Why don't we all see neurologists?

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My second diagnosis of AS came from a neurologist.

Has anyone ever read lists of symptoms for people with TBI or Traumatic Brain Injury? Many of the symptoms are similar to Aspergers. Is that not ironic? Could brain injury be the explanation for AS since a number of people with AS were deprived of oxygen at birth? Just a thought...

I don't think the symptoms of TBI (and it depends on which part of the brain was damaged anyway) has too many similarities to AS, beyond general neurological problems like attention issues, poor memory, etc. that are associated with a number of neurological conditions. It's not like the similarity you get between NLD and right hemisphere, for instance. There's just some overlap in more general neurological signs.

Anyway, it's not like most people with AS were deprived of oxygen at birth, and if they were oxygen-deprived you wouldn't expect them to have the strengths they do, like good concentration on their special interests, higher intelligence (often), etc. Plus, AS seems like it has some genetic components.

Well you can have neurological conditions mildly or severely. And for people with AS traits bu tnot hte full-blown condition, that may mean that their brain is wired differently but not as much as that of full aspies.

As for being able to detect AS in the brain, well, not yet. AS is diagnosed as a psychological disorder because it's the psychological features that can be detected. Just like ADHD, Tourette's and schizophrenia, all of which are neurologicall-based (but well, the mind is mostly neurologically-based according to today's science), and all are diagnosed and treated as psychological disorders.

I brought up birth trauma at an ASD meeting once and all the mothers said they had difficult births where the child was deprived of oxygen & child turned out autistic. Most of the adult autistics at the meeting also conceded that they had been told they were oxygen deprived. We've had this discussion a long time ago on WP and found many here were O2 deprived and/or injured by forcep delivery.

I went to see a neurologist and psychologist, and a developmental doctor, those were the three who diagnosed me. The neurologist saw it in my brain which was weird, he showed me what my autistic brain looked like compared to a normal brain, which was even weirder haha.

also true in both myself and my daughter's case....

we dont even know how the brain works with enough specificity to even be able to dx NT!

Well, my experience has been the opposite. I've known several adults with AS and several children with autism, and none had difficult births.
In contrast, my cousin *was* deprived of oxygen at birth, and she is completely NT. However, she is noticeably "slow", especially when trying to learn new things. Nothing like AS at all. Same thing with a kid I worked with who had brain damage due to birth trauma. And how would oxygen deprivation cause the patterns of strengths you see with AS? And what about the genetic component?

I've never heard of a developmental doctor. Where exactly do you find one of those? Are they a sub-type of neurologist?? I have read about MRI's showing Aspergers in people, but have never heard of a real AS person actually saying their dr saw a difference in their brain. What part of the brain was different? I still have a set of my MRI films if I only knew what to be looking for.

YEAH, And I read(SERIOUSLY!! !) that if half of a mans brain is removed, he can be SMARTER! The theory is that the other half kind of dumbs it down.(Of course you don't really know WHICH half! ) I guess that means all male geniuses only have half a brain!

BTW the SAME source said it would generally make no difference with women. The idea was that it is almost like women have one brain with two parts that are almost redundant(because of the corpus callosum being larger), and men having two smaller brains(In the head for the feminists that are thinking what I think they're thinking) that are interconnected.

I guess I'll be called sexist now. 8-(

But HEY, the human brain is like a computer in some respects. EACH part communicates and takes resources. OBVIOUSLY, if some part dissappears, there is less traffic, and more available resources, and it gives the remaining parts a better chance to perform their best(genius can pop up someplace). ALSO, each part controls something, so it's loss can be felt(seizures or loss of motor control or stupidity someplace). That isn't anything new, and is actually quite obvious.

BTW Ticker,

They just look for differences, but labpet and einstein have an anatomical difference in common!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_sulcus

If you don't see that, you know SOMETHING is odd! There is another section as well, but I can't remember the term properly I guess.

you can have mild cases of epillepsy (few attacks) or severe ones (many attacks), many neurological conditions have varying degrees of severity.

That was on an episode of "House," where this guy's right hemisphere had been destroyed because of an accident so that that it was barely functioning anyway. If you removed half a normal person's brain you would end up giving them severe disabilities. I worked with someone who had his left hemisphere removed because of a severe stroke in that hemisphere, and he had: paralyzed right arm, weak right leg, moderate expressive aphasia, mild receptive aphasia, word-finding difficulties, apraxia, plus some cognitive impairment. He could read and write a little bit, but mostly communicated in one-two word sentences. Really, it's amazing he functions as well as he does. We speculated that he might have had bilateral dominance for language. If someone who had left hemisphere dominance for language had their left hemisphere removed, they would likely have little to no language function left.

Last edited by LostInSpace on 30 Sep 2007, 1:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

What you've read is that men tend to have strict hemispheric dominance of function. For instance, language in the left, prosody in the right. Women on the other hand, are more likely to have bilateral dominance for different functions- language in the both the right and the left, prosody in both, etc. If that is true, that could be considered an advantage, because they would be more likely to recover function after brain injury or stroke. I wonder if that is why rates for learning disabilities, ASD, stuttering, etc. are higher for men than for women.

Yeah, but each part also provides resources. If you remove part of someone brain, they lose function and lose available processing resources. Removing a part of the brain isn't like taking out the optical drive- it would be like crippling part of the RAM and under-clocking the CPU *plus* removing the optical drive. You'd have lost the ability to read/write CD/DVDs and in addition slowed the computer in general. Brains are different in that there is no particular location for "RAM"- connections are made between all parts of the brain. You can't damage one part without having some kind of overall negative impact on functioning. That is why so many different kinds of brain injuries/neurological conditions, in addition to some other primary impact, are also associated with shorter attention spans, difficulty with planning, sequencing, inhibition, etc. They've lost part of their processing resources.

I actually saw it LONG ago, and long before house was produced. In fact, it was before jaws which bad hat productions got its logo/name from. BTW don't get TOO happy about the idea of quick recovery. From what I understand, women are more likely to get dementia. Of course, I imagine autism affects that course as well. That is probably especially true because mental exercise works against dementia, and many here seem to take such exercise seriously. And nobody could seriously claim that I don't, even though I don't do as much physical exercise as I should.

Anyway, that isn't to be sexist, just to even things out, and argue against complacency.

One point about the "inheritability" of AS...

a)it is probably a condition which has a number of causal genes

b) we are beginging to understand that many genes only express in context of environment - a concept called "penetrance". The best way to explain this is by example. Huntingdon's Chorea is a gene with 100% penetrance. If you have the gene, you will have the condition. The genes for Type 2 diabetes probably have penetrance between 50-80%, and obesity is probably the "environmental" trigger - so if you have the gene but remain slim, you may never turn on the genes.

c) we have both our mothers and fathers genes to consider.

Take my family tree

Paternal side

Gt Gfather - highly likely HFA (quirky and spoke late)
Gt Gmother - hihgly likely AS (very intellegent, married very late, belived sex was only for repro)

Gfather - highly likely AS

Father - highly likely AS

Sister1 - NT
Sister 2 - NQ
Brother - HFA
Me - AS

Mother - comes from a whole line of NTs

In the next genaration we have 3 definate spectrum dwellers - all male. I suspect only one of the girls of the next genaration will be on the spectrum

Helen