Brain Imaging Sheds Light on Social Woes Related to Autism

FRIDAY, Dec. 18 (HealthDay News) -- The brains of autistic people are less active than expected when they're engaged in self-reflective thought, a finding that helps explain autism-related social difficulties, say British researchers.

Using functional MRI, they measured the brain activity of 66 males, half of whom had autism, while they were asked questions about their own or the Queen's thoughts, opinions,preferences, or physical characteristics.

The researchers were particularly interested in an area of the brain called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which is known to be active when people think about themselves.

In non-autistic volunteers, this part of the brain was more active when they were asked questions about themselves than when they were thinking about the Queen. But the response was equal when those with autism were asked about themselves and the Queen.

"This new study shows that within the autistic brain, regions that typically prefer self-relevant information make no distinction between thinking about the self or another person. This is strong evidence that in the autistic brain, processing itself is atypical," said Michael Lombardo of the Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge...

The article is excellent, but misses the forest for the trees.

Autism and its milder form, Asperger’s Syndrome are super masculine aspects of consciousness that are developed in order for a developing fetus to protect themselves against painful emotional experiences relating to “self.” I’ve found that the critical period in formulation is in the third month of pregnancy, and usually involves the environmental factors of the mother. This is similar to the children who formulate a logical premature self identity to emotionally protect themselves from abuse. I joke that they are the 9 yr olds going on 35. Their emotional perception is suppressed and calloused toward other people and often leads them into harmful behavior. Ther is an excellent book on this subject where a 40+ year old Asperger’s man talks about intellectual morality vs. emotional morality and how difficult it was for him to relate to other people’s feelings while he was growing up.

I speculate that the real area of interest is in the hypothalamus, specifically the arcuate nucleus, an aggregation of neurons in the mediobasal hypothalamus adjacent to the third ventricle and the median eminence, not the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. The dopaminergic neural pathways are also critical in forming emotional attachment do not function properly.

What I have found in working with Asperger’s patients is that the emotional aspect of consciousness is blocked from developing, thus causing a continuation of the basic early childlike responses to emotional situations throughout life. They fear emotional attachment, except with animals as they feel “emotionally safe” around them. This would be similar to asking a question about themselves vs. the queen in the study. Emotional triggers are the keys.

Where the study misses the boat is that the fMRI is monitoring signal transmission from the consciousness processing and not the processing itself. It’s kind of like watching a speaker to determine what music is playing. The music is not compiled in the speaker, only transmitted through it. I’ve figured out a way to monitor their conscious and unconscious processing and then monitor the neural pathways to see where the “blocks” in signal transmission occur resulting in the brain images found in the MRIs.

I’ve had considerable success in helping autism spectrum children overcome learning disabilities as their learning process does not function well in the typical gradeschool classroom which utilizes an emotional process teaching rather than logical teaching methodologies. To prove my point, try to play a match card game with an Asperger’s child where the cards are all face down and you need to remember the location of all previously flipped cards. They remember very well based upon location of the memory, and do not have the ability to emotionally locate a stored memory. Since this is a logical learning process, they do very well, even better than the average child..... and grow up to be excellent scientists.

No, my youngest child is very smart, as his daddy, & granddaddy, yet all 3 have Asperbergers, a form of autism.

In fact, many genius’s are autistic. Einstein, Edison, Newton, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Di Vinci, Beethoven, And on & on were all Aspies.

Personally, I think that really smart people’s brains function differently, it’s what makes them really smart!! But, since smart people can behave differently, the general public has to create a “syndrome” to label smart people with so the average man can feel better abut himself.

Very true. The problem is balance. While consciousness shifts to allow for extreme intelligence, learning and logical processing ability, it is at the expense of emotional development and decreased ability for social interaction.

One major problem with autism is the extreme expression of emotions when they are experienced, often leading to flinging of the arms and uncontrollable crying. The problem is that suppressing this emotion actually increases its frequency. If it is validated at an early age and then replaced with healthy expressions, the child gradually becomes more comfortable experiencing emotions and gains more balance. The first hour after school is critical for pressure relief from the days accumulated tensions.

Just a side comment.... Just as the Autism is a logical processing disorder, MS is an emotional disorder. Please allow me to rephrase that... both are emotional disorders....just that in autism the person has abandoned or intellectualizes emotions while in MS the emotions are internalized to suppress immune function as a form of self punishment. I’ve noticed a pattern in that MS symptoms increase when the person is in a healthy relationship and drecrease when the person is in an unhealthy relationship.

Please do not confuse logical intelligence with emotional creative intellligence. The two have different atttributes.

In many of the people, it is the ability to utilize both aspects of consciousness that resulted in their greatness. Problem is, the process of combining the two comes after the proverbial “Dark Night of the Soul” is experienced. This is what led to Lincoln’s extreme depression for many years. When a person comes out of that experience and the attributes combine, many will explain that a profound religious experience had occurred. Often altruism then appears.

This process is similar to, but not exactly the same as the experience of being filled with the “Spirit” that gave the extreme knowledge to Jesus’ unlearned disciples.

I use the term “super masculine” to refer to the left brain logical processing. A little experiment that reults in interesting outcomes is to hold a poster off to the right visual side of an autistic or Asperger’s child. If you hold it there for a few seconds, their comprehension is relatively high. If you hold it in front of them, their comprehension is relatively low.

This is due to the limiting of input to the right hemisphere which creates the confusion in the brain’s sorting of priority of input (focus). Each eye has two nerves which split and cross over to input to the opposite side of the brain. Thus the right side of the right eye goes to the left hemisphere while the left side of the right eye goes to the right hemisphere. The same pattern occurs in the left eye. Thus by holding the poster in the right field of view, input is predominantly in the left hemisphere and logical processing is maximized with minimal emotional input confusion.

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