• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD): Compendium Thread

I once dated an autistic lady and we got on fine (up to a point), but I learnt a lot about autism from her and can now easily recognise the symptoms in other people in all walks of life who may not even know they have a touch of it.
For example one of her symptoms was an inability to think outside the box, but to prefer staying within her comfort zone of regular routines and mindset.
 
I once dated an autistic lady and we got on fine (up to a point), but I learnt a lot about autism from her and can now easily recognise the symptoms in other people in all walks of life who may not even know they have a touch of it.
For example one of her symptoms was an inability to think outside the box, but to prefer staying within her comfort zone of regular routines and mindset.

And yet, astonishingly, this isn't one of the diagnostic criteria. I wonder why the NHS spends so much money on training clinicians when it's apparently all so simple.

How are you testing this claim @Dropship ?

I ask because in my experience the tropes you describe are just that tropes. Furthermore they are damaging ones... so I'm wondering why you are spreading them?

Where is your evidence?
 
..I ask because in my experience the tropes you describe are just that tropes. Furthermore they are damaging ones... so I'm wondering why you are spreading them?
Where is your evidence?

I had to look up the word "trope" in the dictionary but am still none the wiser, what do you think it is exactly?
As I said, I had an autistic ladyfriend which is good first-hand observational evidence; she was a bit slow and set in her ways, but she was quite happy and we got on alright, so how is it "damaging" to anybody for me to say so?
 
I once dated an autistic lady and we got on fine (up to a point), but I learnt a lot about autism from her and can now easily recognise the symptoms in other people in all walks of life who may not even know they have a touch of it.

There isn't, and there never was, a clearly delimited 'it' to diagnose, as illustrated by the belated recognition that what was once called a single 'autism' was more accurately described and formally re-characterized as a spectrum disorder (i.e., a condition whose symptomatology varies across individual cases).


For example one of her symptoms was an inability to think outside the box, but to prefer staying within her comfort zone of regular routines and mindset.

Sounds 'way too over-generalized, abstracted away from observable factors, and (sadly) familiar ... :thought:

Were this a definitive symptom, one would have to wonder if such apparently obvious 'autism' represents the modern human norm.
 
Danish researchers' most recent work indicates prenatal sex hormone levels correlate with development of ASD in early childhood.
High levels of estrogen in the womb linked to autism

Scientist have identified a link between exposure to high levels of oestrogen sex hormones in the womb and the likelihood of developing autism. The findings are published today in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.

The discovery adds further evidence to support the prenatal sex steroid theory of autism first proposed 20 years ago.

In 2015, a team of scientists at the University of Cambridge and the State Serum Institute in Denmark measured the levels of four prenatal steroid hormones, including two known as androgens, in the amniotic fluid in the womb and discovered that they were higher in male foetuses who later developed autism. These androgens are produced in higher quantities in male than in female foetuses on average, so might also explain why autism occurs more often in boys. They are also known to masculinise parts of the brain, and to have effects on the number of connections between brain cells.

Today, the same scientists have built on their previous findings by testing the amniotic fluid samples from the same 98 individuals sampled from the Danish Biobank, which has collected amniotic samples from over 100,000 pregnancies, but this time looking at another set of prenatal sex steroid hormones called oestrogens. This is an important next step because some of the hormones previously studied are directly converted into oestrogens.

All four oestrogens were significantly elevated, on average, in the 98 foetuses who later developed autism, compared to the 177 foetuses who did not. High levels of prenatal oestrogens were even more predictive of likelihood of autism than were high levels of prenatal androgens (such as testosterone). Contrary to popular belief that associates oestrogens with feminisation, prenatal oestrogens have effects on brain growth and also masculinise the brain in many mammals.

Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, Director of the Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge, who led this study and who first proposed the prenatal sex steroid theory of autism, said: "This new finding supports the idea that increased prenatal sex steroid hormones are one of the potential causes for the condition. Genetics is well established as another, and these hormones likely interact with genetic factors to affect the developing foetal brain." ...

FULL STORY: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190729094538.htm

PUBLISHED PAPER: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-019-0454-9
 
Last edited:
Posts specifically relating to Greta Thunberg (the newly famous Swedish ASD teen climate change activist) have been eliminated and / or moved to a new thread dedicated to her as the focal subject:

Greta Thunberg
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/greta-thunberg.66259/


Future posts addressing Greta Thunberg specifically should be directed to that thread.
 
This new survey / analysis study focusing on identical twins provides some pretty solid indications that the particular symptoms and severity of ASD cannot be attributed solely to genetic or environmental factors.
Severity of autism symptoms varies greatly among identical twins

Identical twins with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often experience large differences in symptom severity even though they share the same DNA, according to an analysis funded by the National Institutes of Health. The findings suggest that identifying the causes of this variability may inform the treatment of ASD-related symptoms. The study was conducted by John Constantino, M.D., of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, and colleagues. Funding was provided by NIH's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). The study appears in Behavior Genetics.

ASD is a developmental disorder that affects how a person behaves, interacts with others and learns. Previous studies have found that when one identical twin has ASD, chances are extremely likely that the other twin has it, too.

