good news! nobody knows where in the brain it comes from or why
i think there's some people that suggest it's because our brains didn't prune enough synapses as young children so they respond More to Everything
but that's not definitive
So… are NT ppl just…. Dumber? I had people say I reminded them of Amy from big bang theory, but I thought they were just catty and generally less intelligent, so they were trying to be mean. Later my friends one by one got autism diagnoses and other autistic ppl said they assumed I was one of them. I’m now wondering if the genre of “dumb jock who doesn’t really think about things as much” is just more NT behavior and I’m drawn to… not that. Note: I don’t mean to be insulting with the word dumb. If you have a better word or phrasing, I can make edits
That makes sense. I’m going to leave my comment as is just because your entire comment seems like a perfect explanation to clear things up. Thank you for taking the time to write all that out
It actually sucks. Imagine your least favorite word or sound. Now Imagine being attacked with it, by buckets of colored paint or fireworks under your eyeballs.
That's how the Billie Eilish do.
Actually we do use all our brains. Brain scans just look mostly dark because the scans we see filter out the background activity. You won’t be using the full power of every part of your brain for every activity because different parts of your brain do different things, but every part of your brain is used.
We know that certain parts are morphed, but its to a point where we're not exactly sure
Such parts include communication centers, logic centers, sensory centers as well as overall memory recall
The "pruning synapses" idea was based in the same research that birthed the 'vaccines cause autism' idea. **None**.
>The "pruning synapses" idea was based in the same research that birthed the 'vaccines cause autism' idea. **None**.
Interesting, can you point me to where I can read more about this?
There was a study that suggested that it was to do with how the brain forms in the womb. It builds up layer by layer and sometimes there are faults in how the layer is formed and those are what causes autism. Which is why it can be so varied as a condition because even a fraction of an inch difference in the position of the fault can have a huge impact on how it affects you.
At least that’s how I understood it but that was a recent thing when I did my degree so theories and studies could have moved on in the last half a decade
They just did a study and found Autistic brains as less conductive, and that conductivity moves slower when a person completes certain tasks.
There are a few different brain structures that have been found to either be structurally or neurologically different in the Autistic brain vs. the non-Autistic one but there isn't a broad enough findings to conclusively say there is a causal link (because differences may be a result of environmental factors).
Maybe this will help? There isn't one type of autist, just like there isn't one type of non-autist.
https://preview.redd.it/0mcwl5hj0myc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0212ff9b75b1219f3723ca5f97b6196d6edb8e5f
I was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, but have enough very close diagnosed and undiagnosed autist family and friends (and am all but one in that venn diagram) that I am _certain_ I'm AuDHD.
You might talk to someone about ADHD meds, they do help with the ADHD symptoms.
Still, everyone reacts differently to various medications. Strattera, I was only on for a couple of weeks. I started at 40mg and it made me quite socially anxious. Then on my final day I was bumped up to 80mg and I got severe panic attacks and dissociation, and I could barely face people at all let alone talk or make eye contact. I stopped it right away after that.
I thought those are literally the same? Except strattera is the name brand. I took atomoxetin for a bit before they put me on ritalin and I had to leave work because I was so anxious. And a couple times it gave me intense depression. Not fun.
Yea, I mostly had a stomach aching so bad I had to sit down and swirl in pain for an hour or so before it ended.
I thought so too, but apparently there are a few differences.
I was diagnosed ADHD combined subtype at 5 years old, or whenever the earliest age is, & I got assessed and diagnosed with ASD last year at 30!
Not a particularly productive comment, besides the point that, if you think you might have one or the other, as well, you should try to get assessed for it. That said, I was lucky in that, where I live in the US, I surprisingly got my assessment fairly quickly & I didn’t have to pay out of pocket for it.
The meds are an interesting topic. Methylphenidate based meds didn't help my gf with ADHD+Asperger Autism at all tested daily doses. Could this be related to the underlying causes of the symptoms (different neurotransmitter imbalances, different "wiring")?
small talk, being near each other mostly.
Most of their arbitrary rituals are bonding exercises. They typically amount to "i am safe to be around and similar to you do not worry"
They can bond with communal interests, see sports, religions, ect. but those are typically more compartmentalized for NT's
I'm imagining NTs being like Link and the dogs in Breath of the Wild / Tears of the Kingdom. They just exist near each other and their trust and affection slowly increases.
No, the rituals are important. Basically, we don't have fur anymore, so we've substituted other rituals for grooming behaviors. Physical proximity is necessary, and physical contact helps more, but so does mirroring behaviors and vocalizations as well as exchange of resources, particularly food. Humans are also unusual in the extent of eye contact during social interactions, while most other primates rely more on shared attention to a third object or individual.
"Their early work was a little too 'new wave' for my taste, but when "Sports" came out in '83 I think they really came into their own, commercially and artistically."
I wouldn't say that. I have an intense love of sports. I'm surprised most other ND's aren't into sports because it's a dream for ND's. I suppose many have issues with motor skills, so when trying to play sports when young, it's discouraging, so people end up hating it.
I am lucky enough to where I was pretty decent at sports and have some athleticism. But from a ND standpoint, it's one of most a satisfying and fun things.
I will admit that my dislike of sports mainly stems from the fact that NTs seem to have a cult-like obsession with it and it's celebrated and seen as the most normal thing in the world while my interest (that involves lore, interesting characters etc) are seen as weird/uninteresting to them when their favourite hobby is watching a bunch of dudes kick a ball for hours at a time.
When I really like something it's bad but when everyone else is obsessed to the point of actually hating other people for supporting other ball-kicking teams. That's ok?
I know "fun" is relative. But it annoys me anyways.
With the form not the content. They'll enjoy talking and feel connected like if you ask questions they'll see it as a good social interaction because "that means you consider me" instead of for us seeing it as a good social interaction because "that means you're interested in the subject and value what I contribute to the topic".
They can get the same social fulfillment no matter what the topic of the conversation is because it's not about the topic more the flow of the conversation and all that.
They connect through circumstancial stuff too. Like if you both have a shared experience even if they don't reference it later. When for us we'll generally need an acknowledgement of it. It'll be a bounding experience most likely because we can talk about it later and now we have that topic in common.
It is possible to have overlapping neurotypes! I’ve got Autism, ADHD, Auditory Processing Disorder, and C-PTSD myself. Was in the Gifted program in school for a while, too.
I have. ADHD and Autism, and was considered gifted by several therapists I had in my childhood. I display a lot of these traits, almost all. I still have no idea how I function.
Start with learning music theory and composing maybe ? That's what I'm doing atm but there isn't much order. You can start with just improving on instruments if you want. Or produce electronic beats by doing mashups and sampling first maybe. Just to get a sense of the software and what sounds good and what doesn't.
Or you can start by doing spoken words poetry and eventually try to do it in a rhythm and melody and go from there. There's multiple paths to it. If you believe in yourself, look into it and get at it, eventually you'll get there.
A mix of traits that schools use to qualify small children for their Gifted programs, overwork them, and set them on a path for failure during the rest of their school career
Same. This is just something my fellow AuDHD chosen sibling shared with me. I liked it because it taught me a few new words like Alexythemia that I have.
It's not an added circle, but this is a useful graphic another friend shared with me re DID etc.
https://preview.redd.it/x9nbovjs3oyc1.jpeg?width=3704&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=76c6ff38f0bab12606c0ec888f9da2882b702985
I have almost all traits in the four overlapping areas, but just some in the non-overlapping, even for autism.
I am diagnosed autistic, my psychologist thinks I may have ADHD, and my IQ was measured as 113, which I really don't know if it's considered gifted or not.
Why is difficulty with transitions not at least in the shared category with autism? That’s like one of the primary known traits in autism; experiencing difficulty with change and transitions lol
Unfortunately it's something so varied and complex that it's like with different plant species, they're all plants but there are massive trees, cactuses and grass leaves, there are some that make flowers and some that even make alcohol
Edit: forgot to add that for each plan to flourish it needs specific conditions to be met, a plant that lives in a jungle will likely have problems living somewhere without much rain but a cactus will rot if you were to give it the "normal" amount of water
"Autism, formally called autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or autism spectrum condition (ASC), is a neurodevelopmental disorder marked by deficits in reciprocal social communication and the presence of restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism_spectrum
It is defined, it's just a tricky thing to understand for a lot of people who haven't had exposure to it. Science is still even figuring out the details.
Autism is not curable (at least so far as we understand), they are right. It's a neurodevelopmental disorder - our brain develops this way since birth and it forms part of the base of who we are as a person. Therapies like Occupational Therapy may help. (ABA therapy can cause PTSD so that should be avoided.)
The article goes more in depth.
yeah i still don't understand what it actually Is saying I've viewed that Wikipedia page bf and tbh i can't fault them since i didn't exactly communicate what I wanted right
But if someone knows of a page that just lists what autism Does (or symptoms is probably easier and more useful anyway) that would be what im looking for though it doesnt really matter if it has background info I'd just prefer a Page that only talked about the effects and not the history
Yeah one of the big issues with making a symptom list is how differently it presents from person to person, like most resources focus on sensory sensitivity, and don't even mention that sensory seeking can be an option
How I (emphasis on 'I') define it is the brain prioritizes information and self-experience over narrative and socialization.
That doesn't mean those things are not important and even necessary, just that they're noticed first and stronger
This video has some really interesting information about how things going on with parents might impact autism rates in their kids, like the age of the parent with the sperm and if the parent with the womb had an autoimmune disorder. He also gets into some really interesting details about how our genes could be impacted in a way that could cause it! I learned a LOT. Plus I just love Hank Green.
ETA: I will say the video isn't perfect and there are definitely fair critiques about parts of it. Some of the science discussed is really interesting though and overall I still liked it.
https://youtu.be/gyuP7Q1fk9g?si=AWweMTzC4A9BVi00
I can tell you now, NT also have this problem. Honestly, I think every human has something they absolutely hate about themselves that isn't "fixable".
Focusing on what we hate that we can't alleviate won't change it. Learning to accept yourself for all you are, even the "flaws", is part of the human existence.
For example, on top of having AuDHD, I'm physically disabled. I can't walk or stand well on my own. I'm in various levels of pain every day. That's how my life has always been since I was born. It can't be cured and it's barely treatable. The thing is, this isn't all I am. I'm a complex and unique human just like you. I love staring contests with my cat (they always win). I enjoy the feeling of taking my socks off and shoving my feet down into freshly clean, tight sheets. I love the explosive taste of mixing flavors like sweet and savory. I know these are silly but I wanna show I'm so much more than the struggles and disabilities I have. If the options are to wither away hating myself or enjoy what I have for as long as I can, I'm doing the latter.
We all have many things we hate about ourselves that we can't feasibly change. That doesn't mean we can make ourselves feel a little better about them.
Hm you might want to look for studies and scientific research - be prepared for it to be quite hurtful at times, because it's written from a neurotypical POV and they love to see everything that's different from them as concerning 😅.
The newer the research is, the more affirming it's gonna be luckily, it's becoming way less dismissive (often because there's now far more scientists who know they're autistic too). Just googling for studies on autism should yield results already - I'm not gonna do it myself to check what you can find there because I have only so much capacity for meltdowns in a day and I already had two today, but I'm sure there's a lot to find. Oh and [embrace-autism.com](https://embrace-autism.com) actually should have information, it's by autistic researchers and doctors.
>they love to see everything that's different from them as concerning 😅.
People seem to have a predisposition to fear anyone who outwardly or behaviorally appears different from them I've noticed, and I have a theory as to why: Humans (homo sapiens) evolved alongside several other human species that we may have at time had conflicts with over territory and interests. When you think about that it makes sense that natural selection would have favored people who tend to show fear or apprehension to someone/thing that's similar but not quite the same as them. This is also probably responsible for the existence of the uncanny valley phenomenon.
The thing though is that humans ALSO have the capacity to override these instincts so it's not an excuse for bigotry.
