If you understood what caused autism.

Post Reply New Topic

Why? It doesn't matter.

I've pretty well pinned down the cause of mine. I've not gotten a scan done on my brain to really be entirely sure this is what's happening, but yeah. I have nonverbal learning disorder, NVLD is basically problems with your right brain hemisphere. It affects a lot of areas of your life, including visual spatial things, sense of direction, but also pretty much the same social problems as ASD. So neurologically, the problem is NVLD, but then psychologists still would diagnose me ASD.

I think there's a lot of people with Aspergers that actually have NVLD. I think Aspergers in general is a really vague diagnosis, and the DSM V is sorta making it more vague. Like I don't see how I'm neurologically much similar to someone who's an extreme visual thinker, for example. It means we have different brain wiring. But it's the same disorder? That doesn't quite mesh well with me. I think what happens with Aspergers, it just lumps a bunch of people into a "we don't know" disorder, ala fibromyalgia, chronic pain, etc. Yeah, there's symptoms going on, and some symptoms are similar, but treatment is much different from patient to patient.

As far as other "causes" I think a lot is nutrition, as far as severity of symptoms. As a kid, I was just as weird, but I had no anxiety/etc, I think mostly because I ate well and had lots of vitamins. Now that I'm getting back on track regarding eating well and vitamins, I feel a lot better. It doesn't make me more or less "Aspie" or whatever, it's just me...better. But I think most people with Aspergers could probably benefit from trying out some nutritional tweaks as far as alleviating at least the anxiety and depression that seems to come comorbid.

Finding this cause shouldn't be too hard (in theory). Maybe I should focus on that some day. Thank you for giving me an idea for a new project!

I think autism is purely genetic. And it leads to different kind of brain compared with neurotypicals. I don't mean the structure or the functions are that much different, but the activity of the neurotransmitters, receptors, enzymes etc are different. This affects the emotional behavior. And it affects the cognitive skills. And love, affection, socializing, even those are mostly based on neurotransmittors and neurobiology.

I simply think that the autistic brain has a very different mix of neurotransmittors, enzymes and receptors concentrations compared to neurotypicals. That explains almost every symtom, I think. So, it should be a mutation in DNA or something similar.

Autism and Asperger's is caused by too many neurons, which is like saying music has too many notes...

If I figured out what caused autism, I'd back up my hypothesis with proof, including biological and chemical studies, so it'd become a well-known and accepted theory and cause. And as a layperson who came up with The Answer, I'd expect to win a MacArthur Genius grant as well as a Nobel Prize in Science. (And the $1.5 million in prize money sure would come in handy too!)

I find this interesting. I would have predicted that left-handedness would have been rare amongst Aspies, since the right-brain is supposed to be the hemisphere primarily impaired in Aspies and the left-hemisphere relatively normal. The impaired right brain has to be dominant among left-handed Aspies. That's odd.

For the record, I'm right-handed. However, I was somewhat ambidextrous (used eating untensils with both hands) preschool. However, I think I was just confused as my mother was left-handed. My mother could not successfully teach me to tie my shoes, my right-handed father had to show me. (My eldest brother, also right-handed, had similar problems learning to tie his shoes and ended up developing his own unique method, which he employs to this day ) Once I hit school and learned to write, I had to go with my right hand -- couldn't write with my left to save my life.

By the way, my left-handed mother and all her siblings were notorious for being hopelessly spatially and directionally-impaired -- couldn't even learn to read maps and didn't just become confused about where in a parking lot they had parked their cars but where the parking lot was located My righthanded eldest brother would have to give her directions on how to get home -- as a 2-year-old toddler I personally witnessed her panic when she got didn't recognize our block entering the subdivision from a new entrance. I could write a book telling you stories, but I'll spare you.

I'd keep it to myself. I wouldn't want the millionaires at Autism Speaks the satisfaction of knowing the cause.