Is autism brain damage?

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The ASD brain has different priorities.
Some of these are not conversant with the social standard.

Brain damage? No.

I've been reading a lot of research papers lately looking at PCB exposure in Utero as a possible cause of autism. PCBs affect brain development, which is why they have been banned now, unfortunately though, once they're in the food chain they're pretty much impossible to get rid of. I read one report of the long term affects of PCBs on human development which described it as 'the silent plague'.

How about brain modification?

My belief---I think most of us with autism realize that something has happened to our brain in its development. I don't like to look at it as brain damage. I see it like building a house---no house is built exactly as the blueprints called for. There may be a variation here and there. And maybe the homeowner tells the contractor, "I don't want that door there, I want it here." So it's modified.

Now---I have seen a statistic where 50% or more of us with autism had some problem either before or during the birth process (or immediately after birth like an oxygen problem). For me, I had around 45 minutes of oxygen deprivation before I was born and I was born by emergency C-section. But, there is also the autism gene in my family. I believe that autism is genetic, but factors like oxygen deprivation can turn those inherited autism genes "on." If they aren't turned "on," a person might have some of the autism traits. But sometimes those autism genes just turn "on" for no apparent reason. Well...that's my theory.

So again---whatever it is that happens to our brains that makes us autistic, I prefer to think of as "brain modification."

To answer your question, i reply with a counter question:

-"Is an Apple MAC broken just because its not a PC?"

Wow, allcaps much?

Among autistics, savant skills or splinter skills occur at a rate closer to one in ten rather than "one in a million". They aren't the spectacular talents of prodigious savants, but less flashy things like simply being able to instantly calculate large sums, having perfect pitch (i.e., identifying a note without a reference tone), or being able to "copy" a perfect sketch of what you are looking at. Others have more unusual skills, such as the ability to correctly state the weight of an object held in the hand, the ability to mentally keep time accurate to the second, or the "photographic memory" that allows you to store information at a glance in sensory memory much longer than the usual fraction of a second it stays usually.

Anyway, no, there's no kind of brain damage that inevitably results in something indistinguishable from autism. In a few cases, brain damage has caused autistic traits, but no particular injury to any particular part, or any kind of whole-brain damage, can produce autism reliably; what we have are a loose group of what amounts to statistical flukes. Usually they occur in very young children. (Rett syndrome may be the closest thing to brain-damage-acquired autism that we know of. It is a genetic neurological disorder that differs from autism in that the neurological symptoms are usually degenerative. If you stretched the definition, this could be called brain damage, of a sort. But the term "neurodegenerative disorder" is more correct. Note that not all Rett syndrome cases actually show this progressive effect.)

Autism is not "brain damage"; it is a different brain development, and extremely likely to be different development from the start. Autistic brains are different from NT brains, confirmed to be different tentatively as early as six months of age and definitely by the age of 18 months. For the differences to show up as measurable differences at 18 months, they are very likely present from the first trimester of prenatal development.

Damage would imply that the brain was NT to begin with; but that's not the case. The DNA is autistic; the brain develops from the DNA; autism is detectable very early; and by the time it's detectable, autistic brains are already different enough on average from NT ones that we can detect the difference with MRIs. Considering the way the brain grows, we can only guess those differences have been there since before the autism was overtly detectable as a difference between ability and expectations placed on the young child.

It's brain improvement. It's like the NTs are old IBM boxes and I'm an i7 quad core iMac

Nah, not really. I'm not that elitist. But I see the autistic spectrum as more of a difference than a defect.

Autism is not brain damage. It is variation from the statistical norm.

It is no more brain damage than being left-handed.

ruveyn

I would be up for having my brain scanned.

I had classic autism, and was subjected to a brain injury when I was born. I was born via forceps, completely lifeless, dark purple and blue and had to be resuscitated. When I was finally viewed by the next day through a glass window, my complexion was gray. I had all the classic symptoms of autism throughout childhood and in my adult life as well. I will be autistic until the day I die.

I wouldn't mind having my brain scanned, either, just to see how it compares to others, just out of curiosity.

Autism connected to difficult pregnancies isn't too significant; other genetic disorders are also associated with difficult pregnancies and births...

Anyway, you guys are talking about doing brain scans on autistic brains; and yeah, from all the stuff I've been seeing, there are definitely structural differences in the brains of autistic people. Some parts are bigger; some parts are differently connected; other parts are smaller or shaped differently. It seems to be affecting the whole brain; it's simply developed differently.

My head size was larger in proportion to my body as compared to my sibling's head and body proportions. I ended up being smaller than they are in body size and my head a little larger. I was different than they were in just about every way. I had classic autism when I was a baby and small child, and as I grew older had the typical "little professor" qualities, as well.

I know you think you're some sort of expert Callista, but you're not. I have lived my whole life, with autism, and know what I'm talking about with regard to "significance".

I'm not doubting your story; I mean, why wouldn't you be telling the truth? Difficult deliveries are common. Babies have to be resuscitated sometimes. I don't get why you think I'm attacking you; there's nothing improbable about your birth at all. It just doesn't seem to represent any kind of trend... autistics are more likely to be premature; I know that statistical relationship exists; but... look, I don't know what caused YOUR autism; I just know that there's no real evidence to think that brain damage has any connection.

Who says I think you're attacking me? That's a little far reaching.

Brain injury "appears" to be a factor in my case, and seems very clear cut that way to me. You can't know these things though unless you experience them.

Edit: BTW, What is there not to believe? I find your point of reference slightly peculiar.