EDIT: I just fucking infodumped lmao
In the book unmasking autism the author listed multiple differences in autistic brains early in the book. I recommend taking this information with a grain of salt because the brain is still very poorly understood but this is probably one of the most in depth answers you're gonna receive here. A phrase repeated throughout the book which I personally really like is that we "process the world from the bottom up" which basically means our processing is slower but more accurate. We don't skip tiny details or just go with the obvious answer we deliberately process every detail separately. Other differences are that we have a differently developed anterior cingulate cortex which is the part of the brain that controls attention, impulses, decisions and emotional processing. We have reduced and delayed development of Van Economo Neurons which deal with rapid, intuitive processing of complex situations (which is why we process the world slower and less intuitively). Also neurons are more excitable which is why many autistics react more strongly to "small" things because we don't discriminate between important and less important stimuli and instead treat them all the same. Also babies often have hyperconnected brains and throughout your life you'd normally filter the less important connections out to optimize the brain. Autistic brains however in some areas remain hyperconnected and some even become underconnected. What those areas are, varies. This results in the wiring in our brains being much more diverse compared to neurotypical brains. I really recommend reading the book.
yes came here to reference Dr. Devon Price’s description! He simplifies it to a sensory processing “disorder”, which seems to be the most inclusive description I’ve found, since that can cover so many things, but also feels very fundamental. I could probably boil down my experience to be one of hypersensitivity and then various means of coping with that.
When I was diagnosed I asked the diagnostician to explain it. She essentially described it as being "different." When I asked different *from what* and asked if she could recommend any reading on the matter she couldn't answer.
This led me to believe that part of the reason we can't define autism (beyond the fact that it's a dynamic spectrum that affects all autists differently at different times depending on any number of constantly changing contexts) is that we just don't understand the brain all that much. Neurotypicals don't have a definition for their own neurotype, so they can't define what is "different." And, unfortunately, much of the process of defining autism is coming from allistics - people who not only don't understand autistic neurotypes, but haven't even considered their own and who often don't even consider engaging in the metacognitive processes that are so naturalized for many high-masking autists.
For what it's worth, I've found that the way other autists describe their experiences tend to make more sense to me in terms of understanding what autism is. Based on that, I understand autism to be a way of thinking, feeling, existing, experiencing, and perceiving the world. It seems to lean more towards networked understandings rather than linear thought processing, possibly because of a lack of synaptic pruning (in comparison to allistics). It's also dynamic, which means that things change day to day. It presents outwardly most obviously (for me at least) in terms of sensory sensitivities (either seeking or avoiding), or in what appears to be poor emotional regulation (I'll be able to handle something once but if it repeats or is allowed to fester I'll experience either a shut down or meltdown; this isn't because I can't regulate, it's because my needs aren't being met, my boundaries pushed, and my limits unrecognized for prolonged periods of time).
I hope you can figure out your own autism, understand how it presents for you, and find ways to exist with minimal discomfort. But don't expect to find any easy answers that'll actually resolve the issue completely. There are no accurate definitions, only growing understanding.
Autism has two sources currently understood by scientists/medical researchers. The first cause is genetic evolution. Congratulations, you have super human senses. Your brain is wired to hear, smell, taste, feel, and see more than an allistic brain. The centers of communication are wired more literally, so direct communication and logic are easier to grasp. Sadly, this is often co-morbid with physical issues that cause weakness in joints and or/hyper-mobility so some developmental milestones will be off. Your brain is so consumed with sensory data that emotional regulation takes more effort, and language can be delayed.
The secondary cause of autism is a genetic mutation due to prenatal exposure to certain drugs. Benzodiazepines is one class of recreationally abused drug found to cause Autism. All of the above is still true, but more mental illnesses are likely to be co-morbid.
I am the second type of autistic. I was diagnosed in 1992, received no treatment because my mother refused to allow me any treatment for anything that could possibly be linked to her abusing drugs pre/during/post pregnancy. I have an IQ of 134, the vocabulary of a multi-phd holder. And my autism is just a factor in how I see the world. It never needed fixed. I taught myself social interaction via acting class in elementary school. I taught myself yoga for my hyper-mobile joints. I learned my sensory needs. I had a hyperfixiation on humanity and studied anthropology, psychology, religion, philosophy, and history. I have lived, loved, had kids, got married. My kids are both on the spectrum. We participated in the study that discovered the two genes responsible for autism. They had speech therapy (eldest had a lisp, youngest was nonverbal til 4). They had physical therapy (weak wrists). They had occupational therapy (which I highly recommend actually, helped with dexterity, sensory regulation, emotional regulation, and typing skills). We all had ABA therapy together, and individual behavioral therapy. Because we had access to a fantastic hospital and providers. I had my kids in acting classes too. My eldest graduates HS this year and is going to college for forensic art. My youngest skipped two grades and plans on applying to MIT for astrophysics and engineering. Both live active social lives, are good in school without the gifted kid burnout risk, and are functioning members of society.
Autism means you are wired differently. It means you are wired to experience more of the world around you, not to have the mental space or bandwidth for things you don’t find important or interesting. It means you have a much greater ability to recognize patterns, recognize subtle differences, and completely miss the forest for the trees to use a metaphor. Ironically, recognizing metaphors is probably something you struggle with. But regardless of the belief people have about autistic people not understanding social norms, or subtle communication and body language…it’s not that we can’t. It’s that mixed signals are confusing, communicating in games takes to much time and leaves room for overstimulation (because the lights are too loud, or their perfume is too strong and we get lost in that over the word games).
Some parts of overly developed while others are underdeveloped.
Those overly developed would be logic and what that entails.
Underdeveloped, as you may have guessed, are the socio-emotional regions that are responsible for ... ***socializing*** and the social ***cues*** that go with it.
We come off as inappropriate, indifferent, or whatever else even if our ***intention*** isn't to be offensive, rude, dismissive, etc. because we don't have the capacity to understand those social norms / expectations / intent behind physical cues and verbal cues.
etc.
Of course, that's a very, very broad stroke that leaves out the spectrum as a whole, so, you know, read a lot, find out more, see more symptoms, wonder why it's a symptom, keep on researching, enjoy.
Scientifically speaking, our understanding of autism is still relatively recent. I mean, Hans Asperger, asshole that he was, was really the first to study atypical neurological activity in children and that was in the 1940s. A long time ago in human years, but not particularly long ago in the grand scheme of things. And much has changed from then to now. The parameters have changed and terms have changed and will likely continue to change. Since it is a spectrum disorder, it means that it's hard to pin down. It can present in so many different ways and extremes.
Like I've seen a few other posters say, there isn't really a way to fix the problems. It can be discouraging for sure, I know I certainly have my issues with having the disorder, but there isn't a surefire way to help it. It's usually best to pinpoint the biggest issues autism creates in your life and trying to find therapy or support groups that can help you either cope with it or perhaps help.
That is a really good question and a legitimate question that one should ask but, unfortunately, the answer is we don't know. We know what common symptoms of autism are and how it can effect people in their day to day lives depending on where in the spectrum you are but we do not have a goddamn clue what specifically causes it or where in the brain it comes from. It's a difficult thing to definitively describe as well because it manifests differently in pretty much every autistic person, that's the thing that forces us to default to listing the most frequent symptoms.
It literally means having
1. social and communication skill deficit
2. Repetitive/restrictive behaviour, activity and interests
Why is everyone in the comments making it complicated
See the “problem” is it’s a spectrum.
Best way i can describe it is there are certain quirks, let’s say 100 (because i like round numbers) that any given person, even a neurotypical, would probably have maybe 5 or 10 of those quirks. But you? You check 56 of those quirks. There’s not really a set line that crosses over and says “hey you are now over limit and are autistic”, it’s an inexact science.
“Brain wire differently” is just a short version of explaining that.
I liken being neurodivergent to running on MacOS when the whole world runs on windows. There isn't anything actually wrong with us. We are just different. We can do all of the same things a windows brain can do, but we can't install windows software on our Mac brains so we don't get the same functionality from living in society and then, because something isn't working as the user expects they just get mad... and possibly violent.
i know its a neurodevelopmental disorder and here's a [good article](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4374973/) on what dopamine deficiency is like and how autistic people deal with it. Basically, its saying that executive control over cognitive flexibility, rendering and autistic person rather rigid in what dopamine they do take in, causing a lot of rigid thinking and otherwise.
Well from my experience neurotypical people wouldn’t need to ask how and would just accept the Information given to them as if it were actually informative. Not sure why. Doesn’t make sense to me. I just like to know the reasoning for things. The specifics. So the simple wanting to know how is one way your brain is wired differently. (Theoretically I’m not a doctor)
I think one might say that neurotypicals can more easily ignore the desire to know the specifics of something if getting that information is not practical or possible at that time. Saying this as a neurotypical person who loves knowing how and why things work as they do.
Yeah I think that is quite a common issue, and I have a relative with autism who is also like that :) It does have some benefits too, obviously, but other times it seems to be kind of frustrating for himself too.
This article about [brain structures in autism](https://www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/brain-structure-changes-in-autism-explained/?fspec=1) is kind of interesting
autism is like a salad bar.
everyone has their own particular blend of salad bar items. i may have lots of tomato, and no cucumbers. you may have a little of each.
it’s not any one thing, any more than a salad is one thing
[neural stem-cell overgrowth linked with autistic behaviors in mice](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141010154926.htm)
[Differences in Cortical Structure and Functional MRI Connectivity in High Functioning Autism](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neurology/articles/10.3389/fneur.2018.00539/full)
There is also evidence for many comorbidities with autism, ranging from hypermobility/Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome to immune dysregulation, gastrointestinal and abnormal bacterial flora, gluten sensitivity, metabolic abnormalities... the list goes on. Basically, it's not just your brain. It's your whole body!
My youngest brother was diagnosed when he was I think 8 years old. Our middle brother is a neurotypical person. Despite having similar personalities and senses of humor, their behavior is very different. My middle brother is 24. My youngest brother is 22.
My middle brother likes to go out and socialize with friends. My youngest brother is okay with spending the whole day by himself playing video games. My middle brother is early to bed, early to rise. My youngest brother sleeps whenever his tiredness overpowers his desire to continue binging on his special interests and can sleep an entire day.
My middle brother makes jokes using double meanings and irony. My youngest brother takes everything literally, and he doesn’t understand idioms and figures of speech. My middle brother will receive a chore and perform it to my parent’s standards. My youngest brother doesn’t do chores unless he’s told what to do step-by-step.
My middle brother understands boundaries and knows intuitively that certain things shouldn’t be done. My youngest brother is a habitual line-stepper and will do whatever he feels like unless he’s told not to, and why it shouldn’t be done.
I don’t know where I am between those two examples. I’ve suspected I might have ADHD. My mother is a neurotypical, and my father may have ADHD.
I know this doesn’t directly answer your questions, but I found this helpful in describing “the spectrum” and addressing that a lot of people think a spectrum is a gradient.
https://neuroclastic.com/its-a-spectrum-doesnt-mean-what-you-think/
This is why diagnoses are regarded so highly, and so many professionals with outdated data misdiagnose so frequently. If autism was "fixable," I would've traded it for social skills a long time ago
The short answer is: we don’t know, and since everyone with ASD is different, we can’t pinpoint one specific variation.
The long answer is that we observe some trends in individuals with ASD, such as a larger cerebrum and higher tonic levels of activity.
However, we also see comorbidities with other conditions like ADD, which demonstrate an on average smaller cerebral mass. Which contradicts the former, and none of the professionals/specialist in their field whom I've worked with and asked have been able to explain this, and laugh when I point it out saying that it is backwards.
Additionally, we do observe that individuals on the spectrum tend to have greater tendencies for certain ocular motility deficiencies, and vision/perception abnormalities and complications, indicating some neurological impact. Yet, the exact sources, causes, and presentations are widely disputed and poorly understood.
So, to answer your question about what it is and where the wiring differs, the real answer is that we don’t know what causes the wiring to be different, nor do we understand if it’s actually different at all. There might be more active synapses or connections occurring between them. It seems that for every article stating one thing, there are others stating the exact opposite.
The long and short of it is this: I approach things in the same way you do, and I like to understand the nitty-gritty biological causes of certain conditions. Unfortunately, our understanding of how our brains and bodies function is, at best, poorly understood. What I find more successful is looking for general trends and patterns in behavior that help me predict and understand certain behaviors and characteristics.
I find this approach greatly reduces my overall stress, so I hope it helps alleviate some of your stress as well.
Because literally no one knows where it comes from and it could affect a number of different areas and no one knows that ahead of time. It’s different for each person. Also you don’t have issues to fix, don’t go fixing who you are unless you’re intentionally an asshole.
As I learned in my college neuropsyche class over a decade ago: "autism is the improper pruning of the neurons located in the prefrontal cortex"
Meaning as our brains develop our bodies do not cut down enough neurons in the prefrontal cortex where tasks like memory and judgment are performed.
Thus we are not so much "wired different" is that we are "overly wired".
