as small as a world and as large as alone, karalianne: neurosciencestuff: A Deep Brain...

6:50pm June 26, 2013

karalianne:

neurosciencestuff:

A Deep Brain Disorder
An SDSU research team has discovered that autism in children affects not only social abilities, but also a broad range of sensory and motor skills.

A group of investigators from San Diego State University’s Brain Development Imaging Laboratory are shedding a new light on the effects of autism on the brain.
The team has identified that connectivity between the thalamus, a deep brain structure crucial for sensory and motor functions, and the cerebral cortex, the brain’s outer layer, is impaired in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD).
Led by Aarti Nair, a student in the SDSU/UCSD Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology, the study is the first of its kind, combining functional and anatomical magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to examine connections between the cerebral cortex and the thalamus.
Nair and Dr. Ralph-Axel Müller, an SDSU professor of psychology who was senior investigator of the study, examined more than 50 children, both with autism and without.
Brain communication
The thalamus is a crucial brain structure for many functions, such as vision, hearing, movement control and attention. In the children with autism, the pathways connecting the cerebral cortex and thalamus were found to be affected, indicating that these two parts of the brain do not communicate well with each other.
“This impaired connectivity suggests that autism is not simply a disorder of social and communicative abilities, but also affects a broad range of sensory and motor systems,” Müller said.
Disturbances in the development of both the structure and function of the thalamus may play a role in the emergence of social and communicative impairments, which are among the most prominent and distressing symptoms of autism.
While the findings reported in this study are novel, they are consistent with growing evidence on sensory and motor abnormalities in autism. They suggest that the diagnostic criteria for autism, which emphasize social and communicative impairment, may fail to consider the broad spectrum of problems children with autism experience.
The study was supported with funding from the National Institutes of Health and additional funding from Autism Speaks Dennis Weatherstone Predoctoral Fellowship. It was published in the June issue of the journal, BRAIN.

That was a really small sample. But the results are interesting and confirm things we’ve been saying for YEARS. Well, most people who aren’t invested in the purity of ABA. (I had a VB lead therapist - that’s Verbal Behaviour, which is supposedly more closely based on Skinner’s work than Lovaas’s was, but anyway - look me in the eye and tell me that sensory processing disorders aren’t real and they proved it in a study where they tested sensory integration techniques on a bunch of autistic children. I kid you not.)
So now, finally, some actual real physiological diagnostic things that can be checked, assuming this finding holds up across more and larger studies. I’d be interested in them testing the types of impairments and differences based on the type and location of the impaired connectivity. And then to see that tested in ADHD and the other disorders they’ve recently identified as being affected by the same cluster of genes. (I would totally be a subject for such research. I want brain scan images anyway, I think that stuff is so interesting.)
Not because it’ll lead to a cure (because I don’t think this particular research will) but because it will help us know sooner what kinds of impairments a person is likely to have, and that can help with teaching skills and coping mechanisms, and it might even help us understand why different things help different people in different ways.
In other words, I think this will pretty much cement the concept of “autisms" and “schizophrenias" because they’re probably different depending on where the connections have been messed up, but they present somewhat similarly so are grouped together as one thing instead of a bunch of different things.

Finally someone actually noticed what we’ve been saying for at least 30 years. But schizophrenia isn’t even as much of a thing as autism is. It’s literally an explanation Bleuler came up with for a bunch of totally unrelated (like not even a little) neurological and psychiatric conditions that don’t have to have even a single thing in common. Autism has some of that going on too but not nearly as much. Also many of what look like extreme differences among autistic people, aren’t actually. I’ll be curious how they begin explaining it to themselves once they start noticing that the people most similar to each other neurologically don’t necessarily look anything alike on the surface. Because the surface just means notice one or two superficial traits and ignore deep similarities or differences. Can’t stand the amount of times people tell me I’m just like someone totally different from me or totally unlike someone who could be my brain doppelganger. I bet my and Anne’s brain structure is nearly identical but most people think we are totally different.

neurosciencestuff:

A Deep Brain Disorder

An SDSU research team has discovered that autism in children affects not only social abilities, but also a broad range of sensory and motor skills.

