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 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.
Today's episode recaps the year. A few selected considerations from previous episodes.
Immediately, we must consider not comparing rates.
Comparing rates in any epoch. Unless the definitions of autism remain consistent.
Meaning the DSM-5 timeframes. You can normalize that data within that epoch.
Comparing rates of, for example, 1950 to today, or 1990 to today, or 1938 to 2024 is not getting us anything.
Autism was not even well known in the 1950s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and so forth.
Even in large cities. We ought to caution ourselves with the changes in definitions and grouping them.
This made it very confusing. And if this is by design to hide the vax injury autism.
I like timelines. The Baido Act of 1980. The acceptance of autism in the DSM in 1980.
The vax schedule following the Baido Act. Safety Act in 1986.
The additional autism and autism related definitions that followed. Multiple DSM revisions.
And of course, opening up to the so-called spectrum.
You cannot compare rates through the history of autism. Caution yourself. Bias away from that.
Because they have something. Some sort of an agenda. Some sort of a career.
Okay, so what is autism? Remember B3. Remember the Kanner Kids episode.
And the Asperger episode. Similar phenotypes. Social withdrawal.
A lack of interaction. A lack of desiring the interaction.
Preferring objects. Topics and subjects. Over human relationships.
Poor communication skills. And a preference for schedules.
The preference for objects, topics and subjects governs the behavior.
Now we can think about some of the social problems. The super deficits.
And understand specific skills. And perfecting specific topics. Interest. Those superpowers.
Now think about education. The classroom. The school day.
At least for contrast to the autistic phenotype. The social dynamic. The speech and language dynamic.
The sensory processing dynamic. And restricted. Fixed-ed interest.
That are abnormal in intensity or focus. And the constant. Subject switching required throughout the school day.
45-50 minutes one subject. Switch classes. 45-50 minutes on a different subject. And it is repeating all day long.
And remember the comparison to a beginning scene of B movie. The animated movie about bees.
When the camera zooms out. Showing thousands and thousands of bees swarming. Around imperfect synchrony.
And at high rates of speed. Very efficiently. With known roles and goals.
This shows our sensory processing. That high rate of data stream.
A couple of things here. One. That helps explain what keeps us to ourselves.
And two. It's entertaining. It's safe. It allows us to accelerate our understanding of that salient topic.
Whatever we're drawn to in that moment. We can fixate on these things. With remember abnormal intensity or focus.
This is autism. This sounds like autism.
Imagine this phenomenon in social settings. Especially the classroom. And around lots of people.
This phenomenon keeps us on a single topic. In interest and so forth.
A major problem for us is. Being forced into social norms.
Who decides social norms? Society says switch. Do this. Then do this. And then this.
And if this is not you. Or if you simply don't understand or accept this. It frustrates you.
Maybe even double down and force more contrast to the autistic phenotype.
But if you think about a surgeon. A Navy SEAL. A specialist of some sort.
An Olympic athlete. Whatever has an elite specialized role.
This is similar to how they dedicate their time.
Think Temple Grandin and her animal studies.
It's understood that autistics spend extended times on a topic or object. And then moves on.
This leads us to our catalogs. Our expertise. Our episodic memory. Etc.
Remember the default mode network. And the JD Barker episode.
And remember Temple Grandin. Autistics.
Build up an abstraction. And conceptualizing building catalogs of data.
Similar to how AI processes. We are AI.
We build up details to general. Most people look at general. And then zoom into the detail.
Now let's consider thinking in pictures. And seeing movies. More data on what keeps us within ourselves.
More data on what gives us an ability to perfect and accelerate specific learning skills and data.
I hope you are also considering the classroom. And still considering some harms of people forcing us out of our phenotype.
The biology that gives us autism. Allows us to be comfortable within ourselves.
The problem is. Can you fit in or not. Are you like the so called normal people. Or not.
Apply this information. Not only to education. But to employment.
Also consider how frequent anxiety tracks with us.
More from being forced into social norms. And more of operating with others. With our sensory processing.
Operating with others that are different than us. Don't understand us. Enforcing us.
Remember rules are rules.
Episodes on criteria a covers this. Episodes 2 and 6. And some others on the topics of relationships. Our phenotypes and so forth.
A huge factor to consider. And this is not a popular consideration. Autism and ADHD should not coexist. This.
Our DHD is pseudo. If you have the tentative phenotype. Okay. And ADHD. This was the first trait noticed in autistics.
