Welcome to From the Spectrum Podcast. This is a podcast about autism. It is my goal to explain what is autism.
I plan to use a mixture of scientific literature, personal experience, and opinion.
With opinion, I will explain why, I will fill the way I do and give examples.
I will provide links to various references for each episode.
For each episode, we will discuss various aspects of autism.
For today, I want to highlight research beginning at UT Austin, University of Texas at Austin, led by Dr. Francisco Gonzalez Lima.
In the link, it is study number 2, Effects of Transcranial Infrared Light Stimulation on Symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Ages 4 through 60, with the diagnosis of autism.
There is a form listed at the bottom of the link provided, basic information, eligibility, and so forth, and or an email address and a phone number.
I do not have connections to this study or to the researchers or the university.
However, I do have interest. The podcast has hours of episodes discussing light and human biology.
Artificial light predates autism and Alzheimer's and obesity and the CVD and cancer problems and all of these modern health conditions.
Childhood disorders. It is too common to hear children are attempting suicide at younger and younger ages now.
I think this is all connected here. Artificial light predates autism.
Autism predates all of these, at least most, I think of these environmental risk factors being considered and studied.
Upstream in these problems mentioned is going to be how? Living organisms like humans, even humans, use light for life.
Humans are the only species that will remove itself from its natural environment.
You've heard during the cause of autism episode how humans use different wavelengths of light for different aspects in life.
And how our modern environments have replaced the full sun spectra with isolated artificial light.
And how rates of autism follows these changes.
How humans evolved under getting 20 to 30,000 lux in the morning sunrise and the sunset the evening sun.
The 100,000 to 120,000 lux in the midday sun.
To the 300 to 500 lux of this isolated artificial light and the 300 to 500 lux at night because humans can now extend the day.
Remember the several mentions of melanopsin, this blue light chromophore that wasn't discovered in the human biology until 1998.
And fully understood how it is sequenced, raptomeric opsin in subsequent years, 2002, 2005 and such.
But over the last 20 years after that, we have found it everywhere.
Endothel, or organs and all over the brain.
And the monosomnaptic connections to the super-chiasmatic nucleus and the habinula.
These are vital.
Remember the SCN being the master clock and everything in our body runs on clock operating procedures.
Artificial light at night is a region of interest too.
I suspect light, the various types of light is a missing link with autism research.
And why so many things in autism research is inconsistent.
The genetic studies being a dead end and so on.
Environmental signals are powerful.
And our biology receiving these such as mitochondria are very sensitive.
Remember the two episodes on mitochondria, the solo episode and the wonderful Dr. Richard Fry explaining to us how sensitive these mitochondria are.
And remember the four red light chromophores within the mitochondria.
All of this is going to be very exciting as Dr. Francisco Gonzalez Lima and his team of researchers begin this work.
For today's episode, we will discuss autism and the default mode network.
The default mode network is a buzzword.
With buzzwords, the podcast uses the trans from PubMed.
You can go to PubMed and type in default mode network or default network or default mode.
And all will yield the same result.
The so-called default mode network has increased publications since 2008.
We've covered a meta-analysis, ALE meta-analysis of brain imaging.
ALE is activation likelihood estimation that provides voxel wide, formal estimations of probability of activation.
This is huge for brain imaging.
This, the ALE, gives better spatial resolution and reduces errors.
However, that is not important for today's topic.
What is important is understanding the origins of the so-called default mode network.
Okay, the default mode network.
Remember, the brain is a prediction machine and it uses the central nervous system in a feed-forward, feedback communication to move the living organism while involving the peripheral and the enteric nervous system.
Remember the enteric nervous system in the autism and gastrointestinal problems episode.
Now, with prediction or predicting, the autistic brain stays inward.
Remember, interoception.
Canner, initially called autism innate disorder.
Whether it's the sensation, perception and sensory processing phenomena and or connectivity that provides more pleasure or reward to stay within oneself and or the lack of social understanding, social cognition, learning and experiences of socialness or anything else that is true.
And indeed, all of those are true with autism.
However, the timeline isn't clear.
What comes first?
Which implications are a sequela and so forth?
But the biology that gives us autism allows us to be comfortable within ourselves.
Remember the distinct paths of oxytocin and the distinct roles of the magnosecellular and parvocellular oxytocin.
Remember the huge role oxytocin and vasopressin has for complex living organisms like humans.
There isn't much controversy about any of that.
The default mode network can get questionable.
So the so-called default mode network.
Maybe the first name was task negative network.
Regardless, it is anti-correlated with task related networks.
I should say typically anti resting state.
More on that later.
However, for now, I will bring in Lisa Feldman Barrett's comments on this mental phenomena.
She claims it has been discovered, named and rediscovered and renamed several times.
One, scientists are career driven.
They want to solidify their presence in the field and recognition.
They want to bring in funds.
Scientists can lump or split different areas of our biology, make slight changes and attempt to define it.
Other names of the default mode network and you will recognize these.
The mentalizing network, the theory of mind network, the memory network, the prospecting network,
the empathy network, the morality network, the context network, the self network.
Those are all familiar and you can better understand why I highlighted our previous conversation on oxytocin.
Also, you can see why this topic is solidified with autism discussion.
We cover and autism is known to have aspects to everything mentioned so far.
Feldman Barrett calls these situations core systems, which are one too many or they have diverse roles.
Some areas in the so-called default mode network, the medial prefrontal cortex, our old friend.
Now you can better understand adaptive responses and of course adaptive responses or adaptive responding is a problem for autistics.
The medial prefrontal cortex and this information is taken from our previous episode from autism and adaptive responses.
The medial prefrontal cortex is 80 to 90% excitatory and 10 to 20% inhibitory.
Remember glutamate is excitatory.
Gabba is inhibitory.
Remember the medial prefrontal cortex connects to the basal lateral amygdala.
The roles of p10, phosphorus, Tinson, pTEN, the roles of long range oxytocin, projections,
the roles of mentalizing and processing social information regarding the self and others in the environment.
The medial prefrontal cortex processes conflict monitoring, air detection, executive control, reward guided learning,
decision making about risk and rewards and adaptive responses.
There are connections to the medial prefrontal cortex to and from the hypothalamus regarding homeostatic functions such as hunger and thirst and autonomic control
and providing inputs for endocrine control.
The medial prefrontal cortex is involved in recent memory.
The ventral part of the medial prefrontal cortex connects to neuromodulatory nuclei, all of them.
These powerful neuromodulators such as dopamine and serotonin, acetylcholine, epinephrine and norepinephrine,
they are powerful molecules for the nervous system.
A second region for the default mode network is the posterior cingulate cortex.
This region is involved with self-referential thinking, which is essentially an overarching way to describe the default mode network.
Memory retrieval. Remember we are constantly considering our history and experience as we navigate the world.
Our internal calculators and our metabolic bank accounts is calculating if we have enough metabolic resources for whatever we are navigating or thinking about navigating.
This is a hard stop. Socialness is the most unpredictable thing humans do.
And earlier in the episode we considered these autistic phenotypes. That makes us more innate, makes us keep to ourselves, makes us satisfied within ourselves.
Remember Donald Triplett's father's first sentence written to Leo Kanner in 1938.
He, meaning Donald Triplett, he seems to be self-satisfied.
Donald was even uninterested to Santa Claus as a child.
The PCC, the posterior cingulate cortex, is involved in social cognition, which we've explained by really dissecting it, but social cognition with empathy too.
And finally, more executive functioning with attention and task switching.
Another hard stop here. Many people will test this and it is a misnomer.
They test this with ADHD tasks and often give ADHD.
The problem is for autistics.
Their attention and task switching are skewed because of the lack of stake or lack of interest or care into the material.
Material and context is neglected.
And this is an unfortunate miss from other humans.
Human thought, human creation like this, this is lacking critical thinking by others from the outside.
Questions about that? Let's discuss it.
This is one of our few reasons why autism and the default mode network is confusing to me.
It doesn't seem abnormal to me.
It seems like a superpower. It seems mostly comfortable to me.
Another region in the default mode network is the angular gyrus and language is huge here.
We are integrating visual information including text, text reading, writing and the comprehension aspects.
For me, here is an abnormal part. This is a struggle.
This might be an area with the thinking and pictures.
Visual processing integration is a vital phenotype in my autism.
I see things. This accelerates my learning. I can see it.
And auditory can be, it can be involved.
Plus speaking to myself, playing out these mental images are powerful.
This includes previous experiences, hypothetical situations or thoughts.
Remember the prediction machine. Remember my curiosity and autobiographical information.
So fiction and nonfiction consideration.
These are vivid. Remember the similarities to schizophrenia. But remember, autism doesn't have the psychotic features, those auditory or visual hallucinations.
But these pictures and movies are powerful.
Providing narrative is huge too.
Remember emotional empathy. Being present and feeling what others are feeling.
But doing it in a context that is different from cognitive empathy.
Or just looking at someone and expecting to know what they are doing or what they are going through, etc.
This is very different. Emotional empathy and the cognitive empathy are very different.
The sensory processing here can be both efficient and fast.
Remember a beginning scene to be movie.
Remember that animated movie about bees. Many bees are swimming around at high rates of speed with great efficiency.
Now consider how this can stamp our memory.
Get it? See how artistic phenotypes are doing what they are doing?
These concepts at that neural and synaptic level provide great efficiency.
Now consider how we are restricted and fixated.
In addition, and this is huge, maybe the most interesting things on the podcast.
And that is supplementing relationships.
It seems that I can supplement relationships therein by having these experiences.
Individual thinking. Those hypothetical experiences.
The little social need that I have can be satisfied here.
Seeing others and this can involve me or not, I am not required.
I can process life of others in a way that supplements that social interaction.
Plus my intense curiosity for human life.
These things allow me to counter socialness at my pace, at my time.
You know socialness is challenging for the autistic phenotype.
Simple things like beginning and ending conversations.
It should be getting easier to understand autism.
Remember the cell called self-referential and memory retrieval and information integration.
Externally, this sensation processing and integrating the self with the outside world is delayed.
It is hard to keep up.
Remember autism and education. Remember over stimulation. Being overwhelmed.
There is a lot going on. It is hard for others to speak to us and they have all of these external body movements and processing and conveying information to us.
And we are supposed to keep up in this situation that I described with you with this visual imaging processing.
And these functions are vastly different when we are within ourselves with little to zero environmental factors.
Versus the social setting.
Sensation processing. Sensation to perception.
Is a complicated process at times.
It is highly dependent on the environment.
Probably. To no surprise. Shouldn't be a surprise.
Internal thought processes. Canors innate disorder.
And understanding B3. Restricted. Fixated interest. And Asperger's little professors.
This is what autism is. This is why society and others. That's not like this.
Have a hard time understanding and integrating this type of phenotype into the social world.
Okay. Another area. One that Dr. Leanna Hernandez mentioned. The Precuneus.
Mostly this nuclei involves in self awareness and thoughts about others.
The Precuneus is an area with a high resting metabolic rate.
So some more of that metabolic bank account. And what is tied to this area, this region.
It is also involved with episodic memory and imaging future orientations.
Future encounters. Involved in future strategies.
This is a large part of executive functioning and planning with the human being.
This ability that human beings have is a large benefit for how we sustain our species.
So this is involved here. But remember nothing singular in our biology is responsible for a specific outcome.
A single outcome. Many regions or nuclei are involved to create something.
Okay. So social cognition is a repeated mention and some consideration of social cognition could include
those theory of mind aspects. Which is defining a definition with a similar definition to me.
It doesn't define it. Meaning if you call social cognition theory of mind. It's just defining one thing.
The social cognition with another thing. Theory of mind. Theory of mind or mentalizing, etc.
How you can understand the world around. This is social cognition. Social cues are huge.
Huge for all people. But with different reasons. Artistics have deficits in this.
To me, deficits and being able to do it. And caring to do it.
Social cues could be nonverbal. Conveyance. Facial expressions. Body language. Tone. Procity.
And in large part, these social cues can provide understanding and human interaction. Or conveyance.
For some, it can complicate the interaction. That's complicate the environment.
Now you know why. Some, especially younger autistic children, have a hard time understanding and integrate the social environment.
And they don't know how to express it. And this is also true with adults. How we just tend to learn to avoid.
Now with everything you know about autism and anxiety, you can start to piece together some reasons why.
Anxiety, remember, gives us three distinct features. Avoidance.
Shift in physiology. Remember that shifts in breathing. Both the rate and the depth during highly anxious moments.
And valence. How we feel about the situation.
Remember the autism and anxiety episode. And these three regions.
The amygdala. The bad nucleus of the street of Terminalis. Projecting out two regions responsible for these three distinct characteristics.
The hypothalamus. The praeorobacchal nucleus. And the ventral-tagmental area.
Now remember those internal calculators and everything that I've described here with planning and imaging and sensation, perception, sensory processing.
Those calculators include this. That accountant for our metabolism and metabolic demands.
They include this. What are we going to have to provide to navigate that social world? Or even if it's not a social world, that specific task demand.
So here is something. Defining the default mode network.
The default mode network is a misnomer. It cannot be a default to all.
Default refers to a tendency, a phenotype, a preference. Something that comes automatic. Something that is automatic.
For autistics, indeed, this is a default. But often, people in science, the so-called science will say, autistics have an abnormal default mode network.
I think default mode network is comfort. It is. It is a default.
As in a typical state. A mode of being.
Remember these regions that make up the default mode network are active during a so-called resting state.
It doesn't exactly make sense, unless you consider others. From the outside, determining what and when someone else is in a resting state.
For an autistic, someone from the outside, you cannot determine this.
More examples of others complicating reality, complicating the autism science.
Humans are bad at this. We get to something that makes sense to us. And that's it. We get hitched on it.
This settles our slight conflict. Settles our, it answers our questions, either incorrectly or correctly.
But it provides an answer. Even the slightest conflict within our nervous system. That is typically hard to detect.
Whenever I say conflict, it's not something necessarily that you can feel or you can attach memory to.
It is hard to detect because the body, the brain, the nervous system has quickly or immediately began to kind of settle it on its own.
The nervous system just wants to respond. It's feelings, those conflicts, thoughts and emotions, it's work, it's job, it's to settle those.
Whatever is needed for those simple actions to make that unique individual return to comfort, their baseline, their default, their unique homeostasis.
This to me is a confusion along the scientific literature and so-called professionals defining the default mode network and applying it to the autistic phenotype.
Our default is this mode, is this network, is this tendency to be everything that we described today.
This is the autistic default.
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Thank you for listening to From the Spectrum Podcast.