The authors analyzed data from three previous studies comprising a total of 366 identical twin pairs with and without ASD. The severity of autism traits and symptoms in the twins was measured by a clinician's assessment or by parents' ratings on a standardized questionnaire. Some cases were diagnosed by both methods. The researchers determined a 96% chance that if one twin has ASD, the other has it, too. However, symptom scores varied greatly between twins diagnosed with ASD. The researchers estimated that genetic factors contributed to only 9% of the cause of trait variation among these twins. In contrast, among pairs of identical twins without ASD, the scores for traits were very similar.

The study authors do not know the reasons for differences in symptom severity, but they rule out genetic and most environmental causes because the twins share the same DNA and were raised in the same environment. Additional studies are needed to determine the cause..

SOURCE: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-12/nksn-soa122719.php

PUBLISHED STUDY: Castelbaum, L. On the nature of monozygotic twin concordance for autistic trait severity: A quantitative analysis. Behavior Genetics.2019.
 
Echoing tuco.... Jesus H Christ!

Heads should roll for that.

I once heard of a clinic that destroyed all the early childhood records of patients with autism - I forget why. hat info fell my way when I was editing a magazine for a related charity and not sure we ever did anything with it, although the dr who told me had no reason to lie... It was around the time the MMR scandal had broken.
 
A widespread view about "autistics" as a group. Eugenicists lack only the authority to proceed.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-52217868

I've seen the letters posted out with seemingly little discretion by one Welsh practice to their elderly patients.

They pretty much said: 'Stand Aside, You'll Have To Die'. If you don't want agree to a DNR instruction, you are killing your friends, family and young people more deserving of life. The tone was appalling.

Edit: Text here.

1_JCR_WOL_310320_LlynfiSurgeryLetterDNR_01.jpg


I would be livid if a relative of mine had received one.
 
I've seen the letters posted out with seemingly little discretion by one Welsh practice to their elderly patients.

They pretty much said: 'Stand Aside, You'll Have To Die'. If you don't want agree to a DNR instruction, you are killing your friends, family and young people more deserving of life. The tone was appalling.

Edit: Text here.

View attachment 25117

I would be livid if a relative of mine had received one.

Don’t forget to Clap for the NHS tonight.

maximus otter
 
Yithian, you should not have blanked that out.

I think everyone needs to know who it is?

Heck, I have relatives in Wales, and they are not young.
 
Yithian, you should not have blanked that out.

I think everyone needs to know who it is?

Heck, I have relatives in Wales, and they are not young.

Not my letter.

The address--uncensored--is available on Twitter and (I think) Google images.
 
I've seen the letters posted out with seemingly little discretion by one Welsh practice to their elderly patients.

They pretty much said: 'Stand Aside, You'll Have To Die'. If you don't want agree to a DNR instruction, you are killing your friends, family and young people more deserving of life. The tone was appalling.

Edit: Text here.

View attachment 25117
I would be livid if a relative of mine had received one.
Are you sure this is real ?, it looks like its been written by an idiot, a lot of cancers are incurable but not necessary terminal and I cannot imagine anyone not being offered hospital admission should they become unwell, if it is real does this mean there is a list with people not considered worth saving with the most vulnerable at the top and the most healthy at the bottom ? ( I can guess where the twat who compiled it has put themself ). PS that letter would look a lot more crumpled if it had been sent to me.
 
Some interesting developments in research methodology.

Professional burnout is all too familiar: Go at something too hard for too long, and the motivational tank empties.

But burnout for an autistic person isn’t always about overwork, Dora Raymaker, an autistic systems scientist at Portland State University (PSU), found in a study of autistic workers. Instead, the need to mask autistic behaviors through a workday with nonautistic people can cause chronic exhaustion, reduced ability to tolerate stimuli like light or sound, and loss of skills, the study showed through interviews and a survey of social media comments.

The work, which Raymaker’s team published last month, highlights a new trend in autism research. Raymaker and colleagues are part of a small but growing number of research teams with autistic members. These groups are shifting the focus in autism research from cause and cure to practical steps, including ones that help autistic people in settings such as the workplace. And they’re publishing some of their findings in a new journal, Autism in Adulthood, which is dedicated to including the perspectives of autistic people in what it publishes.

Interest in those perspectives is “skyrocketing,” says Christina Nicolaidis, a co-author on the burnout study. Nicolaidis, a professor in the School of Social Work at PSU, has an adult son who is autistic. Although much research on autism has focused on children, autistic adults who came of age in the 1990s and early 2000s are joining the field and bringing a focus on their own experience. One member of that cohort is TC Waisman, a doctoral candidate at the University of Calgary studying how faculty and staff can improve autistic students’ college experiences. Waisman says she sees researchers increasingly “respecting us as our own self-determined culture and foregrounding our needs in studies.”

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/autistic-voices-should-be-heard-autistic-adults-join-research-teams-shift-focus-studies
 
The Night Clerk: Bart Bromley (Tye Sheridan) has Asperger's Syndrome he lives at home with his protective but not overbearing Mother (Helen Hunt). Working as a night clerk at a hotel he observes people to sharpen his social skills. This extends to placing secret cameras in hotel rooms to see how they act when alone or in small groups. Voyeuristic but not sexually motivated. Bart observes some being killed in a room. How is he going to explain his knowledge to the police? Moved to another hotel he starts to form a link with a young woman guest, Andrea (Ana de Armas). An interesting exploration of how someone who feels different relates to relationships, authorities and everyday society. Some Noir elements intersect with this journey of discovery. On Netflix. 7/10.
 
Back
Top