Is Autism a medical issue?

I remember when my daughter was about 5 or 6 and on asking her about being in class and the things that she /they do in class her answer was....daddy the lessons they do and the books they have and they toys they have are for babies lol
 
Its a physical abnormality in the brain, from birth, social factors only tend to lessen its effects over time as other areas of the brain take over.

Its not something you can be given, and the only social factor leading to its increase is simply that in our modern society its easier for the shy to have a normal life, get married and have kids
 
LeeUK said:
When I was at school no one had Autism, you were just a bad kid. Now they are all mollycoddled.
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But autistic kids can still be extremely well behaved, no?

I would say with ADHD though a lot of kids who are simply not interested or bothered about schoolwork simply get branded with ADHD these days. You're never going to pay attention if you're simply not interested. Put a PS4 in front of them and they will have no issues with attention.
 
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LeeUK said:
When I was at school no one had Autism, you were just a bad kid. Now they are all mollycoddled.
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Yes. I hate that medical science has progressed since the early 30's too. parrumpapumpum. Harrumph!

To answer your question, I think that Autism is very much nature but can be helped by being in the right environment. I'm on the autism spectrum for example; not nearly as pronounced as many but occuptaional therapy has helped me over the course of many years to find ways to cope with certain scenarios...However, social queues and interaction is still pretty much a mystery to me.
 
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What is Autism anyway??

I have a nephew who ,is "Autistic"

I have done the on line testy stuff that suggests I am too (which wouldn't surprise me at all really)

So what does this mean in practice??
 
My 13 year old son is Autistic, it could be described as severe. He can't function without support, in some area he's very high functioning and in others he's like a child of 5. He has three siblings and I can tell you from experience it has nothing to do with conditioning, it's a very real and debilitating developmental disorder. It was obvious that he was different from a very early age. Living with him is a daily challenge and it's only getting worse.
Try not to think all Autistic people are like the one's you see on the higher end of the spectrum. 25% are non-verbal for starters. If you met him it wouldn't take long for some pretty extreme aberrant behaviour to appear. Dealing with Autistic meltdowns with a child that's nearly as strong as a man, obsessions, compulsions. It's a very long list of behaviours which I won't bore you with but's it's not a lot of fun.

And remember they grow up, if you want to see a bit more of the lower non-verbal end of the spectrum here's a channel from one of the people I follow, should give you a better idea.

https://www.youtube.com/user/kgaccount/videos
 
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Oh, and PS

One thing that is the case,

For some reason I seem to attract Women who are prepared and willing to put an immense amount of effort into trying to improve my life, and I have never really been able to understand why.? :/
This isn't a ramble really, It is actually part of the picture
 
People may be more aware of it now.

Our 4 year old girl displays several traits of it, thinking back we can pin it down to back when she was 2 years of age. She displays more traits of aspergers though, so she has always been way ahead. Reading etc, but never being good at playing by herself. If she was to play something with her mother, if I played with the same thing she wouldn't be happy as I didn't play the same.

We are currently undergoing major problems with her transition from nursery to reception. The nursery took a lot of weight off her mind and developed trust with her, they always flagged up that she was incredibly bright but struggled socially and couldn't handle "free play".

Since reception the school are pushing independence, things are obviously never quite the same day to day in a school environment and she just can't handle this. She thinks ahead and worries so much that it provokes panic attacks. The school haven't dealt with her very well, treating her like a naughty child rather than one with anxiety, hence creating a sense of school phobia in her.

We are now in talks to move her schools, which will obviously create more anxiety, but it's how the school deal with it that's important.

So again, even though not diagnosed, the traits are there. Nature caused her to be a "worrier" and intelligent, perhaps they go hand in hand, but nurture (the nursery) handled things well and she settled. Nurture (the school) handled her like a naughty child and now she's near school phobia.
 
Once upon a time, there were simply naughty children, children who didn't fit in, children who were 'different' to all the others. Then one day, some scientist or other said "Hey, these food colourings, they make rats to funny things, maybe they do the same to children!" but by then all the naughty children had grown up and had their own children who were now allergic to E102 and E110. A few years passed and we realised that it wasn't food colouring at all, and infact it was ADHD and these children needed to be pumped full of Ritalin in order to keep them docile.

As the years passed, another generation has been spawned, and the cycle begins anew, only this time its autism, a catch-all phrase that covers a huge spectrum of development disorders, from social awkwardness through to non-verbalism, the range traits and symptoms is mind-boggling, and even today we don't know what the cause is, we dont know how to fix it, heck, we don't know what IT is.