Why is this not just autism. Suddenly. It's both.
The impulsivity criteria. See above. See being forced into social norms. See being forced into social interaction.
It's not ADHD. It's just the autism.
Hyperactivity criteria. Okay. See the comments about being forced into those social norms.
See the episodes on excitation and inhibition imbalance. Stereotypy. Stimming. Repetitive restricted behaviors.
It is not both. It is either one. Or the other.
The criteria for ADHD is centered around the living organism being in environments that do not fit the living organism.
I hope that's understood for humans. We have created these sets of norms and defined them. And they are all new for human evolution.
This stuff is madness. A huge similarity is that excitation and inhibition imbalance with autism and ADHD.
And to fully compare. It's also seen in schizophrenia. OCD. Tics and Tourettes. These are typically mutations or deletions within the basal ganglia.
And altered neuroclaim activity are consistent with these disorders. The basal ganglia is our go no go area.
Where motivation and movements converge. And be careful defining motivation here. Define it from the perspective of the nervous system.
If it is structured like autism, the nervous system that is or schizophrenia or OCD and so forth. It does that.
The central nervous system just wants to respond. It doesn't like to work.
This is why people can accept changes hard. Changes hard. Because you have to restructure your nervous system.
It prefers what it knows. That is the definition of motivation here. The basal ganglia and the striatum.
It's where motivation and movements converge. Remember autism and adaptive responses.
The medial prefrontal cortex, including the ACC, are inputs to the basal ganglia that explains this.
Autistics lack adaptive responses that connect down into the basal ganglia's dorsal striatum.
Which is the caudate nucleus and purtamen. Sometimes pudamen.
Dr. Hannah Stevens has a wonderful review on the dorsal striatum and autism.
It is a fun area and an area of my personal dissertation and research.
Connectivity of the salience network, which includes the insula and the so-called default mode network are different in autistics.
Remember the study from UCLA published earlier this year on 6 weeks old. 6 weeks old. And the altered salience network.
And these 6 weeks old were later diagnosed as autistics as they grew older.
Point is this. It comes early.
Likely in the womb. The womb ought to be our biggest region of interest.
Autism is underdeveloped cells. A loss of energy from the environment used by living organisms, including humans.
To shape life. Abnormal cells. The paradigm calls it neurodevelopmental disorders.
This is underdeveloped and or abnormal developed. Which we are just describing the same thing using different words.
And this is common practice. Because of this phenomena of abnormal cells, it explains something well accepted in medicine and research and delay public.
All of the comorbid conditions. Autism and XYZ problems.
Remember the proteins implicated that are vastly responsible for developing the living organism in utero.
Remember the imaging and the machine learning used to identify these abnormal regions of interest.
So we have the UCLA study on the salience network. And the study from UCSD, University of California at San Diego.
Study on two months old. Predicting severity of autism.
And then the Ben Ari machine learning. As early as two days of life. This was released in scientific reports.
A very good journal. Cellular proliferation, differentiation and migration is happening in the womb for these areas.
The light story. How living organisms are created on earth.
Light is electromagnetic. If we go to the electrons and protons or what drives our energy within biochemistry.
And the photoelectric effect. Those electromagnetic fields hitting matter. Creating massive amounts of energy.
Now we can consider mitochondria. A buzzword in medicine. And properly so.
See the episodes, plural episodes on the mitochondria. And covered in the cause of autism episode as well.
If we are discussing in light. Gives life to other organisms. It is not controversial at all.
I don't understand. Humans can complicate so much. A human's capacity to think and create.
Is not just fantastic and helps sustain our species. And provides us great benefits.
It's also the source of holding us back and harm.
Another cool molecule is oxytocin. This is a region of interest. Not as an identified aspect of our biology.
That is abnormal. More so the two different pathways. Magnosecular and parvocellular.
Magnosecular oxytocin are both peripheral and central nervous system. The peripheral release is endocrine.
So hormone. Via the posterior pituitary. The magnosecular is parental attachment. Parvocellular is more peer to peer attachment.
Sounds like autism. Magnosecular is emotional. Sometimes called effective empathy. Parvocellular is cognitive empathy.
Sounds like autism. Effective empathy is empathy after. You know of the situation after being told.
Cognitive empathy sometimes called theory of mind is empathy from seeing others.
