Impaired Brain Parts

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Basically, I was hoping if you can share more about what you know about the Impaired Brain Parts of people with autism spectrum disorder, including high functioning autism and low functioning autism. What brain parts are impaired, what is the name of these brain parts, and are they impaired by birth, or by a neurodevelopmental problem at an early age, and so on?

Does medication help heal or fix these impaired brain parts, or is this a permanent disability? I have heard somewhere the SSRI's can do that, but I'm not sure if that is correct.

Thank You!

My brain is not “impaired.”

I’m practically perfect in every way, like Mary Poppins.

Some people find SSRIs helpful; others do not. We are all different.

Yes we know it is neurodevelopmental from birth, but the reason can be caused by a number of factors like genetics or a natural variation. None of them can be changed so there's not much use trying to pinpoint reasons in oneself. It's not even necessarily "bad" to be autistic or neurodivergent, especially if you have friends like Mary Poppins as a role model.

SSRIs won't change the structure of anyone's brain or rewire their neurodevelopment. Meds only affect the conductivity of neurotrasmitters, whether that's necessary or not. They might make matters worse for some people, whether they're autistic or not.

I've had a rough ride with SSRI as well. None of them worked, and they screwed up my sleep by pushing my daytime anxiety into nightmares. The only one that kind of worked (Trintellix) made me more nauseated than morning sickness and that effect never went away. Antipsychotics made me feel so chill I was braindead and couldn't function.

I've been on Vyvanse for three years for ADHD but it gives me racing thoughts and no improvement of EF. They just added another ADHD med which is non-stimulant, called Intuniv. Holy cow! I feel such a huge difference with the two combined. I can actually think linear thoughts without feeling that my brain is exploding in 20 directions all day long, which I've felt my whole life but even more acutely on Vyvanse.

Intuniv is recommended for autistic people with or without ADHD. People can take it with or without a stimulant ADHD med. For me, they seem to work quite well together but I haven't tried Intuniv on its own.

I think people likely need an ADHD diagnosis to get it, but I'm not positive. It's worth looking into if anyone has brain fog, trouble concentrating, irritability from autism (sensory), etc. It lowers blood pressure, helps with sleep (doesn't help me), and doesn't even cause weight gain.

So far it seems like the only med that's done anything for my brain function in my entire life, but of course we're all different.

It doesnt seem to work that way. Autistics dont have non working lobes of the brain, or large nonworking areas, that you can point to.

But also the state of knowledge about it is very limited.

Or thats my understanding of it.

In the future they may well be able to pinpoint some kinds of autism to some tiny physical differences in actual brains, but they arent there yet.

Actually I take that back. On the microscopic level they have found physical differences in brain cells. NT brain cells prune themselves like self pruning neat bushes in a hedgerow while in some autistics the brain cells keep all of their branching branches in a wild unkempt mess.

PS
Someone on concurrent thread stated that "theyve found four kinds of autism from brainscans". So maybe the knowlege is more advanced than I thought.

I heard that something happens with neurons around the time babies get their first vaccines, like for "typical" people the neurons get cut or something and for autistic people they don't?

Anyways, that's why symptoms first begin to appear around the time vaccines are introduced. The vaccines themselves have nothing to do with it.

The unpruned neurons explain why many of us have larger brains than normal.

I cannot speak for anyone else.

But mine feels like there's a traffic up there, with fogginess and sometimes some parts feels blocked or congested.

To a point that I could just feel it, and it frustrates the heck out of me that. I have strong urges to just bang my head on the wall in hopes that block would go away.

I don't think my parts are impaired.
But more like... Something systemic is not doing what it's supposed to, and it happened to affect certain parts more than the rest.

Because there are times -- there are without those congestions up there -- and I've seen the contrast between with and without those issues...

It's collerated with how well I slept, my immune response, the food I ate, the hormones that's coursing through my body...

I just had to know what combinations of these things would give me least problems and recreate the conditions of those times when I have a working EF...

It's not a cure for autism, it's not a rewiring of the brain. It's just my health -- to feel like myself more often than not.

I do not desire to live and act 'normal' -- I just want to act and actually live as myself, not with this subpar version of me who is likely sick and have my sickness dismissed as autism.

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My Autism was diagnosed in 2019.

Because of a likely unrelated medical phenomena I had a head MRI in 2021. One thing the MRI detected seemed to greatly concern my medical providers: significant mid-brain atrophy.

When I finally found my way to a helpful neurologist she noted that she's seen MRIs like mine before and those patients were in wheelchairs...and she seemed surprised I was not in a wheelchair (I also do not use a walker, or crutches, or a cane). She's still trying to figure my MRI out but has speculated the MRI anomaly was perhaps due to my Autism.

I would much rather have Autism then a wheelchair.

I had MRI for the stroke but I think all they mentioned was the cerebellar damage.
I'll have another look because I'm going to sort my medical papers today.

I also had EEGs looking for Epilepsy and the results were weird.
This was after the MRI.
They said I had abnormal slow waves in my temporal lobes.
I have no idea what that meant.
I'll look for that too.
They didn't know how to classify it but decided against Epilepsy so I could drive.
This was pre-ASD diagnosis so I didn't ask them about autism.

There's some brain info on my sleep tests too.

OK now I wanna go find my medical papers!