Kiriana Kowsage featured in Psychology Today magazine

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The "Met" gene is a development of the cortex and cerebellum, I can tell you 3 other thing's that can effect that part of the brain without the met problem... They throwing junk out that they just come across...

" Not autism it's a link to autism - NAS Are commenting on these researchers....

" Lack of proof - Not enough research - only 1 lab doing the test - 1225 people autistic and not - that is not much to go on, jumping to Conclusions" Not everyone has this problem with the met gene...

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They don't know what autism is linked to or they would know about autism - just cold fusion at room temp researchers been let lose....
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This MET receptor tyrosine kinase gene codes for a protein that relays signals that turn on a cell’s internal machinery and is known to play a key role in both normal and abnormal development, such as cancer metastases (hence its name). Levitt’s group and others had earlier found that impairing the receptor’s signaling interferes with neuron migration and disrupts neuronal growth in the cortex and similarly shrinks the cerebellum — abnormalities also seen in autism.
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Let me put it this way if you let these researchers win -- if you let them lose bbc have a link of them wanting to stop autism people from having kids at later ages...

http://search.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/search/ ... go&uri=%2F

logitechdog, you missed my point. The Met gene was just one little example and was definitely not the point of my post. I was trying to explain that only one chromosome out of 46 differs from the male to female genome. It is very unlikely that all, or even any, of the genes that are involved in autism are on the sex chromosomes. It is far more likely that the genes are on chromosomes that both males and females have.

It's nice to read about a female. I think it could be part of why I've gone unoticed. I don't think I really hide anything or consciously pretend to be normal, but perhaps it's because submissiveness is more expected in girls. People who know me just think I'm very shy, and probably wouldn't think anything unusual of me unless I let them get to know me. So, actually maybe I really do hide some traits people otherwise would notice if I let them see the real me.

Some things I could relate to in the article were having to turn the volume up when watching a movie to understand the dialouge. I have to do this sometimes because sometimes conversations sound like jiberish to me, and I have to concentrate hard sometimes in order to understand what's going on in the movie. Yeah, I think I probably have some auditory processing problems.

Also her contentment to be alone, and never really feeling lonely. I have felt this way as long as I can remember.

Finally, saying I love you. I don't think I have said "I love you" to my family even once, even though I really do love them very much. I've also had problems saying please and thank you. It seems so easy for everyone else, but such an effort for me. I don't intend to be rude either by not doing it. Maybe that has something to do with AS as well.

Ok, then I guess that's another difference. I've lived my whole life not knowing too. In the story, she's 24 and was diagnosed at 19. I'm 27 and was just diagnosed this year.

However, you can actually think of yourself as being lucky to have been undiagnosed. Just because I wasn't diagnosed with Asperger's doesn't mean that anyone thought I was normal and OK. It just meant that they decided to label me with things like OCD, Dissociative Disorder NOS, Social Anxiety Disorder, etc, etc. And then they drugged me up to try to "fix" all those different disorders with medications that only made me worse. I spent a couple of years in my teens in and out of mental hospitals. Not exactly "lucky."

I don't see the label, or diagnosis as lucky. If I did, I would go for it ASAP! I see the fact that you know what you have, what to expect/look out for, and know that you are not alone! BTW I am 43! If I knew about AS when I was 3, or even 27, my life would be VERY different. NOT because of the label, but because I would not have changed so much, would not have done things I did, would have done things I never did, and would EVEN have known what to look for to see if I could develop good and lasting friendships.

BTW I NEVER liked psychiatrists/psychologists. The idea of someone giving arbitrary labels, etc... to peoples feelings, giving out drugs that merely MASK symptoms, etc... just doesn't seem right. For ONCE I see a purpose for them.

Steve

The article seemed to me, to be condescending in tone. Perhaps that's the way they always write?? Could barely stand to read it.

Yeah, well, they are writing for the middle of the bell curve.

This article is very well done.

Yes, the amount of DNA that differs between the sexes is a small fraction of the entire genome. However, the effect of that change is magnified by affecting the way lots of other genes are turned on or off, both directly or through hormones. For instance, not nearly all genes that are involved in building muscle are found on the sex chromosomes (I don't know the exact percentage off the top of my head), yet I think that everyone will agree that the average male has more muscle mass than the average female.

