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Defining the Autistic Phenotypes is not difficult.

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Understanding it and bringing real life data and experiences can bring these Autistic Phenotypes into power.

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For today's episode, we will cover Autism and Speech and Language.

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Imagine how much speech allows our species to sustain and evolve.

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The amount of conveying information, teaching and learning.

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But first, song and dance predates speech and language.

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This lack of ability to convey meaning to the Autistic Phenotype prevents people from truly understanding the Autistic Phenotype.

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Imagine how much human understanding and our ability to evolve and sustain our species hinges on speech and language.

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On that theme, and before we begin, recently a paper was published and highlighted by a popular neuroscience distributor.

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As I will call them, a distributor. They highlight and promote new neuroscience studies.

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This study published bilingual benefits for Autistics.

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Hard stop here. Let's investigate and spend some time and money on Autistics and One Language.

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An ability to perform speech and language using One Language.

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This is a problem that I have with Autism research. What is the purpose here?

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Okay, to begin the Autism and Relationships episode previously released, we began with a brief explanation of the speaker, receiver, dynamic.

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And I will play a short clip of that now.

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Before we begin, I think it's important that we discuss social communication and interaction.

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Between the speaker and receiver, or speaker and receivers plural.

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We will discuss it from both points of view, meaning the speaker and receiver, and the potential implications from an Autistic.

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The speaker is generating abstract ideas based off of a couple of components. There are a couple of inputs here.

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Their knowledge, their ability to formulate speech and language, and their idea of the information.

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And then they process this through speech and language to the receiver.

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Additionally, the speaker will use different gestures, body gestures, and eye contact, and eye gaze.

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This is all to kind of help the attention of the receiver.

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This all helps with the conveyance of that message, turning ideas, turning information over to the others, inviting them to understand and participate.

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And the receiver, or receivers, they have to follow along with the spoken language, the gestures, the eye contact, and eye gaze, and make sense of everything happening.

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Now we've discussed visual thinking, listening, and hearing that information, and then transposing that into visual thinking.

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Keeping pace with this, keeping pace with the speech and language that is coming, and making sense of the gestures, all the social norms, the eye contact, eye gaze, autistics.

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Remember, autistics see things and imagine things from detail to general.

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So it's maybe a different process, processing speed.

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We see the details and then work our way out as we're building the details up to make a concrete image, a conceptualized, concrete understanding of the spoken language being received.

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Now I know that's a lot. That's a lot to keep up with and try to understand. But there's a lot going on in socialness and human interaction.

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Remember, it's very unpredictable too. Remember, B2. Remember, we need structure.

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We don't like the abstraction as much as concrete ideas. And consider how each environment or each interaction is kind of context dependent.

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There are different rule sets based off of the environment or the setting.

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And remember one of the overall goals of the prefrontal cortex is being a flexible rule setting machine as far as giving us ideas or instructions, I should say, about what to do in certain environments.

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The healthy versus unhealthy adaptive responses.

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And also imagine the back and forth with the processing challenges or differences and then exchanging the information or communication.

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Of course, with speech and language, Broca and Varanaki's area are two go-to areas for the brain.

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Broca for speech and the basal ganglia will be involved and Varanaki for language.

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Neither of course are exhaustive. A white matter tract called arcuate fasciculus connects the two regions.

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Now it is interesting why the two brain regions for speech and language are distal from each other.

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Broca is in the inferior frontal gyrus of the left hemisphere.

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Varanaki is in the posterior superior temporal gyrus of the left hemisphere.

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So essentially just right above the ear, right behind or above the ear.

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Interestingly, Broca is speech production and orchestrating the articulation of speech.

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With me, it can be choppy or disruptive and these occur on a spectrum for humans.

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In the 1990s as a teenager, I became fascinated and hitched on hip-hop music, especially from New York,

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and especially the so-called freestyle ability, which will incorporate both Broca and Varanaki.

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So Varanaki is more language comprehension, fluency, and semantic processing.

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Both areas conduct our speech and language.

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Speech and language are very dynamic in the human ability, therefore it is dynamic in the brain.

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We will cover lots of the interaction of the basal ganglia.

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We will stick to the theme of the basal ganglia.

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First, the arcuate fasciculus.