Oxytocin is a dynamic molecule. A small peptide with phylogeny of millions and millions of years.
In living organisms. A 9 protein peptide and a hormone. It shares 7 of the 9 proteins with vasopressin. Also shown to be abnormal in autism.
This originates from vasotocin. In smaller, less complex organisms. These peptides are very fascinating.
In socialness it is shown that for socialness to be rewarding. Oxytocin in the central nervous system and serotonin must converge in an area of the ventral striatum.
A very popular area in neuroscience. The nucleus accumbens. When oxytocin and serotonin converge in this little nikeli. Or big nikeli I should say.
And it allows socialness to be considered rewarding. And autistics lack this. Not only from the oxytocin side but also it's shown to have abnormal serotonin.
Now serotonin is a very fascinating neuromodulator. Sometimes a hormone. As well.
Remember the episode on autism and gastrointestinal problems. And we have serotonin in the peripheral and in the GI tract. Which is synthesized through TPH1.
Tryptophan hydroxylase 1. And that provides us with those enterochromathin cells. 95% of our serotonin in the human body is in the GI.
This is produced here. From the outside of the skin. Light hitting skin. And synthesizing this protein. And enzyme. This is huge in development.
Also the same is true for the central nervous system. The serotonin released in the brain from the RAFE. More specifically the dorsal RAFE.
This is the serotonin we're talking about when we talk about it converges in the nucleus accumbens. This is TPH2. Tryptophan hydroxylase 2. Which is only brain serotonin.
These don't travel across the blood brain barrier. And remember serotonin is synthesized through this tryptophan.
And tryptophan has a very special protein. Has one codon. But even more so. It's an aromatic amino acid. Has a benzene ring. These are UV light antennas.
From 200 nanometer to 400 nanometer light. So now we're talking a little bit about bio photons. Which are produced in our mitochondria.
And whenever they are synthesizing. Whenever they are operating correctly and efficiently. We release the bio photons. And this is. This signifies life. Our energy and health.
So with serotonin and the oxytocin. Let's consider relationships. These are challenging of course. I want to highlight supplementing relationships. Mostly by the visual thinking and movies.
Remember that effective empathy too. Supplementing our human interaction. And the lack of relationships. Can be accomplished. With the visual thinking and the movies.
This is in reality. An interaction. It's just different. Than what you might experience. If this is not you. You will not likely understand it at all. This is complicated.
And that's fine. But this is safe for us. We know the end. Remember the simple challenges. Beginning and ending conversations. Luckily. For the podcast. I have a standard beginning.
However. Ending the podcast is quite awkward. Whenever there's a guest on. There are many goodbyes. And these so called common gestures. The common back and forth that people undertake to end conversations.
I never know if it's enough or too much. These visual thinking and movies come automatic. And at times. Things I don't want to think about. It takes a shake of the head. And deliberate effort at times to stop.
Seeing what I'm seeing. About other people. Stop these movies. Running through my head.
However. With all thinking and pictures and movies. This is a form of accelerated learning. Asperger's little professors. Or autistic intelligence.
Instead of human relationships. I love objects. Topics. And subjects. I can see people. Or observe people. Or even the interaction. The common back and forth.
And I can take that little data set. And create things in my head. About them. And follow them. Almost like I'm living their life from their perspective. And I can do this pretty accurately. As I get more data inputs.
With future conversations and interactions or observations about them. I can just update this in real time.
This is all very strange. Instead of the human relationships. It's the relationships with objects. Topics. And subjects and so forth. This is mostly the case.
At times. I can have desires of human interaction. Not frequent. But it does happen. Romantic relationships don't happen. This is in large part. The time involvement.
And how to integrate my phenotypes into something that's largely different. That's largely exhausting. Maybe. Remember the metabolic bank account.
This is the first trait observed in autism. The whole history of autism in human. Remember the first diagnosed autistic. Donald triplet and his father wrote a 33 page letter to Leo canner to describe Donald's strange phenotype.
His father said Donald seems to be happiest when left alone. Drawing a shell and living within himself. Later saying oblivious to everything around him.
Remember the biology that gives us autism. Allows us to be comfortable within ourself. I want to caution you. It's a big takeaway here. Don't force the autistic phenotype into things that you think it needs. What you think we need.
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You can contact me on X at RPS 47586 or YouTube. We can check out shorts and all the videos. Please feel free to leave a comment and I will interact. You can check out the hop link.
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