Why do we believe autism is "hard-wired"?

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"Cognitive differences present from birth" strongly suggests inherited neurological condition, but "differences beginning later on" does not rule it out. There are quite a few inherited neurological conditions that present symptoms quite a long time after birth.

Autism affects brain development. Not a surprise; your DNA affects how you develop, after all, not just where you are at birth. "Neurodevelopmental" is another way to describe that. Autism will almost always be different at 2 years, 4 years, 14 years, 40 years of age... I would be very surprised if it weren't.

The thing you are missing for all your harping on neuroplasticity is that autistic neuroplasticity has been demonstrated to be different from NT neuroplasticity via brain scans. Did you read the study I linked in my first post? That is what they are talking about when they talk about that "second-wave changes" thing. If the only autistic traits you have is some form of this difference, a common presentation is schizotypic traits. The present from birth autistic stuff is in the white matter white area outer edges of the brain being larger and in the central areas related to perceptions being the same relative size but in a different absolute configuration. It is in the increased rate of neuronal developments and changes in an autistic mind and decreased rate of physio-moto development. The second-wave stuff is the mechanism by which an autistic trait neuronal pruning process happens in grey matter as opposed to the NT method of neuronal pruning.

Why are so many autistic trait individuals "outside the box thinkers"? Because of the way in which their neuroplasticity presents, they never "grow up" and "lock in" in the same fashion that a neurotypical person does. Normal people reach an "adult" stage where they have the major groundwork for how they think laid down and it takes much more effort for them to rework their brain, they are past the developmental learning stage and have "locked in" on assuming that the way they have been taught to react to things is pretty much "the right way" they will neural prune and intake information and process it in a "mature" fashion with more self confidence than a "developing" brain that is "still figuring out the rules".

An Autistic brains different starting point and different mechanisms of growth cause a different growth curve. They take a few more years to figure out "how to verbalize" maybe, but once they are verbilizing they verbalize beyond the normal ability. They take longer to understand how to process emotional cues, but once they do they process far more emotional information than the normal person. Neurotypical brains reach physical maturity some time around age 25. Autistic brains reach it quite a bit later if they ever do. Sixty year autistic growth pattern brains have been shown to still be undergoing growth and plasticity shifts at a rate associated with childhood development.

Low Functioning or High functioning isn't the important difference here, an autistic brain in other ways can happen to not have the neverending growth pattern, and the neverending growth pattern could be the only autistic trait that ever physiologically presents.

These things are "hard-wired' in that they are differences in the neuronal wiring of the brain, in the genetic structure of the DNA, in the underlying physiological aspects of the human form, those parts we generally refer to as "the hard-wiring" which is actually anything but hard-wired in the sense that the wiring is laid out and never changes. It is in the different operations and mechanisms of the way the wiring is plastic. It is in the different operations and mechanisms of the very nature of their human hard wiring, up and down the system.

Do you want the full fledged run down from start to finish of how this all inter relates and works? I can explain a lot of it one baby step at a time, but most people get bogged down by the fully realized understanding of any little aspect of it. Most people are small picture types, this is a good thing, it is how s**t actually gets done. This is not me. I'm the big picture guy. I'm the guy corporate america calls "The Fixer". I'm the Super Consultant. Powerful and Important men and women by the standard of american materialist culture, the head honchos at businesses, decide they think their company is trapped in a box. In order to maximize growth they need a new way of looking at things. So they call me or somebody like me in to take in the big picture of how they fit into the society they are in and identify methods by which they can maximize the realization of the goals they state to me they have.

I walk in, take a look at "the box" and ask a few questions, and use the information they give to me to explain the options they have available and ask them which one they prefer based on the pros and cons I lay out. Then I explain methodologies by which to pursue those options and the pros and cons of them. They take what truths they can understand from my vision, and implement them as best they can, creating a new "box" that is bigger and "outside" of "the box" that they were trapped inside before. Then I go on my merry way to fix something else for somebody else. To wait for somebody else to ask me to find them a bigger box.

I get s**t wrong. Garbage In, Garbage Out. I'm just a humanform computator. I'm a Mentat. I'm a Shaman. Modern Man has forgotten to give respect to the useful function I perform. I think and experience in metaphor, have respect of the services I can provide humanity and accept them in the spirit they are given. Don't trust what I say, trust that there is something real and true that is causing me to say it. Believe in the power of metaphorical science and creative mythology to describe Truths in a different way than fully realized empirical scientific understanding.

I'm not trying to promote some new age superstitious belief. Anything but. I'm as sceptical as they come, I don't believe anything without a rational argument supporting it. But just because it doesn't fit into your box doesn't mean it is irrational. It means that if my rational argument obeys logic and the principle of parsimony, you need to find a bigger box and stop hiding from the truth. Instead of waiting for the geniuses to force everybody else to accept the newer bigger boxes one at a time, just accept that there will always be a bigger box. Our understanding of anything will ALWAYS be incomplete, for if we had a complete understanding we would have reached the end of the Universe. Reality would be a complete contained defined system that has no more new information to generate. The lack of Genesis of Information is Death. If the Universe and all reality is not growing and changing, then it is Dying. Our Universe has to be expanding because otherwise it would be shrinking.

Take this as you will. I've never been one to hide from the fact that I'm often called delusional. I only ask the question "okay, if I'm the one who is deluded, how come I'm the only one of us actually presenting a rational argument using sound logical practice based on evidence and the application of the principle of parsimony, while the people that call me deluded resort to the use of logical fallacies like appeals to authority and tradition?" Maybe I really am deluded, but bald faced assertions with no argument supporting them certainly is not the way to establish that.

Asking whether the growth rate causes autism or autism causes the growth rate is circular nonsense. The atypical aspects ARE AUTISM. Or some other word we later decide to use to represent it. We are talking about the broad strokes "Pervasive Developmental Disorder" AKA the Autistic Spectrum. Autism is the name given by science to the collection of noticed differences. The name given for Atypical Developmental Functions, not the atypical presentations, the qualities that caused an atypical presentation. Stop staring at fingers and look at the moon the fingers are pointing at.

thank you, crassus.

you said "autistic neuroplasticity has been demonstrated to be different from NT neuroplasticity via brain scans." which I think is the core issue.

I think people mistake "brain plasticity" for "I can change myself into whatever I want", which is not true.

Fascinating topic! If one were to attain Aspergian traits through experiences while growing up, I wonder what that would be called. If one were to attain enough to meet the DSM criteria for example, would that person be diagnosed AS or something else?

Probably AS. It's just that the odds of getting all those traits together for some other reason than being genetically destined to get them is really quite unlikely.

Crassus, to whom was your post directed? The second person seems to have shifted mid-post.

In your response to the circular reasoning regarding autism and brain growth, I suppose it depends on your definition of autism. If by autism you mean fundamental neurological difference, then you are correct. If by autism you mean the traits which are indicative of the position (probably the more commonly accepted definition), then it's a different story.

If you really are talking about a fundamental difference in brain structure, then those differences should manifest in every autistic person, right? Is it a stretch, then, to assume that there should be some sort of physical test which can be performed which yields definitive results? As someone else said, these studies only show differences between groups of autistics and non-autistics. Why would some autistics show no detectable sign of this "hard wiring" (for lack of a better term)?

By the way, you bring up excellent and fascinating points. I am thoroughly enjoying this discussion.

We are not badly wired robots domed to spend our lives as broken machines ! !! !

Is there anyone here who can honestly say that nothing has helped them, that they are still incapable of change ???