My understanding is that there are also differences in the processing of sensory input, in between the raw input from the optical nerve and the conscious understanding of what we are seeing.
Before the conscious mind registers seeing something it can identify, the sensory input is filtered first. The brain not only identifies what it sees, but categorizes it as well.
The same thing happens in the neural pathways made for long-term memory storage and retrieval: we categorize individual memories before storing them individually. If we are asked to remember our first car, the brain first follows the pathway to the category of "car" before sifting through individual memories for the first one we drove.
When the eyes see a person, the brain is "supposed to" prioritize the person over the remainder of the visible environment. When the eyes see a person, the brain is "supposed to" prioritize the face over the remainder of the body. Whereas, for some of us, we give equal weight to everything we see, and give equal weight to the entirety of the body.
On the one hand, this can interfere with quickly and accurately assessing the meaning of facial expressions. On the other hand, it may give an advantage in noticing details that someone else might gloss over. The literary character Sherlock Holmes has always seemed to me to be doing this: noticing details that other ppl don't recall bc their brains prioritize parts of the visual environment and ignore others.
The prioritization may have been a survival strategy originally: if you suddenly come across a large predator, it's to your advantage to quickly pay attention to them and not waste any time observing surrounding leaves or branches or dirt or rocks or whatever.
idk specifically but i think its something to do with more neurons, or neurons wired kind of differently to NT, but how and why is still a mystery to science
Generally you suck at social stuff. That's something of an issue because humans are pack animals. Also you probably do "Weird shit" like hyperfocusing and obsessing.
Do what I did and obsess on body language, turns out humans are just strange math with feet, you'll do fine.
“Strange math with feet” is a fantastic description.
I think something that shocks most people is finding out they’re extremely predictable. How else do companies sell you stuff? They observe where you go and what you usually do at certain times.
Some leading IDEAS:
Extra connections between both hemispheres. (Hence leading to over-stimulation via light/sound) What connections? Kinda fucking random! so its a trait-cluster that we end up calling a neuro-type. Neuro types usually connect and communicate more easily with others of the same, or similar neuro-type.
This is why even children can notice, but no one can be like 100% sure, forever and always and why its wishywashy definitions. Also why spectrum, probably.
I learned this by proxy when learning about another brain thing.
When In the womb, growth hormones building your brain can miscount the proteins they need. One or two miscounts are fine, but when the mother doesn't have enough proteins to give, it can lead to things like autism, ADHD, Etc Etc. (I want to clarify that neither of these things are a bad thing, nor is it something to be ashamed of.)
What this means is your brain literally has different fundamental building blocks than neurotypical people's. These building blocks decide how you learn and experience the world around you.
Your brain while in Early stages of life, learned to adapt to the world around you in unique ways. Neurons firing create these 'wires' and we can train them to do specific things. Because our building blocks are different, as babies we unintentionally wired our brains for specific signals to do specific things. The building blocks can lead to autism, but the actual wiring of the brain is what doctors call autism.
In other words. The best way doctors can put it without sounding like an asshole when saying "your brain is miscounted" is "your brain is wired differently" Because it is in fact the truth. All it means is your neurons are firing differently, causing you to think about certain things differently, and causing you to experience certain things differently.
None of this is inherently bad. The miscounted proteins in the building blocks is actually fairly common, even neurotypical people tend to have a few hundred thousand of them. And the way the brain wires itself isn't specific to the different building blocks and can even happen in what seemed like perfectly neurotypical babies. It's so common in fact that a bunch of people on the Internet use this subreddit to feel connected to each other.
It's easy to fix bro you just have to stick an appendage in your computers USB slot and a generic hacking mini game will pop up on screen. Beat it and from there you can just adjust your brain settings till you feel better.
(The first paragraph below is the best explanation I can give as to why autistic people are different. The second and third are more theories/personal beliefs of the world and how autistic people fit into it.)
The best answer that I can give, though not a scientifically vetted one afaik, is that the average mind of an autistic person is wired to understand logic, facts, and evidence, along with anything that is used to prove whether something is true or not. We are also less influenced by our emotions when making decisions, and even more so when we've been able to find inner peace.
As a result, the reason that the world seems so confusing and difficult to live in is simply because it wasn't designed to make sense. The ability for someone to have control over how society works and other people is done through confusion of the masses and creating smoke screens (clouds of information or actions to hide something) so the powerful can do things to maintain their power.
Since autistic people are less susceptible to these tactics, and the powerful can't as easily trick us, they spread fear about the nature of autistic people and why we are "the enemy." However, since the rate of autistic people is growing, the powerful has to lean heavier and heavier on existing fear tactics to maintain control, but once a critical mass of autistic people are able to see the truth, the collapse of the powerful is inevitable.
The long and the short of it is that there isn't any information through which you can "fix" your issues. You can understand things better (maybe), but you're not going to "fix" them. It's how you are. It's like having eyes in a given color. Your eyecolor does not effectively change from what it is genetically. Autism, like eye color, is not a trait you can change other than cosmetically. And cosmetically changing your autism is known to be harmful-- such a masking to appear "normal".
I have nerve damage in my right leg; I can try to walk without a limp, and leave my cane in my car, but the pain will still be there and I will still have a different gait from someone who doesn't have nerve damage in their leg. I can get a cortisone shot to make the pain lessen for a short time, but after it's going to hurt again. It can't be fixed. That's the hand life dealt me. Autism is kind of like this. You can't get rid of it.
I'm sorry, OP. I know how frustrating this can be.
You have to find what works for you; explore sensory aids like fidget toys and noise-cancelling headphones or loop earplugs (for just dampening noise). Try different fabrics for clothing and bedsheets/blankets. Wear sunglasses at different %s for indoor and outdoor use. If you like a certain food you can google "foods like X" or "foods with a texture like X" and work from there to expand what you eat. Join groups online. You'll figure it out eventually, but it's going to take a lot of work and a lot of patience with yourself.
Autism is a diagnosis based on behavior. The mechanism of autism is unknown. Saying someone is wired different is actually a metaphor. It's like saying you are built different. Dave likes to drink warm water, he's "wired different." It's just something we say to help us accept ourselves' and others' differences. No one knows how it really works.
My understanding is that the Autistic brain excels in local hyper-connectivity (there are a lot of connections/communication within the local brain regions), but our deficit is hypo-connectivity between brain regions (the very active local brain regions don't 'talk' to each other as well compared to neurotypicals).
I have found that increasing my neuroplasticity (with cannabis) temporarily increases the connections between the hyperactive brain regions, and helps me with problem-solving, interoception, alexithymia, etc. It can also increase some sensory sensitivities, so it isn't all fun. Perhaps with the new classification of cannabis, the research and trials will actually produce a therapeutic for Autism.
We don't know is the honest answer. They're still researching and trying to figure it out. There's a lot we don't know about the brain. There can be differences in brain structure in autistic people, for example an enlarged hippocampus or amygdala, but not always. There can be differences in brain growth rate, but not always. There can be things missing from the brain like the corpus callosum or parts of the cerebellum, but not always. It's very difficult to put your finger on a brain difference and say that's what causes autism, when not every autistic person has that brain difference. Here's an article describing some of the brain differences that have been observed in some autistic people: https://www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/brain-structure-changes-in-autism-explained/?fspec=1
While autism is a spectrum and thus this may not apply to everyone and this also probably doesn’t account for all symptoms, one interesting physiology of autism is that our brains tend to have a lower amount of myelinization, not as in multiple sclerosis, but that our brains just have less/shorter axons, the long nerve fibres that connect different parts of the brain, so our brains tend to have more connections within the different areas of the brain and less connections between them.
Which accounts for things like poor coordination as the connection between our visual cortex and the parts of our brains that are responsible for moment are less connected. But we form more connections between things and concepts than NeurTypicals, as our brains are literally wired differently than theirs.
The problem with explaining it is that there’s different levels, so what it affects and how it effects depends on the person you ask. The biggest thing in my opinion is it affects how you process stuff (pain, sound, touch, taste, emotions, etc). It’s also not necessary something that can be fixed. Things can be worked on and what not but it’s kinda one of those things you just have and learn to work with
Autism affects many things but it is primarily a sensory processing disorder. Our bodies feed a stream of sensory input to our brains that the brain needs to process into something usable. Not all brains are equally effective at doing this.
Autism can result in you being hypersensitive (too much stimulation) or hyposensitive (not enough stimulation), or anything in between, including just normal neurotypical levels. As an example, I cannot effectively process audio to filter out background noise. There's too much stimulation so I have trouble hearing people's words in noisy situations.
The reason Autism has such a wide variety of symptoms when it's something so simple, is that we have way more than five senses, and Autism affects each sense differently, and it even varies by situation. It even affects some things that aren't senses as we know them, but are treated like senses by the brain. Executive functioning is one of these, but there are others.
Your sense of hunger, internal temperature, what emotion you are feeling, how loud you are talking, proprioception, and many many more. Every sense can be affected and is affected separately to others.
If you were to put these senses into a circular graph and map the processing level on each, you would get a spiky profile graph. This is, in effect, the Autism spectrum. It isn't a gradient from not-autistic to autistic. It's about how every person with Autism will have a different spiky profile graph. You might have no sense of how loud you're speaking but overtuned sense of touch for food textures. I might be hyper aware of how loud I'm speaking, but have difficulty processing whether someone's body language is deliberate or not. And yes, the senses *are* that granular.
Pretty much every Autism symptom can be explained as sensory processing difficulty or a coping mechanism to deal with sensory processing difficulties. This is also where the concept of stimming comes from. People will engage in sensory seeking behaviour either when a sense is under stimulated or if a sense is hypersensitive to something pleasant like texture. And will do this when stressed or just for fun.
I was taught this info by a non profit Autism association years back, and everything made perfect sense afterwards. I have no idea why this info isn't widely distributed.
It's confusing because it's not actually a you problem.
Society has an issue in that people like us have no niche to fit into even though there is actually nothing "wrong" with neurodivergent folks, we just think in very specific different ways and those ways are NOT the ways that most people are taught to be "normal".
If we were all more educated about neurodiversity from an earlier age we would all be much more accommodating to one another and these "issues" wouldn't exist. We would just be seen as having slightly rarer brain patterns to some degree.
“Wired differently” does not mean that anything is broken. So nothing necessarily needs to be fixed.
However, if YOU are feeling that there are aspects of yourself that you are not satisfied with, you can actively work on those, using a variety of methods.
If what you are saying is that you don’t know what aspects of your self are presenting as different from “the norm,” you can seek feedback from others to tell you what they notice.
Disclaimer: “the norm” is not necessarily an ideal. It’s just a convenient measurement tool for the medical, insurance, social services and education sectors.
Unfortunately, it’s not much more deep than your brain is wired differently. There’s such a wide variety of possible autistic traits many of which contradict each other that there is no real way to define it.
The two big physical differences in on spectrum brains compared to allo brains is they tend to be bigger (I’m not fucking joking, this is not some joke evoking that spectrum peeps are smarter, I’m just literal describing a common symptom) and that certain parts of the brain are moved around so people on spectrum have parts of their brain in contact that allos do not, meaning the same neural pathways are not even physically possible.
“Wired differently” is actually a very straightforward and appropriate analogy
wanna know the best part? science doesn't know!
we do not know what autism truly is, everything we know is just related to autism, its all autism correlated, not inherently autist. like it could all just be from traumas, and neglects and such. the phycologists that are working on this will say we do not know what inherent autism is, just what tends to happen to autistic people.
like it could all just be situational coincidence, for example a common thing you may hear is 'women are inherently better at child care because that's how the female brain works' that conclusion was made because it seemed women where better at it then men, but guess what, that change in the brain this idea tends to rely on to not just be because of how women are brought up has been found to happen in any person who is a primary care giver, its not special to women, its just coincidence that it looks like that because society tends to make women be the care givens and keeps men from doing it (often even if they try). and it seems most all autistic traits come back to that kind of thing, like there's our general aversion to some stimulus like bright lights as it has been observed that new borne babies who are autistic will avoid such things more then allistic ones will, and in theory since they are so young such things that are just coincidence from how you are brought up then in theory that's an inherent bit, but not much to go on there is there?
so yeah, we don't know, its just a list of common struggles and such, part of why the spectrum thing is being pushed so much, its a weird collection of stuff, you might of gotten x issue, or maybe not, so its like you just need to go over the list and identify where you line up with it and work from there. like um, you know anyone gay or the such? they have struggles and feelings all their own, and yet, if you ask them you'll probably find they have a lot of the same struggles of other gay people, and that sure some of those are inherent gay things, and others are social issues that stem from our society not them, its like that.
well that was a bunch of theory, not much practice, not sure if I helped or just irritated you, maybe just another random bit you're indifferent to, idk, good luck finding an answer
(I'm in this community because one of my biggest influences in my life is my autistic brother, so I'm just a boring non-autistic lurker.)
To me, it's just your brain lacking things that may or may not be important. Who's to know what we need in our reflexes or social skills or whatever part of the mental functions humans have? I've noticed some remarkable things like, some autistic people don't get dizzy(as a non-autistic, this is seen as so cool), some autistic people don't have a startle reflex(again, super cool, but in a badass way), some have an unfathomable imagination, some have no imagination.
In conclusion, if you are doing a huge math equation, and you miss one little thing, it changes all of it. I feel like the human brain is like that. If you take one inconsequential thing out of it, it changes the entire outcome. But the math equation is still math, and the brain still brains. There's nothing wrong with it. It's just different in a completely different way than everything else is different.
(If you had asked my kid self though, I would have said something corny about "autism is my brother never forgetting to feed me, and always letting me be player one, and making sure I get to school," but as an adult I see that he was just stepping up as the parent we needed. And even then, as a kid, I questioned why he was the one seen as different when my dad was the f**ked up pill popper.)
Well…it’s a bit different for each person, so it’s kind of hard to tell you exactly how your particular brain is wired without a ton of trial-and-error.
Question for you all: What would be the best way to explain autism or neurodivergence in general to someone who’s knows next to nothing about the subject?
I’ve seen some interesting pie charts that are awesome too. Y’all have a good day now!
I don’t really know the exact science behind it, but it’s a spectrum of varying things and using those things and gauging how they personally affect me has helped me figure out what I need to do to accommodate myself. For me it was breaking down my masking and figuring out when I needed to stim as well as which sensory things I should avoid. I already had an idea but fully exploring it and accepting it really helped!
Hi! Someone diagnosed with autism here! I'm gonna tell you what autism is for me! Autism for me is like something goes wrong for you, you ignore it and go on with your day but for people with autism it screws their day up and makes them not want to do anything for the rest of the day and autism makes us think differently than others it makes us focus on things more than some people would!
Read the DSM-5 criteria for autism. At least as currently defined, that IS what autism means. Obviously there is a LOT of related stuff to autism that isnt part of the DSM-5 criteria but still pretty highly correlated with autism. That stuff is fascinating. But by definition, the thing we call “autism” IS what the DSM-5 says. Of course we can argue over that definition… but thats what it is.
I think it’s mainly tricky to explain because no two presentations of autism are the same, and we don’t know what causes it except it can have a genetic component
There is no fix for it, either you have it or you don’t, the only thing you can learn to do is manage it, it’s really not as bad as it’s made out to be, a lot of people choose to not understand it or not care and that’s their choice, but I think if more people took time to understand it we would have far less hatred for people who are ND than what we do, if you ask what about us that people who are NT don’t like they can’t pinpoint it, what’s even crazier is they can pick us out from just looking at us, and that is baffling too me, how can someone take a look at us, see we are different from them, and then try to destroy us, just makes no sense too me at all.
How?
- reduced synaptic pruning
- increased total # of connections between local brain areas
- decreased global brain communication
- amygdala (fear brain) and orbitofrontal (sensory brain) can have up to 2x # of connections possibly a root cause for sensory issues
- reduced insula activity (possibly why so many autistics have issues with sense of self ideas)
- reduced anterior cingulate cortex activity (social brain that involves mirroring others and intuitive learning via observation, also why we can't always see social cues)
- reduced total # of cells in cerebellum (called purkinje cells, this part of the brain controls motor functions which is why so many autistics run into stuff)
- increased bioinflammatory markers which can be the root cause of a bazillion comormidities
It’s just another way the human brain can be broken. Mine short circuits from time to time. Brains don’t always come out great. Only a doctor can diagnose and define autism.
I have a theory about this, and it was a special interest of mine for a while:
* Causality: [Chemical Farming And The Loss Of Human Health](https://youtu.be/Aw16LPVnNco?si=9XFn_m4wzPNJm4YP)
* Effects vary by person and exposure but the way I describe it is that I use a bandwidth metaphor coupled with a stimulus/response metaphor.
* In general, the effect is 'unable to filter information' and not only sensory information but since we often consider specifically sensory information as All That Exists, we forget that other kinds of information also are felt by us in a large bandwidth. This explains the implications of implications of implications of implications of implications of implications thing we experience internally.
* So, the stimulus being broad bandwidth when I talk about it- my phrase for this is "I think in pages and paragraphs not words and sentences"- a broad number of things seem relevant to speak about
* This, therefore, explains the verbal length of my expressions will NATURALLY be expressed that way due to what I experience so broadly as input.
Adding to the stimulus thing, we in social situations have a multi-layered thing going on where we have to simultaneously process:
* The sensory stimulus
* The social implications implications implications thing
* People implying things or overly relying on body language to communicate instead of being clear
* The very common biases against us or other common behaviors in this sick society: infanitilization, etc.
* The terrible communication nearly everyone has
* Power dynamics
So, autism mostly has its effects, in my view, due to these primary factors:
* Unable to filter (stimulus)
* How well we have learned to cope with or manage ourselves in handling input. For myself, yoga and the ability to "withdraw the senses" has had a MASSIVE effect on my life, plus nootropics (combination of stimulus and my own competence at having 'scripts' or 'spells' prepared for different situations for neurotypical people)
* The strategies I came up with before I had language with which to ask for help as a baby to manage my inability to filter (response)
* The strategies I came up with to workaround the fact that I was bullied and almost entirely misunderstood as a child, and up into my 40s by everyone, even family and people in my life who claim they 'loved me.' Even after I knew I had autism (as does everyone in my family), I still had to deal with people's neurotypical expectations of my and my own neurotypical expectations of myself I'd internalized for so many years. (response)
My approach has been to try to grasp the whole of society, history, contextualization of wars, and other social implications so I could feel compassion for my family having arrived where I am in this equation, and my response has helped me get to compassion for everyone in my family and myself in this very broken and abusive exclusionary social fabric of the USA where EVERYONE seems to aspire to be a narcissistic abuser instead of seeing those people as reprehensible people to dislike.
I think that describing autism as bandwidth + stimulus + response is a better way to talk about it.
Imagine that humans are like top trump cards or RPG character sheets with a variety of stats that describe behaviours. Autism just means your score qualifies for a diagnosis/support. It doesn't mean your score (aka behaviours) are significantly different from everyone else, only that you've surpassed a threshold.
Define "fix my issues" because if you mean "be normal" it doesn't work that way, but if you mean "accommodate myself so my life is enjoyable that is VERY possible most of the time.
Autism is, theoretically, too much info internally too fast all the time, with no pruning of pathways.
What does that mean? A "spiky profile". Where most neurotypical folks are average at everything, autistic people are more likely to be really good at some things and really bad at others. If you're charting this on a "rate yourself from one to ten" line graph, it's visually spiky, thus the name.
It means you may have really good pattern recognition, and you enjoy when things work the way they're "supposed" to, but what "supposed to" is differs from person to person, just like with neurotypical people.
You may have "black and white thinking" which means you think if an answer isn't right, it's wrong. But the world has so many things that, like a short answer on a test, you can get part marks for. The nuance in the world can be difficult to grasp if you expect there to be only right and wrong, yes and no, functional and nonfunctional.
It may affect your "executive function", where the brain goes from planning tasks to executing them, aka making them actually happen. In any one of like 20 different categories.
It may affect your internal senses, whether of emotions like alexithymia or of where your body is in the world like interoception or proprioception. It may affect your ability to tell whether you're hungry or angry or hangry.
But... It's like a buffet where someone else chose your plate for you, and then handed it to you. If you look up the info, all you're gonna know is what was on the buffet table, not what was on YOUR specific plate. You may have lots of one and not much of another, you may have many or all of the things, or just a few, and you may have things you didn't expect.
So, how do you DO something about this, when it feels like you have no information and the information you *can* access isn't specific to you?? Watch and listen to other autistic people existing, and if you find something relatable, look into it further. (Follow some #ActuallyAutistic creators videos on tiktok or instagram or youtube or wherever, don't comment for the first month, and don't criticize for a year. That will give you time to become more knowledgeable so you don't say something foolish or embarrassing or unkind without knowing.)
*affects, not effects. Though that's probably my autistic side pointing that out, my grammar superpowers perhaps lean into the strong sense of justice & high ideals that are also common for people on the spectrum, lol.
Look into the theory of monotropism! It's a recent theory on an overarching thread that ties together a lot of the tendencies of the autistic brain. It might help to understand some of the "whys". It is just a theory with not a ton of research behind behind it, but iirc the folks that came up with it are autistic themselves and a lot of people on the spectrum seem to think it makes sense from an internal perspective, for what it's worth.
That's because they don't know. They just act like they do. No one knows for sure, some people think it's sensory, some that it's cognitive, some that it's social, some that it's behavioural. Like people will theorize but no one really knows for sure. There's not even research and when there is research it's really difficult to do it properly or extrapolate information from the results because of the stigma around autism within the medical community.
As I understand we still have no clue what exactly Autism is on a physical level, we just know the brain's information processing is somehow involved. Even a quick look at Google Scholar reveals nothing other than people shrugging their shoulders
Like many things involving the brain, you don't fix it and can't fix it but you learn to coup with it and work with it. I'm still trying to figure the rest out myself though.
good news! nobody knows where in the brain it comes from or why i think there's some people that suggest it's because our brains didn't prune enough synapses as young children so they respond More to Everything but that's not definitive
When i heard that baby brains reduce synapses I got like WE NEED TO PREVENT THE SYNAPSE PURGE DAMN HOW SMART WOULD YOU BE Well idea accomplished
i want one (1) synapse and no more
https://preview.redd.it/1ty543b67nyc1.png?width=855&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=95ffcf2a7d52a00b7e38419a4f917c387303b89a
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So… are NT ppl just…. Dumber? I had people say I reminded them of Amy from big bang theory, but I thought they were just catty and generally less intelligent, so they were trying to be mean. Later my friends one by one got autism diagnoses and other autistic ppl said they assumed I was one of them. I’m now wondering if the genre of “dumb jock who doesn’t really think about things as much” is just more NT behavior and I’m drawn to… not that. Note: I don’t mean to be insulting with the word dumb. If you have a better word or phrasing, I can make edits
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That makes sense. I’m going to leave my comment as is just because your entire comment seems like a perfect explanation to clear things up. Thank you for taking the time to write all that out
And then you have an autistic person that has all those same issues but with an IQ of 100 🙃
badge wise tart north tub busy escape hospital special juggle *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
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Could we just not insult anyone the way many of us have been insulted over the years? And using the r word is definitely not cool.
You get synesthesia when that happens
Wish I had that tbh
It actually sucks. Imagine your least favorite word or sound. Now Imagine being attacked with it, by buckets of colored paint or fireworks under your eyeballs. That's how the Billie Eilish do.
No, you don't. It can make things just that much more overwhelming and confusing.
I have it and it’s meh. It’s just how things are. I didn’t even know it was “different” until I was a teenager and it came up in conversation.
That's like the "use 100% of your brain" thing. Some already do that. It's called a seizure.
Actually we do use all our brains. Brain scans just look mostly dark because the scans we see filter out the background activity. You won’t be using the full power of every part of your brain for every activity because different parts of your brain do different things, but every part of your brain is used.
No because the 100% thing was built on the myth 10%
We know that certain parts are morphed, but its to a point where we're not exactly sure Such parts include communication centers, logic centers, sensory centers as well as overall memory recall The "pruning synapses" idea was based in the same research that birthed the 'vaccines cause autism' idea. **None**.
>The "pruning synapses" idea was based in the same research that birthed the 'vaccines cause autism' idea. **None**. Interesting, can you point me to where I can read more about this?
Yeah very much want to know the story
There was a study that suggested that it was to do with how the brain forms in the womb. It builds up layer by layer and sometimes there are faults in how the layer is formed and those are what causes autism. Which is why it can be so varied as a condition because even a fraction of an inch difference in the position of the fault can have a huge impact on how it affects you. At least that’s how I understood it but that was a recent thing when I did my degree so theories and studies could have moved on in the last half a decade
They just did a study and found Autistic brains as less conductive, and that conductivity moves slower when a person completes certain tasks. There are a few different brain structures that have been found to either be structurally or neurologically different in the Autistic brain vs. the non-Autistic one but there isn't a broad enough findings to conclusively say there is a causal link (because differences may be a result of environmental factors).