All available evidence suggests that autism spectrum "disorders" are due to multiple genes, so it is certainly imaginable that the effects of the primary genes would be influenced by context (such as hormone levels and/or genes on the sex chromosomes).

I agree. In a nut shell, I would say I benefit from my condition way more than I suffer from it. I think we should all agree that we are evolved, or hybrid, rather than suffering from some disorder that most NT's don't have a clue about, so when they hear the phrase asperger's, or autism, they start in with the "hi buddy! Do you need some help?" or worse, assuming that an AS lives in a group home, or is mentally ill.

They have not even finished mapping the Y chromosome or other stuff just sound's stupid to focus in 1 area even if your doing it for autism, I am starting to think they do this just to get the funding or something in the research * As the stick autism on it * .... Should take it back They said it was a Junk Yard chromosome...

http://www.hhmi.org/news/page5.html

http://www.hhmi.org/news/page5a.html (Y map animation)

Just thought ill paste this from another place since it backs up my theory of why I am interested in it... & why I don't trust the micro research teams out they...

http://www.hhmi.org/cgi-bin/scientist_s ... &x=24&y=15 They rsearch on autism...

I have no criticism of Kiriana. I enjoyed the article about her and her contribution to the video on aspergers for college professors.

I was very quiet and shy in elementary school. I spent most of my time looking out the window and daydreaming. Only after school did I get excited when I went to the library. I became totally immersed in trains, dinosaurs and vegetation. By sixth grade I was taking out a dozen books at a time in my areas of interest. In the Catholic school where I went I was taught to learn by rote in a sing song fashion and use it even today when learning a new subject. I was bullied and menaced throughout grade school and hate it and catholic education. My teachers felt I was odd because I wouldn't stand on line and open my pants to allow a doctor to examine me. They thought I was strange because I wouldn't go in to learn to swim where half the boys were naked and I wouldn't get naked, speak or even look at the other boys. By 8th grade when I was put in a group of kids I didn't know or trust I refused to participate in what they did or even talk.

In high school I was even more timid, and bullied and menaced regularly. I was afraid to even use the bathroom as there were no doors and boys gathered where I went and made rude comments about me.

I was totally clumsy in metal, print and wood shop. I carved through a cherry dish I was making. I didn't apply enough oil to a piece of metal I was lathing and it broke apart, shot off the lathe and almost killed someone,

I enjoyed two english classes and business law as at least it was grounded by sound logical principles.

I got so frustrated with high school that I used to cut classes and walk outside to a clearing in the woods to read aloud and commit the subject at hand to memory. I read history, geography, classical literature, business law, and dictionaries and encyclopedias. Actually I made a fort for myself near my house when I was about eight and sat in it after school reading the enclclopedias my mother got for me.

I passed high school not because I was such a good student as because I scored very high on the standardized tests required by New York State for graduation.

I was befriended by a tough girl on my bus who protected me from the bullies. After school she got me a job with her and involved me in her social scene. Everyone of her friends were homosexuals it turned out who hung out in bars. They assumed I was a homosexual which I wasn't and when two of them volunteered to take me home one night on man anally raped me and I still bear the scar of it, a fistula in ano, inside.

I became increasingly unhappy and cynical about people's motives. To me there were only the bullies, the victims, and everybody else who watched and did nothing. I cannot get over this feeling of resentment even after forty or more years.

When I was in grade school I was sent with my mother to see a psychiatrist once in 1956. I don't know what he found or even what he was looking for. In 1960 I was committed to the local state hospital because I refused to go to school because of an embarassing toileting accident precipitated by bullying which I never told anybody about. After being brutalized by rough nurses and injected antipsychotics I was transferred to a Catholic hospital for several months. I didn't like the psychiatrist or the staff and was deathly afraid of them. I said nothing to any of them and they concluded I had a conduct disorder and needed military school. In 1968 I was committed to the state hospital because I called the ambulance service and said I was tripping out on a psychedelic drug which I wasn't. I tried some drugs before but they gave me headaches or forced me into closets to hide from everybody. I went through the rough nurse and injections and was held there until I was transferred to a private psychiatric hospital nearby where I stayed for about four months. The doctor always wanted to have his nurse in therapy sessions and they always wanted me to talk about my sex life which I refused to do. I became very private and reticent to share my thoughts and feelings after that.

My mother died of cancer in 1970 when I was deliberately out of state. When I returned I was a guilty, extremely anxious and depressed person with no one to talk to not even my father or sister with whom I lived.