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This consists of nerve fibers, so axons, how communications connect, and this has many connections.

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Three functions include language processing, repetition and verbal, working memory and reading.

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Okay, so we've covered how reading works. When reading, we activate the muscles used for speaking, for speech,

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and we silently speak the words, the language we are reading up to the brain,

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and this is how we are processing the written words by silently speaking to ourselves.

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We are teaching ourselves.

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So this includes speech and language.

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If you think about the multiple complications with autism and speech and language, there are massive implications here.

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The amount of dysfunctions, because how dynamic this process is,

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the amount of brain real estate involved in the actual skill,

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the choppy speech, the understanding of language and context,

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the attempts to make sense of what the written words are conveying.

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If you think about back and forth in real time, it is similar.

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Of course, a major difference is the human interaction and the components involved with that.

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However, in both cases, we are processing information.

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Cognition, remember the clip with the speaker and receiver.

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Remember how autistics have rigid thinking, literal thinking,

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and delays and troubles with sensory processing.

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All of those are involved.

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Those delays are, in my experience, one source of ecolalia.

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The ecolalia is allowing me to see the repeated word,

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and it's allowing me to catch up to the processing of this dynamic phenomenon.

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Ecolalia has many reasons behind it, and this is one of them.

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For the processing, the cognition, and understanding, so I can keep up.

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I suspect that is unknown or underrated by those from the outside,

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research or others involved and around people that do ecolalia.

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I don't know, maybe that is known, but I would love to know if others consider this from the outside,

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and if others do this.

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Often I say, if this is not you, you have no idea.

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This is one reason for ecolalia.

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Okay, with the arcu- fasciculus and autism,

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diffusion, tensor, imaging, or DTI,

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shows less coherence and organization within these tracks.

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So think language delays and language processing difficulties.

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I call it choppy.

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This area contributes to fluent speech and the flow from comprehension to output,

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the spoken words.

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In addition, and connecting the basal ganglia, the abnormal speech production involves

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broca, two-dorsal striata.

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Remember the ecodetniculus and putamen, the input areas which begin downstream behaviors,

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the living organism produces, including speech.

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We can zoom into these regions and define objectives or functions.

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Forget the dorsal striatum has the codetniculus and the putamen.

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Zooming in, we define the dorsal striatum into the dorsal medial striatum and the dorsal lateral striatum.

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The dorsal medial, more in the middle of the brain, the dorsal lateral striatum,

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more on the side.

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It is more lateral, so the side.

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The dorsal medial is more deliberate actions and learning, goal-directed and intentional.

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Dorsal lateral is habits, automated skills where we like to store things we don't have to think about.

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Remember this is a goal of the nervous system, so it does not have to work.

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It can just respond.

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It can conserve energy.

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Speech is an action, a behavior.

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If you think about the environment of communication and communicating with others.

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So undisputed, most, nearly all environments.

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Think about the process of speaker-receiver.

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So two things I want to cover.

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One, it's rehearsing what you are going to say in real time.

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Okay, I want to once again caution you.

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This is in real time and I assure you, you do this.

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When you are listening, you are preparing what you will reciprocate.

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And remember what we just covered, speech at times is reflexive.

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So this explains people not waiting, interrupting.

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And if you remember the basal ganglia, the goal or direct pathway and no-go or indirect pathway, you can see that here.

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At times, people can suppress and urge and wait.

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And sometimes people cannot suppress it.

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Likely, everyone fits into this in both categories.

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And they are many variables in play.

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Context, social context is huge.

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If you suppress and wait, this is taking energy and ability away from listening.

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Sensation perceptions are competing.

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Soon, we will have an episode on sensory processing.

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At least one episode on sensory processing.

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So as you are rehearsing this, planning a language to speak, it ought to be called language and speech.

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Because that is the process, it's language and then speech.

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It's backwards.

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This involves language formation.

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This is a problem for autism in planning and in real time.

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And remember the dozens of mentions of neuroplasticity.

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So an additional two things here based on the first of the two items.

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I want to cover neuroplasticity and the internal calculators and making predictions.

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With years and years of poor social skills, that includes being cut off, being made fun of, messing up, messing up the speech and language and so forth.