A group of investigators from San Diego State University’s Brain Development Imaging Laboratory are shedding a new light on the effects of autism on the brain.

The team has identified that connectivity between the thalamus, a deep brain structure crucial for sensory and motor functions, and the cerebral cortex, the brain’s outer layer, is impaired in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD).

Led by Aarti Nair, a student in the SDSU/UCSD Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology, the study is the first of its kind, combining functional and anatomical magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to examine connections between the cerebral cortex and the thalamus.

Nair and Dr. Ralph-Axel Müller, an SDSU professor of psychology who was senior investigator of the study, examined more than 50 children, both with autism and without.

Brain communication

The thalamus is a crucial brain structure for many functions, such as vision, hearing, movement control and attention. In the children with autism, the pathways connecting the cerebral cortex and thalamus were found to be affected, indicating that these two parts of the brain do not communicate well with each other.

“This impaired connectivity suggests that autism is not simply a disorder of social and communicative abilities, but also affects a broad range of sensory and motor systems,” Müller said.

Disturbances in the development of both the structure and function of the thalamus may play a role in the emergence of social and communicative impairments, which are among the most prominent and distressing symptoms of autism.

While the findings reported in this study are novel, they are consistent with growing evidence on sensory and motor abnormalities in autism. They suggest that the diagnostic criteria for autism, which emphasize social and communicative impairment, may fail to consider the broad spectrum of problems children with autism experience.

The study was supported with funding from the National Institutes of Health and additional funding from Autism Speaks Dennis Weatherstone Predoctoral Fellowship. It was published in the June issue of the journal, BRAIN.

That was a really small sample. But the results are interesting and confirm things we’ve been saying for YEARS. Well, most people who aren’t invested in the purity of ABA. (I had a VB lead therapist - that’s Verbal Behaviour, which is supposedly more closely based on Skinner’s work than Lovaas’s was, but anyway - look me in the eye and tell me that sensory processing disorders aren’t real and they proved it in a study where they tested sensory integration techniques on a bunch of autistic children. I kid you not.)

So now, finally, some actual real physiological diagnostic things that can be checked, assuming this finding holds up across more and larger studies. I’d be interested in them testing the types of impairments and differences based on the type and location of the impaired connectivity. And then to see that tested in ADHD and the other disorders they’ve recently identified as being affected by the same cluster of genes. (I would totally be a subject for such research. I want brain scan images anyway, I think that stuff is so interesting.)

Not because it’ll lead to a cure (because I don’t think this particular research will) but because it will help us know sooner what kinds of impairments a person is likely to have, and that can help with teaching skills and coping mechanisms, and it might even help us understand why different things help different people in different ways.

In other words, I think this will pretty much cement the concept of “autisms" and “schizophrenias" because they’re probably different depending on where the connections have been messed up, but they present somewhat similarly so are grouped together as one thing instead of a bunch of different things.

Finally someone actually noticed what we’ve been saying for at least 30 years.

But schizophrenia isn’t even as much of a thing as autism is. It’s literally an explanation Bleuler came up with for a bunch of totally unrelated (like not even a little) neurological and psychiatric conditions that don’t have to have even a single thing in common. Autism has some of that going on too but not nearly as much.

Also many of what look like extreme differences among autistic people, aren’t actually. I’ll be curious how they begin explaining it to themselves once they start noticing that the people most similar to each other neurologically don’t necessarily look anything alike on the surface. Because the surface just means notice one or two superficial traits and ignore deep similarities or differences.

Can’t stand the amount of times people tell me I’m just like someone totally different from me or totally unlike someone who could be my brain doppelganger. I bet my and Anne’s brain structure is nearly identical but most people think we are totally different.

Notes: