Many autisms

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My theory is that "autism" is not a single disorder but a myriad of conditions that have similar symptoms. Different forms of autism may have vastly different causes.

A few types have specific genetic roots, such as the autism that comes with Rett's Disorder, Fragile X syndrome, and Tuberous Sclerosis. These autisms were easily identified and separated from the others because they are idiosyncratic in their presentation.

Autistic children, though their symptoms may look similar*, have different ages of onset. Some kids present with symptoms from infancy (lack of eye contact, inconsolable crying, lack of attachment to caregivers, not wanting to be held), while others develop normally before hitting a regression period around the age of two. Still others lapse into severe autism between the ages of four and ten, a rarer condition called Childhood Degenerative Disease.

There is much debate about whether autism is a predominantly sensory or cognitive problem. I believe that some types of autism are more sensory while others are more cognitive, and some are both. Cognitive autism results from a pathological inability to see the "big picture" and filter out unnecessary information (I know a boy with severe AS who has no sensory symptoms but certainly thinks like an autistic person). Sensory autism results from a cerebellum gone mad. The brain processes stimuli the wrong way, leaving the person confused and traumatized by the outside world.

Then there is the matter of severity. AS is a type of autism that, for some reason, leaves the verbal centers of the brain almost completely intact. Very severe cases, like severe cases of basic mental retardation, may have a totally different cause, such as a specific gene mutation or brain damage. Also, some types have physical symptoms like epilepsy and hypotonia, while others do not.

Someday, perhaps someday soon, researchers will be able to differentiate the different types of autism, just like they were able to separate bacterial, viral, and fungal TB or the three Hemophilias**. It is a difficult task, because most cases can't report their own internal symptoms, but modern science is capable. One day, MissPickwickian may be able to say that she has "Type B Asperger's" or "Later-onset genetic Asperger-Smithfield syndrome".

*Every child with autism is different. I am referring to more universal traits like communication difficulties.
**I am not calling autism a disease, anti-cure people. Just an analogy.

This is a good description of the various autistic disorders. I think there is also a form called Landau-Kleffner Syndrome, which causes seizures.

yes the different 'Autism's'. I never liked the name 'Asperger's Syndrome' so I would welcome a different label heh.

You may have put yourself in the firing line by linking brain damage to autism symptoms...

Maybe there is a type of autism that is caused by brain damage, but I still think most is genetic.

Actually, some researchers believe this to be the case for autism in females, and a genetic component in males.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/t441610h17728566/

A good idea, we need a map of Wrong Planet.

At the growth rate, we should have cities, for types, not just the Kids' Crater, and old dino home.

Trait mapped we would form fun groups.

Pan-WP conversations can get mangled, for no one puts the same meaning to words.

I think there are at least 2 variants, one is inherited and the other one isn't. The non-inherited one seems to have the same symptoms but stronger. All aspies I've met in real life have one aspie parent tho.

Then there's also the issue of the loners who get a diagnosis of asperger when they don't really have the full condition Hans Asperger identified. Should they be rediagnosed with something else? or should they be classified as Type C asperger or something...

The processing of sensory information -- otherwise known as perception -- is a part of cognition, it's not separate from cognitive processes, it is a cognitive process.

How does the "pathological inability to see the big picture" thing account for the fact that, when tested, autistic people do seem to see the big picture. We just also see the details, with less filtering. See for example this article, where they took autistic people who did well on Block Design (something often cited to say autistic people "miss the big picture"), and found that they could do perfectly well on similar tasks that did not miss the big picture. So it wasn't a matter of missing the big picture, it was a matter of being able to look directly at the details in a way that most non-autistic people are not able to do.

Processing stimuli happens in other places besides the cerebellum, too.

I do get the sense that there are either different sorts of autism, or else different ways that autism manifests, though. And I am pretty sure that the "different ways autism manifests" are often mistaken for different kinds, rather than different shapes of the same basic thing.

One of the divisions I find most interesting, just in interaction and conversation with other autistic people (and therefore this is a casual thing I wonder about, not a neurological-based theory), is between people whose skills are relatively static over time, and people whose skills shift a lot. (And that can be the same person at different points in their life, too.) When I say skills I mean surface-level stuff, not the deeper-down cognitive processing that might stay the same all the time.

I have a friend whose skills are very static. And he gets confused by me sometimes, because I might at one point be unable to read but able to write, then at another point able to write but unable to read. It's not generally chosen, either (and the most I can choose, which is not usually, is the direction of what shuts down and what doesn't, I can't prevent the fact of shutdown altogether or anything). I've suspected that this has to do with the fact that I'm flooded with so much information, that dealing with it and responding to it takes up a huge chunk of my brainpower just to do "one thing" (which to me is lots of things combined, things people don't even think about), so all others shut off in the meantime.

So this means that I can do more things than him, but also at more cost: He looks more functional than I do in general to most people. But it's at a very stable level. I might surpass him in some areas only to crash down way below his level in others (and even in the area that I once surpassed him in, once I am no longer able to sustain it). I am more prone to overload and shutdown than he is, and spend a lot of time unable to move and/or unable to comprehend what's around me in anything approaching a typical way. He does get overloaded but not as much, and he has some abilities seemingly permanently shut off in order to minimize that.

My guess is that these are two ways of dealing with the same thing, rather than two separate conditions or anything. But I still find it interesting. Because I have friends who are both of these different ways, as well as various combinations of them. And the way we experience things, on a personal level, is very different from each other along this line. (Again, I'm not saying anything about a neurological level because I don't understand it enough to say those things.)

Oh, and, I have many relatives either known or suspected to be autistic, and most of them have the stable-abilities thing, I seem to be the main one who does it the other way. But I have lots of online friends who are more the way I am, probably because, with similar experiences, we gravitated to each other when trying to figure ourselves out.

An analogy of the difference between me and that friend (and many of my relatives) seems to be like this: If a particular skill level is considered a particular elevation, the people with stable skills are standing on flat ground in that elevation, and maybe other areas are lower elevation in a more permanent way. Whereas, what I seem to have to do, is start very low to the ground, and then climb up to that elevation, and since I'm hanging off a cliff face, I have to eventually go back down again, there's no stable ground to stay on for long. On the other hand, they might have started on the lower ground, but getting there was like hiking up a slope, and then hitting a large area of flat ground eventually where they could build a house and actually stay and live there. Whereas when I am on the cliff face I have two options -- climb down or fall down.