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Now remember the autism and anxiety episode.

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Okay, I hope this is making sense.

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However, with neuroplasticity, it is very common, autistics or in speech therapy.

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The arcuate fasciculus is plastic and changes with practice.

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Those repetitions are crucial.

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And the second thing I want to cover, a reflex that inhibits our audition, our listening during speech.

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We have GABA-ergic neurons inactivating hearing during speaking.

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There is not much more.

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I want to cover on that.

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But when speaking, we reflexively shut off our ability to listen.

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Here, you might think about tone, loudness, porosity, because the known EI, excitation, inhibition, imbalance with autism.

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GABA is inhibition and is abnormal.

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Remember Dr. Ben Ari, one of the foremost research scientists on GABA.

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The rows of excitation for activation and inhibition for inactivation are to keep the living organism balanced.

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So homeostasis is involved.

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Remember the seesaw analogy.

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Typically, it is better if one side does not stay elevated.

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And it is better if the opposing sides are not in constant and rapid up and down.

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With autism, it is an imbalance of over excitation.

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Glutamate is excitation.

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GABA is inhibition.

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These are sensation, perception, and regulating actions.

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Remember the inputs of the basal ganglia are a lot of cortex regions.

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Specifically, some prefrontal for the top-down thinking, the top-down processing and control.

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Please see the episodes, the previous episodes on the basal ganglia, for more detail.

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The episode on autism and basal ganglia, motivations, movements, and autism in Parkinson's.

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And towards the end of that episode, the last six minutes or so, we spend time on the direct pathway and the indirect pathway.

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And autism and the basal ganglia, sameness, repetitions, and habits.

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Okay, for speech and language, remember speech is a behavior and action.

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So the basal ganglia has a role in initiating and sequencing motor activities, including speech production.

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The basal ganglia's role is bringing this into life, articulating words and sentences, and back and forth.

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The speech fluency.

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And back to ecolalia, there are many variables in play for the causes of this phenomena.

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And one consideration is the basal ganglia.

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These cyclical loops running through the basal ganglia. And remember, this is where motivations meets movements.

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And here we're talking about speech movement with the ecolalia.

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And it's on repeat.

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And remember, whenever it comes to our central nervous system and these basal ganglia circuits, these loops in play here, we don't define motivation.

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You might want to define motivation here as something that you go directed and things that you want and you're providing effort for, trying to reach.

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That's not motivation from the perspective of the central nervous system.

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Motivation here is just responding to what it knows, to how it knows, responding to certain stimuli.

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We are who we are because of these connections.

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And with ecolalia and these things being on repeat, these circuits are activated and they just keep responding.

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The circuits keep going. It's a cyclical loop.

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It's similar to OCD, which is also running through these circuits.

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Now with ecolalia, this is very fascinating to me.

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I cannot hear a song.

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The last song that I hear while, let's say, in a car, that song is going to come with me.

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And I'm going to repeat that until whatever it is disrupts that circuit.

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Now, as I've gotten older, I'm able to deliberately.

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Now here we can define motivation like you might define motivation.

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I can deliberately try to cut that loop off.

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I must provide effort and try to cut it off.

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But that song is coming with me once the car ride is over.

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And remember the very first episode I described an old man.

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I overheard an old man speaking to his wife in this kind of southern slang, southern draw.

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And that speech, what he said, stood with me for six, eight months, maybe even longer.

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And it got to the point where my kids were like, dad, that's enough.

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That ecolalia there was a habit.

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I would just kept repeating what I heard this old man say.

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It's a phenomenon that didn't even realize it was occurring.

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It was just my nervous system here, these circuits from Vernecki and Baroka to the Dorsal Straitum

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orchestrating this speech movement, repeating whatever it is that the ecolalia is attached to.

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These circuits are motivated to respond, regardless if I want them to.

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So here with the ecolalia, I've given you two examples and there ought to be two good takeaways here

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that sometimes ecolalia is performed so we can keep up with the discussion, the social interaction

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because of that sensory processing phenomena.

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And the second one is it gets stuck in this basal ganglia loop and the basal ganglia and motivations and movement,

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which includes speech production.

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These basal ganglia circuits, they don't need context.

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They will just respond.