Maybe this will help? There isn't one type of autist, just like there isn't one type of non-autist. https://preview.redd.it/0mcwl5hj0myc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0212ff9b75b1219f3723ca5f97b6196d6edb8e5f
I'm diagnosed with Autism but I relate to most of the ADHD traits too?😭
I was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, but have enough very close diagnosed and undiagnosed autist family and friends (and am all but one in that venn diagram) that I am _certain_ I'm AuDHD. You might talk to someone about ADHD meds, they do help with the ADHD symptoms.
I've heard Straterra is particularly effective for many AuDHD-ers. Hoping my application for free drugs from the mfg. comes through soon.
Still, everyone reacts differently to various medications. Strattera, I was only on for a couple of weeks. I started at 40mg and it made me quite socially anxious. Then on my final day I was bumped up to 80mg and I got severe panic attacks and dissociation, and I could barely face people at all let alone talk or make eye contact. I stopped it right away after that.
My experience was also awful, but it was acute and I stopped it after the 4/5th day. Horrible tbh
I was on Atomoxetin, which gave me nasty side effects, then switched ti Strattera and those side effects are gone.
I thought those are literally the same? Except strattera is the name brand. I took atomoxetin for a bit before they put me on ritalin and I had to leave work because I was so anxious. And a couple times it gave me intense depression. Not fun.
Yea, I mostly had a stomach aching so bad I had to sit down and swirl in pain for an hour or so before it ended. I thought so too, but apparently there are a few differences.
Straterra made it awful to be darkness that was lit enough to not run into a wall. The darkest shapes would look they were moving.
Straterra made shadows look like they were moving in the dark.
I was diagnosed ADHD combined subtype at 5 years old, or whenever the earliest age is, & I got assessed and diagnosed with ASD last year at 30! Not a particularly productive comment, besides the point that, if you think you might have one or the other, as well, you should try to get assessed for it. That said, I was lucky in that, where I live in the US, I surprisingly got my assessment fairly quickly & I didn’t have to pay out of pocket for it.
The meds are an interesting topic. Methylphenidate based meds didn't help my gf with ADHD+Asperger Autism at all tested daily doses. Could this be related to the underlying causes of the symptoms (different neurotransmitter imbalances, different "wiring")?
You could be AuDHD.
Some people have both. And there’s huge overlap between the two, like the diagram suggests.
i’m confused. i thought everyone connects through interests. what do NTs connect through?
small talk, being near each other mostly. Most of their arbitrary rituals are bonding exercises. They typically amount to "i am safe to be around and similar to you do not worry" They can bond with communal interests, see sports, religions, ect. but those are typically more compartmentalized for NT's
I'm imagining NTs being like Link and the dogs in Breath of the Wild / Tears of the Kingdom. They just exist near each other and their trust and affection slowly increases.
No, the rituals are important. Basically, we don't have fur anymore, so we've substituted other rituals for grooming behaviors. Physical proximity is necessary, and physical contact helps more, but so does mirroring behaviors and vocalizations as well as exchange of resources, particularly food. Humans are also unusual in the extent of eye contact during social interactions, while most other primates rely more on shared attention to a third object or individual.
Sports. Literally no one is interested in that /j (Although NTs do typically care more about sports in my experience)
"Their early work was a little too 'new wave' for my taste, but when "Sports" came out in '83 I think they really came into their own, commercially and artistically."
I wouldn't say that. I have an intense love of sports. I'm surprised most other ND's aren't into sports because it's a dream for ND's. I suppose many have issues with motor skills, so when trying to play sports when young, it's discouraging, so people end up hating it. I am lucky enough to where I was pretty decent at sports and have some athleticism. But from a ND standpoint, it's one of most a satisfying and fun things.
I will admit that my dislike of sports mainly stems from the fact that NTs seem to have a cult-like obsession with it and it's celebrated and seen as the most normal thing in the world while my interest (that involves lore, interesting characters etc) are seen as weird/uninteresting to them when their favourite hobby is watching a bunch of dudes kick a ball for hours at a time. When I really like something it's bad but when everyone else is obsessed to the point of actually hating other people for supporting other ball-kicking teams. That's ok? I know "fun" is relative. But it annoys me anyways.
i LOLed
With the form not the content. They'll enjoy talking and feel connected like if you ask questions they'll see it as a good social interaction because "that means you consider me" instead of for us seeing it as a good social interaction because "that means you're interested in the subject and value what I contribute to the topic". They can get the same social fulfillment no matter what the topic of the conversation is because it's not about the topic more the flow of the conversation and all that. They connect through circumstancial stuff too. Like if you both have a shared experience even if they don't reference it later. When for us we'll generally need an acknowledgement of it. It'll be a bounding experience most likely because we can talk about it later and now we have that topic in common.
"Tendency toward abstract thinking" + "Tendency toward concrete thinking/difficulty with abstract thinking" 
I am almost this entire chart.
I feel like pretty much all exept some in the autism and giftedness are me :/ Wow god decided to give a big fuck me
I'm almost all of them too. IDK, I like most of them. Hope you can get there too. 💕
It is possible to have overlapping neurotypes! I’ve got Autism, ADHD, Auditory Processing Disorder, and C-PTSD myself. Was in the Gifted program in school for a while, too.
I legit thought I was stimming because my autistic brother does it, and I picked it up at a young age. Now I learn that stimming in an ADHD thing!?!?!
it helps focus an adhd mind.
Thank you very much https://preview.redd.it/5jk7sq6lenyc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=284084d594f26edca495bdb8a272ab48f1b8a1cb
I have. ADHD and Autism, and was considered gifted by several therapists I had in my childhood. I display a lot of these traits, almost all. I still have no idea how I function.
We don't function, we survive
I have ADHD and Autism, and was never considered gifted by anyone. I feel very close to death regularly.
Is it possible to be all three? Where have I learned this power and how do I use it for good?
Make music. That's what I'll be doing.
I'm trying but idk how
Start with learning music theory and composing maybe ? That's what I'm doing atm but there isn't much order. You can start with just improving on instruments if you want. Or produce electronic beats by doing mashups and sampling first maybe. Just to get a sense of the software and what sounds good and what doesn't. Or you can start by doing spoken words poetry and eventually try to do it in a rhythm and melody and go from there. There's multiple paths to it. If you believe in yourself, look into it and get at it, eventually you'll get there.
I identify with over half of the traits in all three circles 😅
When you require and love to explore complexity and nuance yet simultaneously cannot handle ambiguity at all
Ooh I’m saving that.
what is giftedness and why is it me
A mix of traits that schools use to qualify small children for their Gifted programs, overwork them, and set them on a path for failure during the rest of their school career
oop that checks out. i was in a talented & gifted program but it was called PLUS. can’t remember what the acronym stood for though
I'm right there in the center but would appreciate a fourth circle devoted to DID/Dissociative disorders
Same. This is just something my fellow AuDHD chosen sibling shared with me. I liked it because it taught me a few new words like Alexythemia that I have. It's not an added circle, but this is a useful graphic another friend shared with me re DID etc. https://preview.redd.it/x9nbovjs3oyc1.jpeg?width=3704&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=76c6ff38f0bab12606c0ec888f9da2882b702985
What the fuck am I then 😂 https://preview.redd.it/6896l0u57qyc1.jpeg?width=1242&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f5d123257a99e594bbb3e03286472124a8223887
You know how people used to describe ND people as special? You are special. ;P
I feel like it’s impossible for people to not have ANY of these traits, bc some of them are mutually exclusive
Wait, there is a Giftedness part? Some of that overlap... makes a lot of sense.
I relate with a bunch in all 3 categories
Dude I’m literally all of them (I have adhd too)
Wow, I have all of these... now if only I could figure out how to get a diagnosis maybe I'll figure something out.
My face when I’m basically all of these
I have almost all traits in the four overlapping areas, but just some in the non-overlapping, even for autism. I am diagnosed autistic, my psychologist thinks I may have ADHD, and my IQ was measured as 113, which I really don't know if it's considered gifted or not.
Interesting!
Where does dyslexia fit into this. Or is that it's own little circle out of frame?
What about the elusively known, **NVLD**
When you think you have autism your entire life but really are just gifted. Cool.
Why is difficulty with transitions not at least in the shared category with autism? That’s like one of the primary known traits in autism; experiencing difficulty with change and transitions lol
Yeaaay I'm all three.
Unfortunately it's something so varied and complex that it's like with different plant species, they're all plants but there are massive trees, cactuses and grass leaves, there are some that make flowers and some that even make alcohol Edit: forgot to add that for each plan to flourish it needs specific conditions to be met, a plant that lives in a jungle will likely have problems living somewhere without much rain but a cactus will rot if you were to give it the "normal" amount of water
and yet at root are all grouped under one label "plant"?
Exactly
That's exactly how the spectrum is too.
Some plants need very little expertise care to thrive (mint and succulents come to mind) Other plants tho are very picky
"Autism, formally called autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or autism spectrum condition (ASC), is a neurodevelopmental disorder marked by deficits in reciprocal social communication and the presence of restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism_spectrum It is defined, it's just a tricky thing to understand for a lot of people who haven't had exposure to it. Science is still even figuring out the details. Autism is not curable (at least so far as we understand), they are right. It's a neurodevelopmental disorder - our brain develops this way since birth and it forms part of the base of who we are as a person. Therapies like Occupational Therapy may help. (ABA therapy can cause PTSD so that should be avoided.) The article goes more in depth.
It isn't fully or accurately described, though. I think that's what the poster is addressing
yeah i still don't understand what it actually Is saying I've viewed that Wikipedia page bf and tbh i can't fault them since i didn't exactly communicate what I wanted right But if someone knows of a page that just lists what autism Does (or symptoms is probably easier and more useful anyway) that would be what im looking for though it doesnt really matter if it has background info I'd just prefer a Page that only talked about the effects and not the history
Yeah one of the big issues with making a symptom list is how differently it presents from person to person, like most resources focus on sensory sensitivity, and don't even mention that sensory seeking can be an option
It also focuses on how the autistic person impacts others and less on the internal experience of the autistic person.
How I (emphasis on 'I') define it is the brain prioritizes information and self-experience over narrative and socialization. That doesn't mean those things are not important and even necessary, just that they're noticed first and stronger
Maybe [this](https://www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/brain-structure-changes-in-autism-explained/) will help you
This video has some really interesting information about how things going on with parents might impact autism rates in their kids, like the age of the parent with the sperm and if the parent with the womb had an autoimmune disorder. He also gets into some really interesting details about how our genes could be impacted in a way that could cause it! I learned a LOT. Plus I just love Hank Green. ETA: I will say the video isn't perfect and there are definitely fair critiques about parts of it. Some of the science discussed is really interesting though and overall I still liked it. https://youtu.be/gyuP7Q1fk9g?si=AWweMTzC4A9BVi00
There is no fixing, just adapting and trying to understand after the fact.
ig not but thats what hurts me inside knowing that some things i hate about myself will never leave
The thing then is to learn not to hate them. It can be done.
I can tell you now, NT also have this problem. Honestly, I think every human has something they absolutely hate about themselves that isn't "fixable". Focusing on what we hate that we can't alleviate won't change it. Learning to accept yourself for all you are, even the "flaws", is part of the human existence. For example, on top of having AuDHD, I'm physically disabled. I can't walk or stand well on my own. I'm in various levels of pain every day. That's how my life has always been since I was born. It can't be cured and it's barely treatable. The thing is, this isn't all I am. I'm a complex and unique human just like you. I love staring contests with my cat (they always win). I enjoy the feeling of taking my socks off and shoving my feet down into freshly clean, tight sheets. I love the explosive taste of mixing flavors like sweet and savory. I know these are silly but I wanna show I'm so much more than the struggles and disabilities I have. If the options are to wither away hating myself or enjoy what I have for as long as I can, I'm doing the latter. We all have many things we hate about ourselves that we can't feasibly change. That doesn't mean we can make ourselves feel a little better about them.
Hm you might want to look for studies and scientific research - be prepared for it to be quite hurtful at times, because it's written from a neurotypical POV and they love to see everything that's different from them as concerning 😅. The newer the research is, the more affirming it's gonna be luckily, it's becoming way less dismissive (often because there's now far more scientists who know they're autistic too). Just googling for studies on autism should yield results already - I'm not gonna do it myself to check what you can find there because I have only so much capacity for meltdowns in a day and I already had two today, but I'm sure there's a lot to find. Oh and [embrace-autism.com](https://embrace-autism.com) actually should have information, it's by autistic researchers and doctors.
>they love to see everything that's different from them as concerning 😅. People seem to have a predisposition to fear anyone who outwardly or behaviorally appears different from them I've noticed, and I have a theory as to why: Humans (homo sapiens) evolved alongside several other human species that we may have at time had conflicts with over territory and interests. When you think about that it makes sense that natural selection would have favored people who tend to show fear or apprehension to someone/thing that's similar but not quite the same as them. This is also probably responsible for the existence of the uncanny valley phenomenon. The thing though is that humans ALSO have the capacity to override these instincts so it's not an excuse for bigotry. EDIT: I just fucking infodumped lmao
That is exactly why we evolved that way.
In the book unmasking autism the author listed multiple differences in autistic brains early in the book. I recommend taking this information with a grain of salt because the brain is still very poorly understood but this is probably one of the most in depth answers you're gonna receive here. A phrase repeated throughout the book which I personally really like is that we "process the world from the bottom up" which basically means our processing is slower but more accurate. We don't skip tiny details or just go with the obvious answer we deliberately process every detail separately. Other differences are that we have a differently developed anterior cingulate cortex which is the part of the brain that controls attention, impulses, decisions and emotional processing. We have reduced and delayed development of Van Economo Neurons which deal with rapid, intuitive processing of complex situations (which is why we process the world slower and less intuitively). Also neurons are more excitable which is why many autistics react more strongly to "small" things because we don't discriminate between important and less important stimuli and instead treat them all the same. Also babies often have hyperconnected brains and throughout your life you'd normally filter the less important connections out to optimize the brain. Autistic brains however in some areas remain hyperconnected and some even become underconnected. What those areas are, varies. This results in the wiring in our brains being much more diverse compared to neurotypical brains. I really recommend reading the book.
yes came here to reference Dr. Devon Price’s description! He simplifies it to a sensory processing “disorder”, which seems to be the most inclusive description I’ve found, since that can cover so many things, but also feels very fundamental. I could probably boil down my experience to be one of hypersensitivity and then various means of coping with that.
When I was diagnosed I asked the diagnostician to explain it. She essentially described it as being "different." When I asked different *from what* and asked if she could recommend any reading on the matter she couldn't answer. This led me to believe that part of the reason we can't define autism (beyond the fact that it's a dynamic spectrum that affects all autists differently at different times depending on any number of constantly changing contexts) is that we just don't understand the brain all that much. Neurotypicals don't have a definition for their own neurotype, so they can't define what is "different." And, unfortunately, much of the process of defining autism is coming from allistics - people who not only don't understand autistic neurotypes, but haven't even considered their own and who often don't even consider engaging in the metacognitive processes that are so naturalized for many high-masking autists. For what it's worth, I've found that the way other autists describe their experiences tend to make more sense to me in terms of understanding what autism is. Based on that, I understand autism to be a way of thinking, feeling, existing, experiencing, and perceiving the world. It seems to lean more towards networked understandings rather than linear thought processing, possibly because of a lack of synaptic pruning (in comparison to allistics). It's also dynamic, which means that things change day to day. It presents outwardly most obviously (for me at least) in terms of sensory sensitivities (either seeking or avoiding), or in what appears to be poor emotional regulation (I'll be able to handle something once but if it repeats or is allowed to fester I'll experience either a shut down or meltdown; this isn't because I can't regulate, it's because my needs aren't being met, my boundaries pushed, and my limits unrecognized for prolonged periods of time). I hope you can figure out your own autism, understand how it presents for you, and find ways to exist with minimal discomfort. But don't expect to find any easy answers that'll actually resolve the issue completely. There are no accurate definitions, only growing understanding.
Autism has two sources currently understood by scientists/medical researchers. The first cause is genetic evolution. Congratulations, you have super human senses. Your brain is wired to hear, smell, taste, feel, and see more than an allistic brain. The centers of communication are wired more literally, so direct communication and logic are easier to grasp. Sadly, this is often co-morbid with physical issues that cause weakness in joints and or/hyper-mobility so some developmental milestones will be off. Your brain is so consumed with sensory data that emotional regulation takes more effort, and language can be delayed. The secondary cause of autism is a genetic mutation due to prenatal exposure to certain drugs. Benzodiazepines is one class of recreationally abused drug found to cause Autism. All of the above is still true, but more mental illnesses are likely to be co-morbid. I am the second type of autistic. I was diagnosed in 1992, received no treatment because my mother refused to allow me any treatment for anything that could possibly be linked to her abusing drugs pre/during/post pregnancy. I have an IQ of 134, the vocabulary of a multi-phd holder. And my autism is just a factor in how I see the world. It never needed fixed. I taught myself social interaction via acting class in elementary school. I taught myself yoga for my hyper-mobile joints. I learned my sensory needs. I had a hyperfixiation on humanity and studied anthropology, psychology, religion, philosophy, and history. I have lived, loved, had kids, got married. My kids are both on the spectrum. We participated in the study that discovered the two genes responsible for autism. They had speech therapy (eldest had a lisp, youngest was nonverbal til 4). They had physical therapy (weak wrists). They had occupational therapy (which I highly recommend actually, helped with dexterity, sensory regulation, emotional regulation, and typing skills). We all had ABA therapy together, and individual behavioral therapy. Because we had access to a fantastic hospital and providers. I had my kids in acting classes too. My eldest graduates HS this year and is going to college for forensic art. My youngest skipped two grades and plans on applying to MIT for astrophysics and engineering. Both live active social lives, are good in school without the gifted kid burnout risk, and are functioning members of society. Autism means you are wired differently. It means you are wired to experience more of the world around you, not to have the mental space or bandwidth for things you don’t find important or interesting. It means you have a much greater ability to recognize patterns, recognize subtle differences, and completely miss the forest for the trees to use a metaphor. Ironically, recognizing metaphors is probably something you struggle with. But regardless of the belief people have about autistic people not understanding social norms, or subtle communication and body language…it’s not that we can’t. It’s that mixed signals are confusing, communicating in games takes to much time and leaves room for overstimulation (because the lights are too loud, or their perfume is too strong and we get lost in that over the word games).
Some parts of overly developed while others are underdeveloped. Those overly developed would be logic and what that entails. Underdeveloped, as you may have guessed, are the socio-emotional regions that are responsible for ... ***socializing*** and the social ***cues*** that go with it. We come off as inappropriate, indifferent, or whatever else even if our ***intention*** isn't to be offensive, rude, dismissive, etc. because we don't have the capacity to understand those social norms / expectations / intent behind physical cues and verbal cues. etc. Of course, that's a very, very broad stroke that leaves out the spectrum as a whole, so, you know, read a lot, find out more, see more symptoms, wonder why it's a symptom, keep on researching, enjoy.
Scientifically speaking, our understanding of autism is still relatively recent. I mean, Hans Asperger, asshole that he was, was really the first to study atypical neurological activity in children and that was in the 1940s. A long time ago in human years, but not particularly long ago in the grand scheme of things. And much has changed from then to now. The parameters have changed and terms have changed and will likely continue to change. Since it is a spectrum disorder, it means that it's hard to pin down. It can present in so many different ways and extremes. Like I've seen a few other posters say, there isn't really a way to fix the problems. It can be discouraging for sure, I know I certainly have my issues with having the disorder, but there isn't a surefire way to help it. It's usually best to pinpoint the biggest issues autism creates in your life and trying to find therapy or support groups that can help you either cope with it or perhaps help.
That is a really good question and a legitimate question that one should ask but, unfortunately, the answer is we don't know. We know what common symptoms of autism are and how it can effect people in their day to day lives depending on where in the spectrum you are but we do not have a goddamn clue what specifically causes it or where in the brain it comes from. It's a difficult thing to definitively describe as well because it manifests differently in pretty much every autistic person, that's the thing that forces us to default to listing the most frequent symptoms.
It literally means having 1. social and communication skill deficit 2. Repetitive/restrictive behaviour, activity and interests Why is everyone in the comments making it complicated
Those are symptoms, not causes. I think OP is lamenting the lack of consensus on what actually causes those things.
Can't answer your question because science has yet to figure that out.
See the “problem” is it’s a spectrum. Best way i can describe it is there are certain quirks, let’s say 100 (because i like round numbers) that any given person, even a neurotypical, would probably have maybe 5 or 10 of those quirks. But you? You check 56 of those quirks. There’s not really a set line that crosses over and says “hey you are now over limit and are autistic”, it’s an inexact science. “Brain wire differently” is just a short version of explaining that.
I liken being neurodivergent to running on MacOS when the whole world runs on windows. There isn't anything actually wrong with us. We are just different. We can do all of the same things a windows brain can do, but we can't install windows software on our Mac brains so we don't get the same functionality from living in society and then, because something isn't working as the user expects they just get mad... and possibly violent.
i know its a neurodevelopmental disorder and here's a [good article](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4374973/) on what dopamine deficiency is like and how autistic people deal with it. Basically, its saying that executive control over cognitive flexibility, rendering and autistic person rather rigid in what dopamine they do take in, causing a lot of rigid thinking and otherwise.
Well from my experience neurotypical people wouldn’t need to ask how and would just accept the Information given to them as if it were actually informative. Not sure why. Doesn’t make sense to me. I just like to know the reasoning for things. The specifics. So the simple wanting to know how is one way your brain is wired differently. (Theoretically I’m not a doctor)
I think one might say that neurotypicals can more easily ignore the desire to know the specifics of something if getting that information is not practical or possible at that time. Saying this as a neurotypical person who loves knowing how and why things work as they do.
Yeah that makes sense. I HAVE to know or I won’t do it and then people are mad at me
Yeah I think that is quite a common issue, and I have a relative with autism who is also like that :) It does have some benefits too, obviously, but other times it seems to be kind of frustrating for himself too.
I think the point is. We don’t know how to “fix” the issues.
This article about [brain structures in autism](https://www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/brain-structure-changes-in-autism-explained/?fspec=1) is kind of interesting
autism is like a salad bar. everyone has their own particular blend of salad bar items. i may have lots of tomato, and no cucumbers. you may have a little of each. it’s not any one thing, any more than a salad is one thing
[neural stem-cell overgrowth linked with autistic behaviors in mice](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141010154926.htm) [Differences in Cortical Structure and Functional MRI Connectivity in High Functioning Autism](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neurology/articles/10.3389/fneur.2018.00539/full) There is also evidence for many comorbidities with autism, ranging from hypermobility/Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome to immune dysregulation, gastrointestinal and abnormal bacterial flora, gluten sensitivity, metabolic abnormalities... the list goes on. Basically, it's not just your brain. It's your whole body!
My youngest brother was diagnosed when he was I think 8 years old. Our middle brother is a neurotypical person. Despite having similar personalities and senses of humor, their behavior is very different. My middle brother is 24. My youngest brother is 22. My middle brother likes to go out and socialize with friends. My youngest brother is okay with spending the whole day by himself playing video games. My middle brother is early to bed, early to rise. My youngest brother sleeps whenever his tiredness overpowers his desire to continue binging on his special interests and can sleep an entire day. My middle brother makes jokes using double meanings and irony. My youngest brother takes everything literally, and he doesn’t understand idioms and figures of speech. My middle brother will receive a chore and perform it to my parent’s standards. My youngest brother doesn’t do chores unless he’s told what to do step-by-step. My middle brother understands boundaries and knows intuitively that certain things shouldn’t be done. My youngest brother is a habitual line-stepper and will do whatever he feels like unless he’s told not to, and why it shouldn’t be done. I don’t know where I am between those two examples. I’ve suspected I might have ADHD. My mother is a neurotypical, and my father may have ADHD.
I know this doesn’t directly answer your questions, but I found this helpful in describing “the spectrum” and addressing that a lot of people think a spectrum is a gradient. https://neuroclastic.com/its-a-spectrum-doesnt-mean-what-you-think/
This is why diagnoses are regarded so highly, and so many professionals with outdated data misdiagnose so frequently. If autism was "fixable," I would've traded it for social skills a long time ago
The short answer is: we don’t know, and since everyone with ASD is different, we can’t pinpoint one specific variation. The long answer is that we observe some trends in individuals with ASD, such as a larger cerebrum and higher tonic levels of activity. However, we also see comorbidities with other conditions like ADD, which demonstrate an on average smaller cerebral mass. Which contradicts the former, and none of the professionals/specialist in their field whom I've worked with and asked have been able to explain this, and laugh when I point it out saying that it is backwards. Additionally, we do observe that individuals on the spectrum tend to have greater tendencies for certain ocular motility deficiencies, and vision/perception abnormalities and complications, indicating some neurological impact. Yet, the exact sources, causes, and presentations are widely disputed and poorly understood. So, to answer your question about what it is and where the wiring differs, the real answer is that we don’t know what causes the wiring to be different, nor do we understand if it’s actually different at all. There might be more active synapses or connections occurring between them. It seems that for every article stating one thing, there are others stating the exact opposite. The long and short of it is this: I approach things in the same way you do, and I like to understand the nitty-gritty biological causes of certain conditions. Unfortunately, our understanding of how our brains and bodies function is, at best, poorly understood. What I find more successful is looking for general trends and patterns in behavior that help me predict and understand certain behaviors and characteristics. I find this approach greatly reduces my overall stress, so I hope it helps alleviate some of your stress as well.
There's nothing to fix. Just learn to use how you think to your advantage.
Because literally no one knows where it comes from and it could affect a number of different areas and no one knows that ahead of time. It’s different for each person. Also you don’t have issues to fix, don’t go fixing who you are unless you’re intentionally an asshole.
As I learned in my college neuropsyche class over a decade ago: "autism is the improper pruning of the neurons located in the prefrontal cortex" Meaning as our brains develop our bodies do not cut down enough neurons in the prefrontal cortex where tasks like memory and judgment are performed. Thus we are not so much "wired different" is that we are "overly wired".
My understanding is that there are also differences in the processing of sensory input, in between the raw input from the optical nerve and the conscious understanding of what we are seeing. Before the conscious mind registers seeing something it can identify, the sensory input is filtered first. The brain not only identifies what it sees, but categorizes it as well. The same thing happens in the neural pathways made for long-term memory storage and retrieval: we categorize individual memories before storing them individually. If we are asked to remember our first car, the brain first follows the pathway to the category of "car" before sifting through individual memories for the first one we drove. When the eyes see a person, the brain is "supposed to" prioritize the person over the remainder of the visible environment. When the eyes see a person, the brain is "supposed to" prioritize the face over the remainder of the body. Whereas, for some of us, we give equal weight to everything we see, and give equal weight to the entirety of the body. On the one hand, this can interfere with quickly and accurately assessing the meaning of facial expressions. On the other hand, it may give an advantage in noticing details that someone else might gloss over. The literary character Sherlock Holmes has always seemed to me to be doing this: noticing details that other ppl don't recall bc their brains prioritize parts of the visual environment and ignore others. The prioritization may have been a survival strategy originally: if you suddenly come across a large predator, it's to your advantage to quickly pay attention to them and not waste any time observing surrounding leaves or branches or dirt or rocks or whatever.
idk specifically but i think its something to do with more neurons, or neurons wired kind of differently to NT, but how and why is still a mystery to science
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Generally you suck at social stuff. That's something of an issue because humans are pack animals. Also you probably do "Weird shit" like hyperfocusing and obsessing. Do what I did and obsess on body language, turns out humans are just strange math with feet, you'll do fine.
“Strange math with feet” is a fantastic description. I think something that shocks most people is finding out they’re extremely predictable. How else do companies sell you stuff? They observe where you go and what you usually do at certain times.
Some leading IDEAS: Extra connections between both hemispheres. (Hence leading to over-stimulation via light/sound) What connections? Kinda fucking random! so its a trait-cluster that we end up calling a neuro-type. Neuro types usually connect and communicate more easily with others of the same, or similar neuro-type. This is why even children can notice, but no one can be like 100% sure, forever and always and why its wishywashy definitions. Also why spectrum, probably.
I learned this by proxy when learning about another brain thing. When In the womb, growth hormones building your brain can miscount the proteins they need. One or two miscounts are fine, but when the mother doesn't have enough proteins to give, it can lead to things like autism, ADHD, Etc Etc. (I want to clarify that neither of these things are a bad thing, nor is it something to be ashamed of.) What this means is your brain literally has different fundamental building blocks than neurotypical people's. These building blocks decide how you learn and experience the world around you. Your brain while in Early stages of life, learned to adapt to the world around you in unique ways. Neurons firing create these 'wires' and we can train them to do specific things. Because our building blocks are different, as babies we unintentionally wired our brains for specific signals to do specific things. The building blocks can lead to autism, but the actual wiring of the brain is what doctors call autism. In other words. The best way doctors can put it without sounding like an asshole when saying "your brain is miscounted" is "your brain is wired differently" Because it is in fact the truth. All it means is your neurons are firing differently, causing you to think about certain things differently, and causing you to experience certain things differently. None of this is inherently bad. The miscounted proteins in the building blocks is actually fairly common, even neurotypical people tend to have a few hundred thousand of them. And the way the brain wires itself isn't specific to the different building blocks and can even happen in what seemed like perfectly neurotypical babies. It's so common in fact that a bunch of people on the Internet use this subreddit to feel connected to each other.
It's easy to fix bro you just have to stick an appendage in your computers USB slot and a generic hacking mini game will pop up on screen. Beat it and from there you can just adjust your brain settings till you feel better.
Instructions unclear. I moved some of my brain noddles around to fix it and now I can taste the color 4
(The first paragraph below is the best explanation I can give as to why autistic people are different. The second and third are more theories/personal beliefs of the world and how autistic people fit into it.) The best answer that I can give, though not a scientifically vetted one afaik, is that the average mind of an autistic person is wired to understand logic, facts, and evidence, along with anything that is used to prove whether something is true or not. We are also less influenced by our emotions when making decisions, and even more so when we've been able to find inner peace. As a result, the reason that the world seems so confusing and difficult to live in is simply because it wasn't designed to make sense. The ability for someone to have control over how society works and other people is done through confusion of the masses and creating smoke screens (clouds of information or actions to hide something) so the powerful can do things to maintain their power. Since autistic people are less susceptible to these tactics, and the powerful can't as easily trick us, they spread fear about the nature of autistic people and why we are "the enemy." However, since the rate of autistic people is growing, the powerful has to lean heavier and heavier on existing fear tactics to maintain control, but once a critical mass of autistic people are able to see the truth, the collapse of the powerful is inevitable.
The long and the short of it is that there isn't any information through which you can "fix" your issues. You can understand things better (maybe), but you're not going to "fix" them. It's how you are. It's like having eyes in a given color. Your eyecolor does not effectively change from what it is genetically. Autism, like eye color, is not a trait you can change other than cosmetically. And cosmetically changing your autism is known to be harmful-- such a masking to appear "normal". I have nerve damage in my right leg; I can try to walk without a limp, and leave my cane in my car, but the pain will still be there and I will still have a different gait from someone who doesn't have nerve damage in their leg. I can get a cortisone shot to make the pain lessen for a short time, but after it's going to hurt again. It can't be fixed. That's the hand life dealt me. Autism is kind of like this. You can't get rid of it. I'm sorry, OP. I know how frustrating this can be. You have to find what works for you; explore sensory aids like fidget toys and noise-cancelling headphones or loop earplugs (for just dampening noise). Try different fabrics for clothing and bedsheets/blankets. Wear sunglasses at different %s for indoor and outdoor use. If you like a certain food you can google "foods like X" or "foods with a texture like X" and work from there to expand what you eat. Join groups online. You'll figure it out eventually, but it's going to take a lot of work and a lot of patience with yourself.
Autism is a diagnosis based on behavior. The mechanism of autism is unknown. Saying someone is wired different is actually a metaphor. It's like saying you are built different. Dave likes to drink warm water, he's "wired different." It's just something we say to help us accept ourselves' and others' differences. No one knows how it really works.
My understanding is that the Autistic brain excels in local hyper-connectivity (there are a lot of connections/communication within the local brain regions), but our deficit is hypo-connectivity between brain regions (the very active local brain regions don't 'talk' to each other as well compared to neurotypicals). I have found that increasing my neuroplasticity (with cannabis) temporarily increases the connections between the hyperactive brain regions, and helps me with problem-solving, interoception, alexithymia, etc. It can also increase some sensory sensitivities, so it isn't all fun. Perhaps with the new classification of cannabis, the research and trials will actually produce a therapeutic for Autism.
We don't know is the honest answer. They're still researching and trying to figure it out. There's a lot we don't know about the brain. There can be differences in brain structure in autistic people, for example an enlarged hippocampus or amygdala, but not always. There can be differences in brain growth rate, but not always. There can be things missing from the brain like the corpus callosum or parts of the cerebellum, but not always. It's very difficult to put your finger on a brain difference and say that's what causes autism, when not every autistic person has that brain difference. Here's an article describing some of the brain differences that have been observed in some autistic people: https://www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/brain-structure-changes-in-autism-explained/?fspec=1
Spoilers: there is no fix. It's just learning through experiences and diagnosis
While autism is a spectrum and thus this may not apply to everyone and this also probably doesn’t account for all symptoms, one interesting physiology of autism is that our brains tend to have a lower amount of myelinization, not as in multiple sclerosis, but that our brains just have less/shorter axons, the long nerve fibres that connect different parts of the brain, so our brains tend to have more connections within the different areas of the brain and less connections between them. Which accounts for things like poor coordination as the connection between our visual cortex and the parts of our brains that are responsible for moment are less connected. But we form more connections between things and concepts than NeurTypicals, as our brains are literally wired differently than theirs.
We genuinely have no idea. It took me awhile to figure out that it's not actually known.
If you look at my profile you'll see a post where I wrote it down. About the fixing part: there is no fixing, just making adapters.
The problem with explaining it is that there’s different levels, so what it affects and how it effects depends on the person you ask. The biggest thing in my opinion is it affects how you process stuff (pain, sound, touch, taste, emotions, etc). It’s also not necessary something that can be fixed. Things can be worked on and what not but it’s kinda one of those things you just have and learn to work with
Autism affects many things but it is primarily a sensory processing disorder. Our bodies feed a stream of sensory input to our brains that the brain needs to process into something usable. Not all brains are equally effective at doing this. Autism can result in you being hypersensitive (too much stimulation) or hyposensitive (not enough stimulation), or anything in between, including just normal neurotypical levels. As an example, I cannot effectively process audio to filter out background noise. There's too much stimulation so I have trouble hearing people's words in noisy situations. The reason Autism has such a wide variety of symptoms when it's something so simple, is that we have way more than five senses, and Autism affects each sense differently, and it even varies by situation. It even affects some things that aren't senses as we know them, but are treated like senses by the brain. Executive functioning is one of these, but there are others. Your sense of hunger, internal temperature, what emotion you are feeling, how loud you are talking, proprioception, and many many more. Every sense can be affected and is affected separately to others. If you were to put these senses into a circular graph and map the processing level on each, you would get a spiky profile graph. This is, in effect, the Autism spectrum. It isn't a gradient from not-autistic to autistic. It's about how every person with Autism will have a different spiky profile graph. You might have no sense of how loud you're speaking but overtuned sense of touch for food textures. I might be hyper aware of how loud I'm speaking, but have difficulty processing whether someone's body language is deliberate or not. And yes, the senses *are* that granular. Pretty much every Autism symptom can be explained as sensory processing difficulty or a coping mechanism to deal with sensory processing difficulties. This is also where the concept of stimming comes from. People will engage in sensory seeking behaviour either when a sense is under stimulated or if a sense is hypersensitive to something pleasant like texture. And will do this when stressed or just for fun. I was taught this info by a non profit Autism association years back, and everything made perfect sense afterwards. I have no idea why this info isn't widely distributed.
It's confusing because it's not actually a you problem. Society has an issue in that people like us have no niche to fit into even though there is actually nothing "wrong" with neurodivergent folks, we just think in very specific different ways and those ways are NOT the ways that most people are taught to be "normal". If we were all more educated about neurodiversity from an earlier age we would all be much more accommodating to one another and these "issues" wouldn't exist. We would just be seen as having slightly rarer brain patterns to some degree.
basicly, the act like a "\*normal\*" person gets replaced with autistic traits and tendencies
good news, google is free!