I drank excessively for a time but it made me very sick. I traveled to California to revisit the friend I visited before my mother died but everything was different and he wanted nothing to do with me. I picked up a hitchhiker in Arizona, a lost broken man who didn't know it yet and had a transformative experience. I didn't want to end up like him so I decided to go to college. I had tried for one semester at the same place and felt estranged and confused. I made no friends even with teachers and I failed every subject. When I returned to college the college placement recognized that I was troubled and got me connected with New York Vocational Rehabilitation. I completed Dutchess Community College with highest honors and it was suggested that I should try to get into Vassar. I got the interviewer interested in my new pet project in sociology and I was so enthusiastic and anxious that I interviewed her for over an hour. I learned from a mutual friend that she was so impressed with the interview that I was accepted immediately and Vocational Rehabilitation paid. I found early that I couldn't handle regular classes with little personal attention so I designed an independent major called The Scientific Study of Religion which was mentored by three professors: Misters Mamiya, Flad, and Lowry. I spent most of my time from then on at the Library, Computer Lab, and the Cartography lab even in the wee hours of the morning thanks to key privileges. I was always alone without any friends. The only talking I did was about my research and I could go on and on about it. But I graduated with highest honors.

After about seven years of having only marginal or short term jobs in computer sales, and market research I and a nonintimate female friend who I lived with moved to Texas where I got onto Texas Vocational Rehabilitation and placed in a associate degree nursing program which I did not complete. I had no friends there. My instructors disdained me and wrote very detrimental things about my performance. I took straight As in all my science classes and could commit to memory large bodies of information, but I couldn't ever get clinical performance right. I had one patient fall on me as I tried to move her from bed to chair. I wrapped my arm into a dressing I was redoing for a diabetic patient and I couldn't get it out without help. And I got caught in an intravenous secondary line I was hanging and couldn't get out. I failed my next to last clinical course and dropped out and moved back to New York with my friend. She goaded me into siting for the New York State Licensed Practical Nurse Examination and I've tried to work at it from time to time, but I don't like touching people or being touched by them; I don't like handling bodily fluids; and people yelling, screaming and groaning paralyzed me with fear

After I time my friend and I moved to Atlanta and then Maryland where I started a business compiling archives of books and journal articles on therapeutic massage throughout history and and selling then to massage schools and practitioners. I started giving talks to them about massage history too. But I did not like to get massages. At the end of my nursing school days I was diagnosed with two chronic pain disorders which have made my life a living hell. So I started to research fibromyalgia syndrome and restless leg syndrome among other disorders with which I became afflicted. At about that time I visited a psychiatrist near Atlanta who suggested that I probably had Asperger's syndrome and should look into it further which I never did. I wrote a book on fibromyalgia syndrome and massage after reading several hundred journal articles and books and interviewing people. Then I developed a course out of it and lived for six years teaching and selling books until the business petered out.

At the behest of my friend who has acted as an emotional support and life coach I moved to Florida where I got my nursing license transferred. I worked in nursing homes for a while but was too slow and clumsy to continue. I worked in hospice where I had incredible anxiety about dying in other people's presence. I couldn't lie down or cover myself for months. I went to Florida Vocational Rehabilitation which paid for a certificate course in paralegal studies which I graduated from with honors. But I couldn't get work jn it because of my age and lack of five years experience. I tried selling furniture but I wasn't aggressive enough and failed at it. I was unemployed for a long time before I started nursing again working hospice. It was OK for a short time, but then I started having anxiety attacks and felt like I was going to drop dead. Then, the two hospices I worked for notified my agency that I was weird and was freaking out my clients so they terminated me.

I am now unemployed looking for any kind of work and thinking about going into autism related jobs. I like to work alone on a single project for up to fifteen hours a day every day. This makes me happy. Doing research and imparting it to others in plain English, I am moving soon back to Maryland to be closer to the Libraries of Congress and Medicine as well as the many medical school libraries.

I too have a cat who consoles me. I too love animals, especially dogs and birds.

Kiriana despite her background or because of it is in graduate school doing something with her life. I don't know if I feel for her or merely like her as she relates the problems of her college life like sitting and reading and wanting to reach out to others but being unable to.

I like Kiriana. I hope she does well in life and in school. I would be honored to call Kiriana my friend.