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Now, most people think about the nervous system and the human behavior needing context that matches the environment.

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That is not necessarily accurate because it is both goal-directed and habit-formation.

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Also in the basal ganglia, it is organizing the rules of the context, the environment.

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It toggles through the task for that environment.

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Based off of the rules the living organism has learned.

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In addition, language acquisition.

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So it works within a network that learns speech patterns and rules.

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In language, there are many, many rules.

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Examples of those include such as subject-verb agreement and proper sentence structure.

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So if we zoom back in to the dorsal striatum and use the dorsal medial striatum,

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which is more goal-directed, deliberate actions instead of the habit,

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since the dorsal medial striatum is more towards the middle, so deeper into the center of the brain,

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this likely means it predates the dorsal lateral striatum, that is habit formation.

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Evolutionarily, that makes sense.

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Learning and goal actions come before habit.

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In both the individual living organism and within or even between species.

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Some of these things humans have transferred over to offspring, to subsequent generations,

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things like reflexes and having innate fears and so forth.

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Those are built up over time and conserved by the species.

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That shows at some point it was necessary, it was a difficult part of life.

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These things passed down throughout generations are important.

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So the dorsal medial striatum selects the appropriate rules of the speech and language process.

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Already with autism, you can begin to see some implications so far in the episode.

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These selected rules and responses in large part are driven by environmental cues.

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The dorsal medial striatum is used for learning more speech, improving the speech.

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For autistics, the social dynamic and the novel context have major implications for the autistic phenotype.

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Already, the biology that gives us autism biases us to our inside, our inner and innate world.

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The social interaction is exhausting.

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But now, because of what we have covered with learning, habit and the roles of the brain, there are massive factors opposing these skills.

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The brain, the prediction machine to conserve and allocate energy and resources

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and the differences between energy used during learning versus energy used during habit are significant differences.

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There is a significant delta between energy during learning versus energy during habit.

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Remember the internal calculator within the locus ceruleus where epinephrine and norepinephrine is released for brain energy, brain adrenaline.

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And the astrocyte, a type of glia cell, monitors effort versus outcome.

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When effort is not achieving the expected or desired outcome, the astrocytes will shut off the energy source.

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This is effort versus outcome or persist versus quit.

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And remember what allows us to persist is dopamine.

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In addition to the dopamine's roles with drive, wanting, liking, motivation, pursuit, that exploration.

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Another factor that can maintain persist is contingency, such as a threat, an undesired outcome.

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Back to this outcome factor, isn't it? Outcomes, good or bad, moves the living organism.

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Related to the dorsal medial striatum is the goal directed, okay?

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A way neuroscience describes this is action, outcome.

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This action will give me this outcome.

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And you can use various reinforcers, positive or negative.

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I want to execute this action to receive this outcome, a treat, a pleasure, whatever this stimulus is.

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Or I want to execute this action to avoid this outcome, this punishment, this unwanted stimulus.

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With autism and Leo Kanner's paper captured this well.

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A fantastic part of the paper, the kids with autism learned to interact with parents and teachers and doctors and so forth.

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So they could get that over with and then they can get back to their interest, their pleasure, which was always in isolation.

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They, and still modern autistics, will prefer that environment with fewer or no people.

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That's contingency based learning.

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But ultimately, the desired outcome is the homeostasis and speech provides that for most.

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Not so much autistics, but the majority of others interacting with the autistic.

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There is a wonderful short from a previous podcast guest, a neuropsychologist, saying,

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maybe talking about something going on, using words right now, is not the best option for the autistic.

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Maybe something else is needed right now.

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If you're listening to the podcast or listening to the episode, please feel free to leave a review or rating.

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In podcasting reviews, ratings and downloads are huge and I very much appreciate your feedback.

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You can contact me on X at RPS 47586 where we can have discussions about autism.

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I very much appreciate and look forward to further interactions.

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You can check out the Hoplink for links to all of the shows across many different platforms of podcasting and contact information.

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You can check out the YouTube channel and you can check out TikTok.

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I don't love it. I probably won't sustain it, but there is a TikTok with various shorts and clips.

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You can email me info.fromthespectrum at gmail.com.

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Thank you for listening to From the Spectrum podcast.