I am confused , I am not sure anymore what is "HFA/AS''

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As a side note, the back of my head is a very odd shape. The front of my skull is normal, but the top part of my head isn't in the middle, it's sort of near the back of my head. There's actually a bit of a depression in the middle of my head on the scalp. I've always wondered why that is.

If I had a scan, I wonder what it would show.

My head has a bump in the back. Almost feels like it comes to a point, but I think that's a thing some Europeans have, not anything to do with anything.

I feel little better now ...but still have big doubts.

Hopefully PET scans will become a required tool when it comes to evaluating for AS/HFA.

PET scans sound dangerous to me though. I wouldn't want one unless I absolutely had to for a life threatening illness.

MRIs I'm fine with though. If they do cause any problems, they're pretty esoteric and theoretical, I guess.

I think functional MRIs (fMRI) are replacing PET scans. Also, I think perfussion MRI will replace SPECT scans.

PET Scans to "prove" this stuff don't mean ANYTHING! HECK, I would be willing to bet that pet scans would show me doing LESS work now with math, though I am better. Chips tend to run more efficiently when they are cooler, and brains do ALSO. ALSO, the most direct route is usually the fastest, but many computers today use a circuitous route to use faster memory and preprocessing to make things FASTER while making things cheaper.

Besides, pet scans for this stuff are based on a perceived theory. It is like a show here called mythbusters. They will do a show on explosve decompression disproving it. They didn't even take into account the effect of speed of the plane, and the jet engines. Still, you KNOW that a lot of their theory is hogwash, because planes HAVE suddenly blown apart, and possibly thousands have died from it. They ALSO proved that a bullet shot in the air will NOT kill people. That was news to the sheriff who informed them of 6 people in that town that died of that. They claimed the trajectory wasn't perfectly straight, but it rarely is.

What do you mean by a bullet shot in the air?

I think he's referring to people who celebrate the new year or other holidays by shooting up in the air and sometimes the bullets land on people's heads.

Oh...well wouldn't those have a fast enough speed coming down to kill? It's not like a bullet would have to be going THAT fast.

YEP, I was talking about how some people shoot guns on the fourth of july. They shoot them in the air with the idea that it looks good, and has a limited lethality range(Theoretically). A LOT can happen to the trajectory though. AND, though myth busters officially said they CAN'T kill, THEY have conceeded that they HAVE killed!

ANYWAY, my point is that theories based on applications to SIMULATE things, or theories about the operation of things, just aren't necessarily easily and reliably applied.

In school, I was teased about my very high forehead and large head size -- "brainiac" was the name they used to make me feel badly. I have a very unusual head size. Because I bought a John Deere tractor, I got all kinds of those JD hats for free with the adjustable snap-bands in back and none of them fit even at the largest setting, plus I got one from a local bank offered as a freebee with an adjustable cloth buckle thing and taken to its largest it still fits too snugly for comfort. I generally don't wear hats as a result.

But to be honest, I'd never considered this in the context of autism until reading this thread today.

Jon

I got AS from my dad.

What do you prefer as an avatar editor? Becky was just asking me about this and I was saying that I'd probably just use Paint, set the pixel size I wanted, then use the Zoom feature and draw at that scale to get it pixel-perfect, then shrink back down to double check. But if there is something better around, easier to use, more features, and so on... well, I'm pretty ignorant about all this and she'd like to take a crack at making her own "snail" as an avatar. I seem to recall reading elsewhere you like to do comics of this kind and I wondered if you have a nice suggestion or two.

Thanks,
Jon

These things called humans have variation, lately some have tried to make a living out of it.

Jung thought they were all nuts, just copeing. When copeing failed, there were problems.

All of this AS was after my time, we just lived, and were not the strangest or most troublesome.

I will admit there is something, I have a big head, I think differently than little heads, and historically, there were round heads, and about 40,000 years ago a mutation, long heads. It seems long heads, longer from front to back than side to side, allowed a bigger brain to pass through the birth canal, and the results are round heads became extinct.

Result two was a sudden advance in technology. My guess is long heads lost some of the ape jabber traits, and took on a new focus.

I do not believe the labels, the endless speculation of, will psychobabble for food.

What I do see is we have something in common, for before this place, I connected with nothing.

It goes beyond autism, I relate to all those other Dx'es that come here. Do I have it all, or is it all one thing, times situations, personalities, abilities?

It sounds very much like the TV program where they took a perfectly running car, and disconnected a wire to a sensor, so the check engine light came on. Then they took it to dealers, the best shops in town, and got estimates of how it was going to cost thousands, some wanted to replace the engine, as it was shot, or at least the top end.

I think the low bid was $500. Now how much do you trust psychobabbling pill pushers?

We can figure this out ourselves. We are not the biggest heads, Cro Magnon had bigger heads, bigger brains, and did cool art. So the idea that a brain must be diseased because it is large, is disproven by anthropology. As I recall, and some memory is not good with me, modern humans have 1100 cc brains, and Cro Magnon 1400 to 1500 cc. The males were also taller than moderns.

Autism could have produced populations before. I do like their art. Heads growing faster than birth canals could be the reason for their demise.

I think it is a normal human trait, which has always been around. The Dx is meaningless, because only people with problems get it. Many big heads are doing fine in the world. I discovered this at 60, most people think I am smart, and a bit strange.

Another factor I have been thinking about is the number of possible combinations, DNA as evidence of a crime, one in 7,500,000,000. The planets population is nearing that number, it is possible that the whole Genotype will be expressed.

Most here are European, which means they share the same ancestors, those few who survived the Black Death, and the Crusades, and throw in the Little Ice Age. Europe had a very small population six or seven hndred years ago. What was left was closely related, you cannot get un-related.

So all of the possible combinations of a very limited gene pool are being expressed. Big headed artistic, technological, Cro Magnon is in the European gene pool.

They are jumping on childhood differances, and ignoring adult outcomes. We get better over time, adapt to living with little heads, and do well.

Why is no one checking hat size to survival outcomes? Is there some scary truth out there, like we are becoming more common, taking over, and little heads are losing, becoming less of the population?

What is the hat size of psychobabblers?

What is the projected hat size of the population in a few hundred years?

The treatment of autism seems more propaganda than medicine. MD's say we are normal.

I don't fit hats either, and neither does my mom. We technically have big heads compared to most people, but we don't look out of proportion or anything. I'm not sure this has anything to do with AS, though who knows.

Last edited by Wolfpup on 12 Feb 2008, 1:29 pm, edited 2 times in total.