Is aspergers genetic?

Post Reply New Topic

I just meant I wasn't trying to have a go at anyone here is all.

Your second paragraph appears to be about cognitive bias, which yeah, everyone experiences. It's a pain to try to work around for some things.

It seems that so many spectrum want to cling to the belief that autism is all or mostly inherited. When the fact is this hasn't been demonstrated and isn't universally accepted among experts. I don't know why so many on the spectrum can't accept that environmental factors may play a very large if not a predominant role.

Actually, at one point it was widely believed (based on empirical data) to be hereditary. The evidence as it was understood at the time said this. This is no longer the case, as there were some rather severe flaws in that data, but it is still heritable to a significant extent (although I haven't found any consensus on just how much).

So, people who are "clinging" to that belief are very probably working from information that was - even within the past decade - considered to be accurate and supported that conclusion.

They are doing it because there has to be some consciously or even unconsciously perceived functional value in it. However, just because there is a perceived functional value does not mean that a particular idea an approach is built around is true or even that the approach is particularly functional. Imo to begin to understand why other people are doing things, it is necessary to study ones own brain and body first. If a person really wants to study and find out about autism and he is autistic, then the best way is to study himself. Ultimately he could help a lot of people by taking this approach rather then buying into some story. I see people wasting a lot of precious time in these discussions when so many autistic people and parents and people who are not autistic are so profoundly suffering. This does not mean a parent of an child who is autistic or even an adult should not consult a professional or that people should not look at genetics. The problem is the way some people including geneticists are looking at genetics is very lopsided, like little toddlers trying to read a text they cannot understand.

Verdandi wrote:

The problem is that in regard to framing it is next to impossible to see oneself doing it, as out of the framework emerges a real time overt action or subtle physical body response that releases pent up tension, and this feels so good and right and also gives meaning by self expression, which every creature wants and needs to do---so kind of like a disguised rabbit hole, but imagine actually seeing that AS one is doing it! It would obviously be world changing self-awareness. So how to do it?

Last edited by littlebee on 17 Apr 2014, 1:15 am, edited 1 time in total.

I am thinking Autism has a very large number of environmental and genetic causes that come together, and I am willing to think that possibly if you took 10 random people with Autism, and discovered the cause for each one of them, you would find 10 different causes for all 10 of them.

That is not far from some things I've read over the past couple of years.

Therefore ,if this is true, then to study oneself would be of great value, and to look at oneself as being on a spectrum might be of a more limited value, and I do not even know if there are just 10 different causes for 10 different people. I think, as you say, there can be a combination of factors, and this is probably true for many if not even most people who are autistic. Yet there is such a thing as autism with certain kinds of characteristics that can be seen to varying degrees over quite a spectrum, and I think this is significant, so how to sort it out?

I think that my entire dad's side of the family is touched in some way. I haven't communicated with them very well for the majority of my life. The day before yesterday I was talking to my cousin who has been put on ritalin and such and I have been watching many documentaries about that. I asked her, "What was the reason they started telling you that you had ADD?" And as I was talking to her the entire time she was twitching her leg. And yeah, I noticed it. But I know why it is that people do that. She said they told her that she had ADD because she was twitching her leg. She's been on ritalin for a long time (I think) and she still twitches her leg. So, obviously ritalin is just a bunch of BS. Now, it just worries me what will happen if she tries to quit taking the ritalin. I haven't looked up withdrawal effects or anything. But it makes me think about how I am glad that I learned to mask all of my anxiety and thoughts just for the reason of my parents not taking the advice of some teacher telling them to put me on ritalin. People are stupid.

And my cousin has also gone through some abuse but they never ask her about that. Her parents never talk about it with her. I am pretty sure I am the only one who has ever asked her any questions about the trauma that happened to her. And of course trauma will cause a person (a child) to become rather nervous when being surrounded by a mass of other kids who pick on them because of how they show their energy output and nervousness.

But anyway, apparently my grandma and both of my aunts have severe depression which I have never been told about before. There are a lot of secrets kept in my family that I have only been finding out recently. They also have many of the same habits as I do. It gives me a great sense of relief to know that I am NOT "crazy". Because these females (not my cousin though) always made me feel like I was crazy and there was something "wrong" with me. But really they have tons of secrets that they don't talk about or deal with. So, I just feel much more in control now (I still have a ways to go) that I have learned a little more about my family. I wish people didn't keep such secrets as this.

Yes, people keep all kinds of secrets and they hide secrets from themselves, too. Also, are you sure your cousin's leg was twitching before being put on ritalin? It may be twitching because of ritilan. https://www.google.com/#q=does+ritilan+ ... itching%3F

That would not surprise me at all.

Well, my mom has it, my grandpa has it, my dad has it and, well, I have it too. Whether it was the result of something going remarkably wrong with the coding of the genes or adaptation or not, it comes from somewhere deep. I think it's genetic, pal.

What can be very deep is the feelings of a human being in present time, and when people are unconscious of these feelings this can cause them to respond in a different way then when they are conscious, as I believe unconscious feelings interfere with making clear correlations of various data. How do you know it is something that has gone wrong with the coding of your genes and not that certain kinds or strains of unique individual brains adapted for survival cannot function as well when conditions have changed, in that conditions are so much different now for the average human being, or that different kinds of families with certain similar brain qualities having difficulty adjusting in this day and age do not reinforce certain patterns in each other?

Why just say it is the brain, apart from anything else so not interdependent and a living work in progress?