Autism THEORY???

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I do understand by way of this site that Autism Spectrum is now known to be hereditary. I also see that it can be seen with brain imaging.

This aside, I have ALWAYS been SHOCKED when I see newborn babies in incubators. This disturbs me almost as much as seeing an abused animal. The body language to me is SCREAMING in a 'Terrified Beyond All Imagination' posture. I think to myself "Yeah, there you were in that tight little warm place with a steady rhythm that you feel to your cellular level, muffled sounds that you don't even think about......and then BAM Bright lights, assaulted by your first physical pain (the slap) Hard things poked up your nose and STRIPPED naked and cold just left out there with nothing to grab or shut off the assault of noise (not to mention needles and things) But MAN! That's CRUEL!! !"

Has anyone even looked at this? I mean when I watch the lengths that NTs go to to constantly surround themselves with noise, useless utterances of constant patting each others egos, their constant need for company and their constant efforts for constant entertainment, its like they got assaulted there in the beginning of all things and are the ones with the thickest skins? Ears? Threshold for total sensory assault? And the rest of us 'different ones' Just could not hack it all. Too much! Too Much! Shut it off! Quiet it down! Not so much input-not all at once! Overload!

Now if a thin skinned mother who got assaulted in the beginning, begat a child, wouldn't it react the same way? Because more than one parent is involved here, there would be other children by that mother who would be thicker skinned of course.

Then, brain wiring. The way I understand it is that we connect wiring pathways between hemispheres and such by our reaction to input. We are not born with those pathways already roadmapped. So, just like a person losing a big chunk of brain matter and surviving, those pathways would rebuild and utilize different areas of the brain to do the same thing, just using a different route. So, would it stand to reason that if a baby was on nonstop sensory overload from the git go have completely different reactions based on it's heightend perceptions leading to a fairly predictable roadmapping common to other children/persons with this same overload response? Wouldn't this lead to the fMRIs being so predictable?

I ask this because whenever I see a full on autistic child it seems to me that what I'm looking at is that this kid is being assaulted by every sense and cannot seperate them or process them, they are happening to him all at once.
I'm also curious because I have never heard of autism in tribal cultures or animals, maybe it is there but I am just unaware because if it is not present in them then is it because they 'nurture' their young in those first few hours rather than plop them in a cold plastic noisy overlit tub and let them scream?

Thanks. I've been dying to ask that for years. Anyone know if there is any research on this? Has it been ruled out? If so WHY do they still do this to babies! It horrifies me!

I don't believe that babies who spent time in incubators have a higher chance of being on the spectrum.

It's very likely that what is called autism is the manifestation of a variety of different things, and evidence seems to suggest this.

For example, perhaps some severely autistic individuals have a form of "locked in syndrome" where they are not actually paralyzed but for some reason they cannot act on their thoughts.

This seems to be the case with a girl named Carly Fleishmann.

Perhaps another individual has a severe processing deficit which essentially causes the brain to be unable to reap the benefits of environmental stimulation, similar to what you suggest....that an individual cannot make any sense of their surrounding, and so the brain cannot continue to develop properly, essentially giving them a form of reactive attachment disorder. Indeed, many individuals who were born deaf and blind, or raised in near isolation, have characteristics very similar to severe autism.

And then perhaps another individual has a neurological issue which causes them to have an innate lack of theory of mind. Perhaps they never grasped that other individuals are sentient beings and that in the world around them has meaning. To these individuals, if they exist, the world would be a place full of objects with no meaning, and they themselves would be included in that so they may lack a degree of self awareness in the sense that they are conscious but cannot acknowledge themselves.

And then perhaps others have a neurological issue which leads to extreme apathy, where they are actually fully aware of their surroundings and understand what is going on but can't be bothered to react...or perhaps it's too stressful to react.

And the list goes on. There are all sorts of interesting neurological abnormalities and variations that could cause manifestations similar to that of behaviors that would be called autistic.


Myself, I suffer from none of these. I'm quite aware and my processing deficits are only mild. I'm probably more aware of myself than most individuals are of themselves. Perhaps when I was younger I was a bit lacking in theory of mind. Not profoundly so but perhaps in the context of certain social situations.

I'm wondering what is it that shows up on brain imaging? What does and autistic/aspergers brain look like? I don't know much about it. Are there threads where I can read up on it a little?

