that counts AS in there or not.

I have a link somewhere...give me a minute and I will find it... :)


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Last edited by SeizeTheDay on 31 Dec 2008, 1:51 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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31 Dec 2008, 12:51 pm

Quote:
...For example, in classic autism, epilepsy occurs in one third of cases and mental retardation (IQ below the average range) occurs in about three quarters of cases . However, such associated medical conditions are clearly not specific to AS/HFA, and it is AS/HFA-specific features that are under discussion. Epilepsy or mental retardation may be justifiably seen as disabilities. These will require separate examination. But is AS/HFA (which by definition involves no retardation) necessarily a disability?


link



Apparenty, they don't consider autism and AS the same thing in this stat. I asked this question a while ago, then I happened apon this website. They are not for sure how many people have epilepsy because of AS. People can have AS and then develop Epilepsy or be born with both. I guess it can be too hard to tell. :?


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31 Dec 2008, 1:42 pm

SeizeTheDay wrote:
I have both Epilepsy and AS. My epilepsy however, is not related to autism. I got a head injury. 33% of people with autism also have epilepsy. But I don't know if that counts AS in there or not.

I have a link somewhere...give me a minute and I will find it... :)


Yes, I was also going to quote the 1/3 statistic. I am Aspie and experienced petit mal/absence seizures that have resolved. My sister, on the other hand, has juvenile myoclonic epilepsy. She is more NT than me, but I am not sure if she identifies with being AS or not.

Someone also posted earlier about the brain in some people being more suseptible to seizures, and I must agree. Even though my epilepsy has resolved and I no longer take meds, I am prone to muscle jerks and other mini events if I pull an all-nighter, have low blood sugar, or drive past bare trees on a sunny day (flickering light).


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31 Dec 2008, 1:50 pm

Yeah. Same here. Like I said before, I developed Epilepsy after a head injury. But I had always been wondering if that was really the cause or not since it is so hard to tell. The doctors said my Epilepsy could have been 'just below the surface' and the head injuries just flared the seizures up. So there really is no real way of knowing.


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31 Dec 2008, 2:28 pm

chook wrote:
My neice aged 9 was diagnosed with Aspergers twelve months ago. Today she had an Epileptic fit and i was wondering if this has a link with aspergers. up to today she has never had any fits at all. My son 17 also has aspergers and has never had one but i am desperate to know if there is a link or not.


i have a personal theory that asperger's, bipolar disorder and epilepsy are all related.....for a long time i've thought that bipolar episodes are actually long, drawn out seizures, and that seizures are compacted swings in mood (brain chemistry).....perhaps they are in the same family of disorders.

i personally have never had a seizure (that i am aware of), but i do have bipolar disorder. also, if anyone here has read "the idiot" by dostoyevsky (who himself had epilepsy, quite severely), there is a passage where the protagonist is walking the streets of st. petersberg on a summer day and becomes confused, and begins to have feelings that his "ailment" (epilepsy) is about to act up on him. in this passage (which goes on for a few pages) dostoyevsky very clearly describes the experience of an 'aura' (term for feelings that come before some grand mal seizures) and finally the beginning of the seizure itself, before the character loses consciousness completely (his case is quite severe, like the author's). his description of a seizure is remarkably like that of the experience of a cycle of manic-depression (bipolar disorder), just happening in a manner of hours and days (recovery included here) rather than weeks and months as in the case of BP. i found it to be almost eerily similar. anyway, that's what started the theory for me.



Last edited by starvingartist on 01 Jan 2009, 12:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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31 Dec 2008, 8:14 pm

i have seizures. used to be simple absence seizures, now it's tonic-clonic and myoclonic. they don't happen very often. i recently had an mri and eeg and they came back normal. i always kinda figured there's a link; it just makes sense that neurological stuff would intertwine with other neurological stuff.


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31 Dec 2008, 10:42 pm

I have AS and epilepsy, but my epilepsy is also related to a head injury, like a previous poster's.

I'm actually not sure which came first. I really don't think I was born with AS (rather, with the genetic predisposition for it, that it was latent and something triggered it). There are issues I have now that I didn't have as a child and ones I had as a teen that are way worse now.



chook
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01 Jan 2009, 3:12 am

thank you so much to everyone for your input. I shall pass on all this fantastic information to my sister. My neice is to undergo more tests at monash medical, but as it is christmas time we're not sure when this will be. This information will be invaluable.



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01 Jan 2009, 12:05 pm

Good luck. I hope you do find the cause for the seizures! :)


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01 Jan 2009, 12:13 pm

Seizure disorders aren't that common in those with Asperger's; it's mainly in those with Autism (it's a way to differentiate the two disorders).

Naturally, I had chronic seizures as a child which I grew out of. I get migraines now, but they may or may not be related to such (some say migraines are just tension headaches from anxiety).