The human brain is far too complicated for current medical science to fully understand, a slight chemical imbalance during development, is all it takes to throw a young brain out of whack. Give it a few years and something else will come along to explain why some children behave differently to others.

I turned 40 this year, I was diagnosed as being high functioning autistic almost a decade ago, do I care? not really, nowt I can do about it now. I have coping mechanisms in place that allow me to maintain a full and mostly happy life. I have a job, I have friends, I don't go out much but then I'm old enough to know better. I don't let it hold me back, but I am aware of it, and know that sometimes it means that I will misinterpret something important, or say completely the wrong thing. But what the hell, life's too short to worry.
 
FrenchTart said:
I think that's probably a bit of a typo or brain fart moment rather than the poster thinking it was correct...
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You hope! :D

Either that or it was obtained from the University of Deepwoods Georgia - Ey Maw, Paw, I did done get ma Pee hach dee! Lookie here, I done did do squirrel eatin research!
 
Hikari Kisugi said:
Specific alleles with multiple mutations, or a host of 'normal' genes in funny patterns out of interest?

-edit, is there any sex linkage? do they tend to be dominant alleles, thus we are seeing more of it?
Is it all genetically diagnosable, or are they using alternative testing methodologies?

I know I could look all this up, but sometimes it is easier to have someone who knows explain in simple terms.
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It's not specific alleles or mutations in a specific gene, as most affected individuals have a mutation only found in that person. We have databases set up that record the mutations found in different patients to identify any correlation.

As there are so many different pathways and transcription factors involved in neurology a mutation in any of these components can leads to what we classify as an autistic spectrum disorder. In fact, individuals with autism are more likely to have other neurology problems such as fragile X syndrome because any mutation in such a complex network of interactions will often have other effects.

One group in my lab are studying a specific transcriptional regulator as a mutation was found in that gene within a local patient. This transcription factor affects the expression of a large number of genes which puts the usual fine balance of gene expression off. As you could imagine a mutation in any of these individual genes would have also altered the balance of gene expression to different levels of severity.

As such there is no genetic test because it's not as straight forward as, for example, cystic fibrosis where the mutations all occur at known alleles. Due to this, the testing comes down to a point scoring questionnaire on behaviour and I believe any perceived increase in the disorder is only because we've become more aware of it.

As for sex linkage males are affected disproportionately more than females. Just like fragile X syndrome which is again, more common in individuals with ASD.

Edit:
Oh, here's a fun fact for you. We (well, not me personally, I'm a yeast guy and work in synthetic biology rather than autism studies) often use mice in autism studies. Mice can be considered to be on the spectrum based on their socialising and recorded amount of squeaks to other mice!
 
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Jono8 said:
:(
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I'll be honest, I wrote that message in the pub but you're correct. During my thesis I recognised that I wrote 'I done' quite a few times to my embarrassment. I blame Scotland where the spoken language by most individuals takes a relax view to grammar and breeds bad habits in writing.
 
To be honest i'm no professional.

But i've been around my friends younger brother. He's really young. And you can quickly tell he has something up with him.... he is diagnosed with being austistic.

Just the way he speaks/behaves/interacts with other children it's very clear.
 
I often wonder if autistic people are solipsists. Their inability to show empathy leads me to this conclusion. Anyone know the answer? Are autistic people solipsists?
 
fornowagain said:
My 13 year old son is Autistic, it could be described as severe. He can't function without support, in some area he's very high functioning and in others he's like a child of 5. He has three siblings and I can tell you from experience it has nothing to do with conditioning, it's a very real and debilitating developmental disorder. It was obvious that he was different from a very early age. Living with him is a daily challenge and it's only getting worse.
Try not to think all Autistic people are like the one's you see on the higher end of the spectrum. 25% are non-verbal for starters. If you met him it wouldn't take long for some pretty extreme aberrant behaviour to appear. Dealing with Autistic meltdowns with a child that's nearly as strong as a man, obsessions, compulsions. It's a very long list of behaviours which I won't bore you with but's it's not a lot of fun.
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Absolutely this, is the best description of autism here. Parents/people with little experience tend to jump on the autism bandwagon when their child displays abnormal behaviour, not realising that the above is something which rears its head much earlier on in a child's life and is very much more severe in behaviour.

To answer the question of the original post, autism is a medical issue and not social conditioning.
 
I'll tell you, it's a burden when you can see something in the detail that nobody around you can see.

I'd say 'blessed with a burden', but it doesn't always feel like that.
 
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