I was born prematurely, meaning it was inevitable that I, oxygen deprived and close to death at twelve weeks early, was in an incubator. The Asperger's "symptoms", such as hyperlexia, non-sociability (I always screamed, "nap!", whenever I had to be around a group of people at sixteen months), obsessive interests (music at age six, psychology in first or second grade, literature, and medical things), clumsiness (I even said that I had poor gross and fine motor skills), and "lack of empathy" to the shallow gossips in my class who only cared about celebrities and never wanted to talk to me about dogs and Pokemon and to my narrow-minded teacher, Mrs. *name censored to protect identity*. I, however, have no intention to cure Asperger's, and even then, I said that "I would more likely have a rare disease than a part of a personality type".

I wwas born prematurely too (10 weeks early I think, I was born 30 weeks after the last periods of my mother), and so did my brother (since he's my twin), my mother is also a premature and so are her brothers and sisters. (And one of them is dyspraxic but could almost not been considered as a premature child). My brother and I should not even been here apparently, one of us was considered not viable and my mother almost had a miscarriage after about 4 months. My brother stayed 3 months in the hospital, he could not breathe on his own (but did when they stopped suddenly giving him oxygen to see what would happen). I stayed only 2 months and we had no real delay (though the teachers then though I was a problem, but I was older in nursery school).

I have some autistic traits and I have dyspraxia. My brother does have some autistic traits too but he has improved a lot with the years. I have read that premature children have a tendency to have delays in their development, sometimes mental retardation but found nothing about Autism.
However, it seems that it increases the risks of having ADHD, learning disorders and both giftedness or retardation. So I guess it could have an impact on Autism, such as : people who would have been on the BAP are high functuning or low functuning because of the conditions of their birth.

I know for sure that my mother's birth conditions had consequences on her mental development. She has a pretty bad memory (but she can remember places, some events or things she likes like everyone but she only remember some parts of her life, not a lot) and had lots of difficulties at school, plus it has had an impact on her sight because she was given too much oxygen.

Perhaps I should redefine 'incubator'. I am simply referring to all the open confinement 'bins'; incubators, tubs, tables,=cold, hard, overlit, noisy containers where one is poked, prodded and handled with complete disregard to the 'patient's' (victim's) mental comfort.

Like bugs; intended for the comfort of the scientist not the victim. Like a fish on the deck of a boat.
You know that Doctors are the worst patients? Yeah, they cannot deal with that level of submissive state!

I think I have a few issues related to either prematurity or autism: decreased sensitivity to pain (in fifth grade I made a theory about it; I was stuck with so many needles that it decreased my ability to feel pain), extreme anxiety, and motor skill problems. I've also read an article that said that prematurity was explicitly related to LFA and retardation, but there's so many theories about prematurity that I'm unsure what to believe...

i was born 6 weeks early, to a mother hooked on valium. i was in an incubator for about 3 weeks.

back in the day, babies in incubators were not handled by humans very much, as there was a great fear of infection. my parents were not really there for me at that time. my mother was agoraphobic and mentally ill, with 2 small children already at home (2 and 3 years old). she did not visit me at hospital because she was fearful of bonding with me in case i should die.

my father visited for a short period every day, because he brought my mother's breast milk to me in the hospital. my parents were destitute and my mother thought if i had formula in the hospital i would not be able to breastfeed when i got home. after the initial dangers had passed, my father was allowed to hold me for a brief period every day.

honestly, if i did not have relatives with clear signs of ASD, i would definitely wonder if my problems were caused by my early experiences.

Interesting thought, but theirs evidence that Aspergers and Autism go WAYYYYY back. People have all sorts of theorys about which historical figures were on the spectrum. But this way of treating infants doesn't even go back 100 years.

I have read that those who were put in incubators had a tendency to develop depressions and fear of separation later in life, which is one of the reasons why they try to interact with the babies nowadays.

When I was in the incubator, according to my parents, they still did not touch the babies much and it was very noisy, not a great environment. I have wondered if something could be related to this period of my life more than to ymy prematurity, my genes or the pregnancy in itself (plus the fact that I have a twin brother since some people claim that the fact that females are in a more masucline environment (more testosterone in utero) has an impact on their development) but I know that my mother who was put in an incubator for some week without any contact as you describe does not display the same characteristic at all (fear of separation in her case, not in mine, but no real autistic behaviour, no learning disorder either, no ADHD).

I remember reading somewhere (can't remember where though) that lack of oxygen at birth was quite a common factor among people on the spectrum.