New ASD subgroup

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a very interesting topic! i did a very little bit of brief reading about it on this blog.
it is an interesting read. The reason i mention it is because under the heading "The Hypo-Functioning Amygdala Theory" is something i have been thinking about myself recently. i feel that i over emphasise social cues. this is what leads to my awkward response to social situations and not the fact that i have no clue. TBH it is difficult to say for sure as my innate TOM is really rather basic.

I will read more as it is a really interesting topic and an intense world where i notice things that others do not is something i always realised even before i knew i was autistic.

It is really also fascinating how so many of our own accounts are being validified. To me it suggest some credence should be given to anecdotal evidence such as the insights we might have about ourselves.

I understand that you presented your idea about a new sub-group on the autistic spectrum as a possibility/question. But your reliance on the IWS as a basis for this seems unfounded. (Again, the theory itself purports to provide a unifying explanation of the entire autistic spectrum including autistic disorder, Asperger’s syndrome, Rett’s syndrome, disintegrative disorder, and pervasive developmental disorder (PDD) not otherwise specified.) Central to your idea is your contention that IWS "does not require mind blindness or lack of theory of mind". Where did this notion come from? Did you bother to read the paper and note that a subsection is devoted to this very topic?



A rather silly question given the challenging nature of the message to which you are replying .



Are you again referring to the lack of mind-blindness and theory of mind? This is not part of IWS theory.



To which theories are you referring? Could you provide links. There are other autism theories that don't suggest a hypo-functioning amygdala.

Hi wildgrape,

Thanks for your challenges. You are contributing a lot.

Unfortunately I don't have the time now to recolect the links of everything I have been reading, but I understand there must be a lot of theories and researches around.

I think what motivated me to do this questioning is the HUGE variance of capabilities of intellectual and other aptitudes, a variance much higher than the one presented by NT's. Overexcitability and high sensitive are things associated with "giftedness" (despite the side effect), and therefore I would expect a much bigger portion of "gifted" in the population from the spectrum if IWS explains autism, while in fact it is a quite small portion, even considering only a "high performance" group as AS.

Did you get what is bothering me?

Arroyo,

I do understand what is bothering you, and I share your interest. Differences within the "spectrum" are so pronounced (and sometimes diametrically opposite), that it seems natural to question whether or not shared genetic and neurological roots exist across the spectrum. Prominent autism researchers also question this, as nothing definitive has yet been established. Personally, I suspect that there is at least a common "thread" of some sort.

The IWS is indeed intriguing, although it has yet to be fleshed out to any extent. PERHAPS it and related theories will eventually be synthesized to reach an understanding of the neurological underpinnings of autism. It appears, however, that you are reading things into IWS that are not there. Here is another interesting theory, pertaining to mirror neurons.

http://cbc.ucsd.edu/pdf/brokenmirrors_asd.pdf

The amount of psycho-babble generated on the topic of giftedness has deterred me from even a cursory examination of it. If you can recommend any useful, rigorous peer-reviewed papers on the subject, I would be interested in reading them.

Great article!!

Very easy to understand, and fact-based.
The only remarks I have is that the examples they give are always related to classical autism, severe. I don't present half of those symptoms. And the theory of salience seems to me as unnatural as the theory of mind. I like more the IWS version.

On giftedness, me too, I never found any fact-based good material.

IWS seems to me to be just another name for HSP (Highly Sensitive Person).

I agree that it is easy to surmise that IWS could possibly provide an explanation for HSP. HSP is a description of observed traits, though, whereas IWS is an attempt to explain traits (autism) from a neurological viewpoint. A number of posts on this thread are perhaps misleading in that they appear to consider IWS a diagnosis or description of traits, which it is not.

I spent the weekend thinking about mirror neurons. Well, if someone close to me Yawns, so do I, if I see on the movies something physical happening to someone, I can "feel the pain", I have no problem to understand metaphors, and, in fact, when child I loved to create metaphors. I don't have no idea of that others think, quite the opposite, I think on too many possibilities and cannot decide for one.

So, on what they describe as functions of mirror neurons, I don't really think I have a problem. However, I present really a lot of characteristics associated to ASD, from executive dysfunction to hypersensitivity to flexible joints, and the IWS definitely holds for me.

I was reading yesterday about genetics, and found out there is an association between genes for proteins that promote membrane and synaptic stability on neurons, and Asperger's. Those proteins are involved in the plasticity of neuronal connections. Just like in the IWS theory. Then, assuming that findings from other theories around autism were not wrong, I came up with an hypotetical example:

Let's imagine that Baron Cohen is right and, for simplification, an Autist is a super male. On this hypotetical example, extremely high levels of utter testosterone around 8 weeks from conception will make the brain too much "male", and you will have a classical Autist. Now, we have a fetus with the gene of super-plastic neurons. For that fetus, a SMALL increase in the utter testosterone levels around week 8 will have a much bigger impact on his brain than in the brain of an NT. That child will have hypersensitivity, and will also present lots of the characteristics of the classical Autist, but not all, as the impact of + testosterone + hypersensitivity is not exactly the same as +++ testosterone. And that second type will be more common among the population with hypersensitivity than the first on the whole population, as +testosterone is more common than +++ testosterone. And the actual level of testosterone might define how much of treats that person gets.

