Autistic brains "organised differently" say scient

Post Reply New Topic

While this hardly breaks new ground in research, the reporting is helpful. It's a shame how many professionals in the education field still think of Autism as only a communication disorder, or worse yet, a behavioral disorder. It think it helps them to understand that the brain itself is organized differently and that lack of progress stems from information being taught in an unhelpful manner (primarily verbal). Knowing my son was likely going to be on the spectrum because of my own symptoms and those of my husband, I set about teaching him about social skills, emotional states, and language using videos, computer programs, etc. We then try to generalize things to the real world. This is so much more effective for children with Autism than just fully including them with typical peers and expecting them to adapt.

Perhaps you have strengths in other areas like logic, music or something like that.

I'm visual although I cannot always draw from memory. I can memorise the interior of a building if I've been there once but not as though it's photographic. And sometimes I need to see what I am drawing. I can't work from my imagination alone. So even the visual can have deficits in visual memory.

I'm not very good at logic, math, music or visual skills, but I am good at verbal skills.

It was mentioned in one of the many news articles (not the one you showed).

My strengths mostly aren't visual or verbal either. (Although I do well at some very specific visual and verbal tasks, my main strengths just aren't in those areas and I have no general strengths in those areas.) I do have strengths, just not those.

Yes, because people can tell the structure of their own brain by the way they behave...

It's called empirical evidence... Asking someone is too subjective.

I find the anti-science tone of some of the posts in this thread baffling. Without science, AS would never have been discovered, nor would the Internet that your browsing right now, or the computer your sitting at.

Not blasting science, merely suggesting there might be an easier, more inclusive way to figure out that some autistics are incredibly fond of, say math, than simply mapping their brain. There is a point where science is done for sciences sake and the fact that there are actual living, breathing, functioning human being on the other side of the equation sometimes gets lost. Inclusion is the point. Remembering the human element beneath the science...

While say Autistics brains are organized differently is kind of a "Duh, you just figured that out" thing for us, being able to recognize the differences in an objective manner is very likely to be highly beneficial to us; you don't have to lurk on the site for very long to see the amount of anguish that some of the quacks that think they can rule out a diagnosis of autism or asperger's over a minor point during a brief one time encounter.

Well, there are things YOU experience, etc... that I may never experience, but a couple days ago I watched a medical who done it. The culprit was a social recluse that was VERY smart, mensa member, and seemed very arrogant. He ALSO complained CONSTANTLY about extreme noise from neighboors. He ended up KILLING them, by using a rare heavy metal.

They wouldn't have suspected him, if not for the yelling, and a note he repeated word for word. They couldn't prove it without breaking the law. If I were him, I would claim "fruit of the poisonous tree". Legally, they would have to let me go for lack of evidence. They illegally searched his home, and tested everything and found one bottle of the rare metal. Even if a cop DID trick him into letting her stay there, she had no right to authorize the police to go through his personal belongings. HECK, being there, she could even have planted the evidence.

Anyway, he sounds like he may be AS! They kept saying he killed because of the noise. If only they knew! It could be like a person screaming in a bull horn with feedback inches from a normal persons ear. MAYBE if they realized that, they would see that he really WAS being tortured. If they asked a person to explain, MAYBE they would understand better, and these things affect autistic people whether they are smart or dumb, speak fluently or not at all.

Well they already know autistics can think differently and be exceptionally good in some areas. They're just trying to find out why. Understanding that may lead to treatment that could improve the areas we aren't so good at.

...or at least to convincing people that we're not just complaining about nothing. "What do you mean? I don't hear any humming. You're just imagining it!"

The article generalized and had a very uninclusive tone - I was simply mimicking that. I do support research and I beleive that all autism research should be talking to the population it is intent to cure/assist/treat in order to learn what our concerns, as the population being studied, are. I do not always see alot of that going on in research or in some advocacy.



I've been one of those. Something in my mannerisms causes people to not believe me, especially when it comes to medical/pain complaints. You know that little face chart - point to how much it hurts? I might be pointing to the #8 out of 10 face but because I'm not crying, screaming or otherwise making a scene, they don't believe me. When I insist, I get labelled a trouble makers, a hypochondriac and worse. All it has done is make me distrustful of doctors. Doctors need to listen and take patients seriously even if they don't agree at first glance.

Exactly, it is very unscientific.

I see both sides of this issue. I'm glad the scientific community is finally starting to get some things, but I agree that they should be talking with the people who are actually affected. We're living with our issues RIGHT NOW and need solutions as soon as possible. I think the scientific community forgets that a lot of times. If there was a way to work together between the two sides, we could probably get a lot done in a very short amount of time.

Which is why the dx process involves... asking lots and lots of questions both of the patient and the parents, friends, teachers...

The dx needs more hard science, the hard science needs to account for more empirical evidence.

Again - simply towing the line for a balance here and somehow its being taken as some sort of hard line against science...

A grant from Autism Speaks helped fund this research. It goes to show that the funding Autism Speaks provides, supports research that might lead to better educational methods for the unique way that Autistic people think. This research seems to support the ideology of neurodiversity.

I wonder how much more of this type of research Autism Speaks funds?

Beyond the negative aspects of Autism Speaks, it looks like they are doing something good here.

In the future, if anyone is interested to know who funds the studies, there is usually a tab that indicates this, along with the tab for the article abstract.