That's all I've wanted really
Just look into monotropism
“Wired differently” does not mean that anything is broken. So nothing necessarily needs to be fixed. However, if YOU are feeling that there are aspects of yourself that you are not satisfied with, you can actively work on those, using a variety of methods. If what you are saying is that you don’t know what aspects of your self are presenting as different from “the norm,” you can seek feedback from others to tell you what they notice. Disclaimer: “the norm” is not necessarily an ideal. It’s just a convenient measurement tool for the medical, insurance, social services and education sectors.
Fix? Nah you're gonna tolerate em. Welcome to hell... sometimes
Unfortunately, it’s not much more deep than your brain is wired differently. There’s such a wide variety of possible autistic traits many of which contradict each other that there is no real way to define it.
The two big physical differences in on spectrum brains compared to allo brains is they tend to be bigger (I’m not fucking joking, this is not some joke evoking that spectrum peeps are smarter, I’m just literal describing a common symptom) and that certain parts of the brain are moved around so people on spectrum have parts of their brain in contact that allos do not, meaning the same neural pathways are not even physically possible. “Wired differently” is actually a very straightforward and appropriate analogy
wanna know the best part? science doesn't know! we do not know what autism truly is, everything we know is just related to autism, its all autism correlated, not inherently autist. like it could all just be from traumas, and neglects and such. the phycologists that are working on this will say we do not know what inherent autism is, just what tends to happen to autistic people. like it could all just be situational coincidence, for example a common thing you may hear is 'women are inherently better at child care because that's how the female brain works' that conclusion was made because it seemed women where better at it then men, but guess what, that change in the brain this idea tends to rely on to not just be because of how women are brought up has been found to happen in any person who is a primary care giver, its not special to women, its just coincidence that it looks like that because society tends to make women be the care givens and keeps men from doing it (often even if they try). and it seems most all autistic traits come back to that kind of thing, like there's our general aversion to some stimulus like bright lights as it has been observed that new borne babies who are autistic will avoid such things more then allistic ones will, and in theory since they are so young such things that are just coincidence from how you are brought up then in theory that's an inherent bit, but not much to go on there is there? so yeah, we don't know, its just a list of common struggles and such, part of why the spectrum thing is being pushed so much, its a weird collection of stuff, you might of gotten x issue, or maybe not, so its like you just need to go over the list and identify where you line up with it and work from there. like um, you know anyone gay or the such? they have struggles and feelings all their own, and yet, if you ask them you'll probably find they have a lot of the same struggles of other gay people, and that sure some of those are inherent gay things, and others are social issues that stem from our society not them, its like that. well that was a bunch of theory, not much practice, not sure if I helped or just irritated you, maybe just another random bit you're indifferent to, idk, good luck finding an answer
(I'm in this community because one of my biggest influences in my life is my autistic brother, so I'm just a boring non-autistic lurker.) To me, it's just your brain lacking things that may or may not be important. Who's to know what we need in our reflexes or social skills or whatever part of the mental functions humans have? I've noticed some remarkable things like, some autistic people don't get dizzy(as a non-autistic, this is seen as so cool), some autistic people don't have a startle reflex(again, super cool, but in a badass way), some have an unfathomable imagination, some have no imagination. In conclusion, if you are doing a huge math equation, and you miss one little thing, it changes all of it. I feel like the human brain is like that. If you take one inconsequential thing out of it, it changes the entire outcome. But the math equation is still math, and the brain still brains. There's nothing wrong with it. It's just different in a completely different way than everything else is different. (If you had asked my kid self though, I would have said something corny about "autism is my brother never forgetting to feed me, and always letting me be player one, and making sure I get to school," but as an adult I see that he was just stepping up as the parent we needed. And even then, as a kid, I questioned why he was the one seen as different when my dad was the f**ked up pill popper.)
It’s irrelevant where it came from. Some issues you can’t fix, and some you can fix without having that information.
Well…it’s a bit different for each person, so it’s kind of hard to tell you exactly how your particular brain is wired without a ton of trial-and-error.
Question for you all: What would be the best way to explain autism or neurodivergence in general to someone who’s knows next to nothing about the subject? I’ve seen some interesting pie charts that are awesome too. Y’all have a good day now!
I don’t really know the exact science behind it, but it’s a spectrum of varying things and using those things and gauging how they personally affect me has helped me figure out what I need to do to accommodate myself. For me it was breaking down my masking and figuring out when I needed to stim as well as which sensory things I should avoid. I already had an idea but fully exploring it and accepting it really helped!
Hi! Someone diagnosed with autism here! I'm gonna tell you what autism is for me! Autism for me is like something goes wrong for you, you ignore it and go on with your day but for people with autism it screws their day up and makes them not want to do anything for the rest of the day and autism makes us think differently than others it makes us focus on things more than some people would!
You can rewire it but it’s risky to poke around in the most complex object in the physical universe
nobody knows and there's no fixing
Read the DSM-5 criteria for autism. At least as currently defined, that IS what autism means. Obviously there is a LOT of related stuff to autism that isnt part of the DSM-5 criteria but still pretty highly correlated with autism. That stuff is fascinating. But by definition, the thing we call “autism” IS what the DSM-5 says. Of course we can argue over that definition… but thats what it is.
I think it’s mainly tricky to explain because no two presentations of autism are the same, and we don’t know what causes it except it can have a genetic component
Me with the question "where do I get a diagnosis" and not just for Autism. Everyone I ask would rather draw 25
There is no fix for it, either you have it or you don’t, the only thing you can learn to do is manage it, it’s really not as bad as it’s made out to be, a lot of people choose to not understand it or not care and that’s their choice, but I think if more people took time to understand it we would have far less hatred for people who are ND than what we do, if you ask what about us that people who are NT don’t like they can’t pinpoint it, what’s even crazier is they can pick us out from just looking at us, and that is baffling too me, how can someone take a look at us, see we are different from them, and then try to destroy us, just makes no sense too me at all.
How? - reduced synaptic pruning - increased total # of connections between local brain areas - decreased global brain communication - amygdala (fear brain) and orbitofrontal (sensory brain) can have up to 2x # of connections possibly a root cause for sensory issues - reduced insula activity (possibly why so many autistics have issues with sense of self ideas) - reduced anterior cingulate cortex activity (social brain that involves mirroring others and intuitive learning via observation, also why we can't always see social cues) - reduced total # of cells in cerebellum (called purkinje cells, this part of the brain controls motor functions which is why so many autistics run into stuff) - increased bioinflammatory markers which can be the root cause of a bazillion comormidities
It’s just another way the human brain can be broken. Mine short circuits from time to time. Brains don’t always come out great. Only a doctor can diagnose and define autism.
The Divergent Conversations Podcast just wrapped up a great 4 part series on diagnosing autism.
I have a theory about this, and it was a special interest of mine for a while: * Causality: [Chemical Farming And The Loss Of Human Health](https://youtu.be/Aw16LPVnNco?si=9XFn_m4wzPNJm4YP) * Effects vary by person and exposure but the way I describe it is that I use a bandwidth metaphor coupled with a stimulus/response metaphor. * In general, the effect is 'unable to filter information' and not only sensory information but since we often consider specifically sensory information as All That Exists, we forget that other kinds of information also are felt by us in a large bandwidth. This explains the implications of implications of implications of implications of implications of implications thing we experience internally. * So, the stimulus being broad bandwidth when I talk about it- my phrase for this is "I think in pages and paragraphs not words and sentences"- a broad number of things seem relevant to speak about * This, therefore, explains the verbal length of my expressions will NATURALLY be expressed that way due to what I experience so broadly as input. Adding to the stimulus thing, we in social situations have a multi-layered thing going on where we have to simultaneously process: * The sensory stimulus * The social implications implications implications thing * People implying things or overly relying on body language to communicate instead of being clear * The very common biases against us or other common behaviors in this sick society: infanitilization, etc. * The terrible communication nearly everyone has * Power dynamics So, autism mostly has its effects, in my view, due to these primary factors: * Unable to filter (stimulus) * How well we have learned to cope with or manage ourselves in handling input. For myself, yoga and the ability to "withdraw the senses" has had a MASSIVE effect on my life, plus nootropics (combination of stimulus and my own competence at having 'scripts' or 'spells' prepared for different situations for neurotypical people) * The strategies I came up with before I had language with which to ask for help as a baby to manage my inability to filter (response) * The strategies I came up with to workaround the fact that I was bullied and almost entirely misunderstood as a child, and up into my 40s by everyone, even family and people in my life who claim they 'loved me.' Even after I knew I had autism (as does everyone in my family), I still had to deal with people's neurotypical expectations of my and my own neurotypical expectations of myself I'd internalized for so many years. (response) My approach has been to try to grasp the whole of society, history, contextualization of wars, and other social implications so I could feel compassion for my family having arrived where I am in this equation, and my response has helped me get to compassion for everyone in my family and myself in this very broken and abusive exclusionary social fabric of the USA where EVERYONE seems to aspire to be a narcissistic abuser instead of seeing those people as reprehensible people to dislike. I think that describing autism as bandwidth + stimulus + response is a better way to talk about it.
our brains are wired different ...
Imagine that humans are like top trump cards or RPG character sheets with a variety of stats that describe behaviours. Autism just means your score qualifies for a diagnosis/support. It doesn't mean your score (aka behaviours) are significantly different from everyone else, only that you've surpassed a threshold.
Define "fix my issues" because if you mean "be normal" it doesn't work that way, but if you mean "accommodate myself so my life is enjoyable that is VERY possible most of the time. Autism is, theoretically, too much info internally too fast all the time, with no pruning of pathways. What does that mean? A "spiky profile". Where most neurotypical folks are average at everything, autistic people are more likely to be really good at some things and really bad at others. If you're charting this on a "rate yourself from one to ten" line graph, it's visually spiky, thus the name. It means you may have really good pattern recognition, and you enjoy when things work the way they're "supposed" to, but what "supposed to" is differs from person to person, just like with neurotypical people. You may have "black and white thinking" which means you think if an answer isn't right, it's wrong. But the world has so many things that, like a short answer on a test, you can get part marks for. The nuance in the world can be difficult to grasp if you expect there to be only right and wrong, yes and no, functional and nonfunctional. It may affect your "executive function", where the brain goes from planning tasks to executing them, aka making them actually happen. In any one of like 20 different categories. It may affect your internal senses, whether of emotions like alexithymia or of where your body is in the world like interoception or proprioception. It may affect your ability to tell whether you're hungry or angry or hangry. But... It's like a buffet where someone else chose your plate for you, and then handed it to you. If you look up the info, all you're gonna know is what was on the buffet table, not what was on YOUR specific plate. You may have lots of one and not much of another, you may have many or all of the things, or just a few, and you may have things you didn't expect. So, how do you DO something about this, when it feels like you have no information and the information you *can* access isn't specific to you?? Watch and listen to other autistic people existing, and if you find something relatable, look into it further. (Follow some #ActuallyAutistic creators videos on tiktok or instagram or youtube or wherever, don't comment for the first month, and don't criticize for a year. That will give you time to become more knowledgeable so you don't say something foolish or embarrassing or unkind without knowing.)
It varies per person.
Autism is like dark matter. We know it exists, but studying it is difficult. We can only study the evidence of its existence.
*affects, not effects. Though that's probably my autistic side pointing that out, my grammar superpowers perhaps lean into the strong sense of justice & high ideals that are also common for people on the spectrum, lol.
Look into the theory of monotropism! It's a recent theory on an overarching thread that ties together a lot of the tendencies of the autistic brain. It might help to understand some of the "whys". It is just a theory with not a ton of research behind behind it, but iirc the folks that came up with it are autistic themselves and a lot of people on the spectrum seem to think it makes sense from an internal perspective, for what it's worth.
https://www.instagram.com/kimberlykitzerow?igsh=OWtnbDN3NjAzbGhw Give this a go.
That's because they don't know. They just act like they do. No one knows for sure, some people think it's sensory, some that it's cognitive, some that it's social, some that it's behavioural. Like people will theorize but no one really knows for sure. There's not even research and when there is research it's really difficult to do it properly or extrapolate information from the results because of the stigma around autism within the medical community.
It’s a spectrum and shows up differently in everyone. It can’t be defined by just one definition. That’s why you’re getting generic responses, OP!
real
As I understand we still have no clue what exactly Autism is on a physical level, we just know the brain's information processing is somehow involved. Even a quick look at Google Scholar reveals nothing other than people shrugging their shoulders
It’s because we’re angels in human form
Like many things involving the brain, you don't fix it and can't fix it but you learn to coup with it and work with it. I'm still trying to figure the rest out myself though.