As, untill now, no one single fact determines ASD, I believe that different combinations of treats might arrise from a different set of autism-contributing factors, with distinct mechanisms causing the traits. ASD is a collection of small disorders that can interact and amplify each other, and, based on what are the main sub-disorders determining the ASD, we could have subgroups, clusters of combinations of traits, severities and causes.

Ah, one more to add:
This weekend I also read about Fribromialgya. I really match with those symptoms.... For me, Fibromialgya looks like an old classification that ASD's would get if they did not present the classical cognitive symptoms of Autism.

Ah, answering to Aimless, I am -NT- on Meyers Briggs. So, no INFP.
The "-"s depend on when I do the test... Those always get very low scores, so I say I am in the middle.

Asperger is not overexcitabilities. Some aspies trait do resemble overexcitabilitie, but that's don't mean it is.

Intellectual overexcitabilitie is not the same thing as aspies interests. Aspies interests are more specialised. They can be mix of intellecftual overexcitabilitie and aspie interests in one person, but they not the same.

Sensual overexcitabilitie do have some resemblance to sensory disfunction. But contrary to sensory disfunctions, sensual overexcitabilities don't mean the presence of some hyposensivities.


If you got a naturaly good theory of mind and good empathy, it's mean you're not autist. Executive dysfunction can be caused by ADD/ADHD, or posssibly even giftedness: http://eideneurolearningblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/cognition-without-control-adhd-gifted.html

Also, if you want informations about giftedness: http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/browse_by_topic_articles.aspx

@Arroyo:

Overexcitability is basically equal to IWS. The probably have the same neurological origin. Studies made confrontating Gifted people and Autistic people have shown many neurological analogies.

If you have only overexcitability and an IQ>130, you are simply gifted. Then if we want to include giftedness as an autism subgroup... could be right actually.

http://www.wrongplanet.net/posts114536-start19.html

Great, now we are talking!

It's amazing how most things written on "giftedness" are BS. The number of children some 180-IQ guys from San Francisco from the 1900's had by 1950 will not teach me anything on the subject.

I think I know far many more "gifted" people that have autistic traits than that don't. Maybe the brains of a Kanner and a gifted are very different, but I think both might have something in common, that enables the ASD traits to appear. If IWS is the same as overexcitability, either "Gifted" is a subgroup of ASD spectrum, or there are two very different groups currently in the ASD spectrum, those that fit IWS, and those that not (and probably are the opposite).

From myself, I cannot say I have "normal" empathy. I do have problems on behaving in social situations, far from normal, but slightly less than what most psychs would require to classify me into Asperger's.

Gifted usually got some social problems from being "differents"

http://www.giftedhaven.net/forum/showthread.php?tid=1203

http://www.giftedhaven.net/forum/showthread.php?tid=1032

Your hypothesis here could well turn out to be accurate. It will be interesting to learn if a common factor/thread exists. If so, it appears to me that various theories may need to synthesized in order to come up with the single coherent neurological explanation of autism. The Broken Mirrors theory, for example, presents findings that constitute compelling evidence that many of the social difficulties experienced by autists are caused by a dysfunctional mirror neuron system. But what is the cause of this dysfunction? And, of course, social deficits are only one aspect of autism and for you, personally, they are not the most important component.



IWS is a hypothesis proposing that "hyper-functioning in different brain regions cause hyper-perception, hyper-attention, and hyper-memory that could potentially explain the full spectrum of symptoms in autism". How you can reduce IWS to mere over-exitability, and then state this as a fact, is beyond my comprehension.



Could you please provide links to (or references for) these studies. Without naming names, I do believe that a number of truly brilliant and successful people have autistic neurology.



Since there are hundreds of thousands of parents convinced, or desperate to be convinced, that their child is "gifted", the field of giftedness is very lucrative and attracts numerous self-proclaimed experts and other quacks. Who came up with this extraordinarily simplistic definition, and why do you accept it?

....Fibromyalgia? Really?
You seem to have problems with over-identifying/over-generalizing conditions.
"The defining symptoms of fibromyalgia are chronic, widespread pain, fatigue, and heightened pain in response to pressure (allodynia)."
Fibromyalgia translates, literally, to mean muscle and tissue pain.
When they decided this was not vague enough, they added a number of other symptoms and called it fibromyalgia syndrome, which seems silly because if the thing is called fibromyalgia, but there is no muscle/tissue pain, wtf is the point of calling it fibromyalgia?
The related cognitive issues that you are likely seeing to the exclusion of the primary traits are experienced by 'many' - not 'all'. It's also a controversial dx as it seems to be a catch-all for a whole bunch of crap and doesn't have reliable diagnostic testing.
(basic info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibromyalgia)

Many conditions can cause general cognitive issues that can have much in common with AS. It is their defining characteristics that you should be focusing on.