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For today's episode, we will cover autism and eye movements.

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The eyes are the most underrated, unrecognized part of our biology.

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And the retina is my number one, my favorite brain region.

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So much of human life involves vision and the eyes, which includes non-image forming

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structures of our biology, of our life.

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In addition, so much of the brain is dedicated to vision.

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When we add the non-image biology of the eyes, that adds more and more brain real estate,

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brain structures.

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To note, blind people still use their eyes for these so-called non-image forming biology,

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for our physiology, for our life.

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Life happens through the eyes.

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Even blind people use their eyes for the non-image structures.

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The easy one, and likely most important, is melanopsin monosympathic to the super-chiasmatic

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nucleus of the hypothalamus, the SCN.

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We've covered the SCN.

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This is the master clock.

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And there is a reason that master clock is in the eye, sharing structures used for vision.

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By the end of this episode, you might learn about the roles of our eyes, in a way not

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previously considered.

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If you have considered these roles, you might learn some more specific connections to the

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autistic phenotype.

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We will add in some information about the eyes and oxytocin, and think about visual

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processing, and seeing details to general, meaning, autistics see the details in our

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vision to the larger object.

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This is in real time as we navigate the world, and in controlled settings, when autistics

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see a specific detail within the larger picture.

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And think about pattern thinking, and ability to see patterns.

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We are similar to AI.

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Think about the coranium nerves, especially the sixth, the abducens, the precision of

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our two eyes, and how these are complete, separate structures, completely independent

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from each other.

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The eyes are incredible.

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Life happens through the eyes.

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With autism, it is easy to see.

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With eyes, of course, some odd characteristics with the eyes, such as eye contact.

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But what does this mean?

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It is easy to attach the lack of social skills, social cues, ability to socialize.

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We know criteria A, the social communication and interaction, A1, A2, and A3.

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Those are easy.

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Remember the episode on eye tracking, and at 14 months, eye tracking serves as a reliable

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tool for diagnosing autism with significant validity.

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This is in addition to the normal assessment tools.

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If you add in eye tracking, at 14 months, adding in the eye tracking to the normal autism

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assessment instruments has vast improvements.

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Besides the social aspects, today we will explore some biological components that underlie

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autism and eye movements.

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We will expand on a popular brain region of the podcast and in autism research, the ACC,

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anterior cingulate cortex, and zoom into the ACC with a specific subdivision, the dorsal

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anterior cingulate cortex.

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Remember how fascinating the cingulate is, and it wraps around white matter tracks.

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Today we will discuss a very interesting region, the superior colliculus.

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This is a very powerful region, and as a brief introduction, the superior colliculus integrates

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sensory information.

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The easy one is, if you hear a noise to the right, your head and vision turns to the right.

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Your eyes pick up where that noise came from.

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This happens nearly every time.

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Probably more accurate, this does happen every time.

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This is a powerful reflex.

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It is a machine-like response.

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The superior colliculus biases our attention based on those sensory inputs, that sensory

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information, in large part for what is salient in the environment.

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Here we can think of the reason it has so much power, and it biases us using reflexes.

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It detects threat.

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Remember a goal, or the goal, meaning the number one goal of the central nervous system, is

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to move the living organism.

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Yet another goal is shifting learning into habits, and conserve habits by shifting those

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into reflexes.

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It saves energy, and is optimal for survival.

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The superior colliculus is known as a first responder.

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It is located on the upper area of the brainstem.

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Remember the substantia nigra from the basal ganglia episodes, and remember the locus ceruleus

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from brain adrenaline.

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The little nuclei for norepinephrine, and especially that internal calculator we covered,

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involving astrocytes, when measuring effort versus outcome, or persist, or quit.

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This midbrain region is just below the thalamus, our primary sensory relay station.

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Already, you should be picking up on why this is a region of interest for the autistic phenotype.

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However, I am going to take it to a place that autism research hasn't explored.

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Autism is in the womb before the central nervous system is created.

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The neural tube is its precursor in that little embryo.

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Remember some discussion on neural ectoderm.

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The neural tube goes into four subdivisions to create the central nervous system.

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The only one that remains is the area we are talking about, the midbrain, also called the

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mesencephalon.

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This stays as is.

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This is remarkable because of the connections with motor movements and sensory processing,

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and so many coexisting conditions with the body.

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The superior colliculus has significant roles with how we bias and send our attention.

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Think about it.

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How often do you consciously think about where to look versus how the machine and these reflexes

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handles that for you?

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This is why I gaze.

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Our vision and breathing is very fascinating.

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Mostly, these are under unconscious control.

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However, we can take control of both.

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And both, I gaze and breathing, both depth and rate of breath, or in direct bi-directional

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connections to our autonomic nervous system.

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And that is powerful, meaning what we are looking at can influence the levels of stress

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and calmness.

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And how we, our breathing, can influence our stress and calmness.

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Bidirectional, it can make us stressed or calm.

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Aroused or calm.

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And stress and calmness can change our eye gaze and depth and rates of breath.

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The more stressed you are, the narrower your vision.

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In other words, the more focal or tunnel vision you have.

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The peripheral vision is gone.

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This is the threat detection machine.

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This was a long sidebar, but relevant.

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Relevant because this is operating outside of deliberate control.

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An autism that eye contact and salience to the environment is limited.

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But for good reason.

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Remember, this is huge takeaway and I want the listener to know.

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The biology that gives us autism allows us to be comfortable within ourselves.

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This should all be making more and more sense.

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So the superior colliculus integrates visual, auditory, and somatosensory information.

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The attention bias that acts on those reflexive functions of the brainstem.

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So eye gaze.

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You might see or hear about psychatic eye movements, which explains quick eye movements

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to pick up targets in the environment.

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How we orient to the world or to the environment.

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What is even more fascinating and crucial?

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The superior colliculus shapes brain development.

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If you think about upstream connections that dictate downstream connections and thus strengthen

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of axons, strengthening what is preferred in our circuitry.

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The source of learning opportunities.

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All of these items are sources for the maturing brain.

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These sources mature the brain.

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Learning from an early age.

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Learning the environment.

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Learning what is salient.

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And how to navigate the environment.

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Think about where the three month old or the six month old or the 18 to 24 month old infant

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or baby or developing organism.

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Whatever verbites you want to use there.

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Think about where they are sending their attention.

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Based off of this data we are covering.

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And think about how these symptoms manifest.

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The personality and the traits manifest for the autistic phenotype.

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Interestingly and we have covered many times the altered salience network and autism.

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And the study from UCLA showing this at six weeks old.

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Vision is huge for the living organism.

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Another fascinating connection are psychatic.

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Eye movements in schizophrenia are similar to autism.

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Sensory organization.

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Learning.

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Learning the environment.

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Developing of the brain and the central nervous system.

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And conducting motor movements.

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Indirectly at minimum.

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All of this sounds like autism.

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Think about our senses.

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And a couple of things here.

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Let's cover aference or inputs and eference outputs of the superior colliculus.

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So inputs and outputs.

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Aference or the inputs.

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Some obvious ones.

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The retina.

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Visual cortex.

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Which is sending visual details that ultimately influence where and how attention is biased.

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And have to orient to the environment.

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Frontal eye fields.

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Okay.

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The frontal eye fields are organized to control eye movements.

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This area is mostly at the top of the head.

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The top middle of our cortex.

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Is a lot of motor control.

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And the frontal eye fields begin this area.

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Here motor cortex to be exact.

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This area has tremendous roles in things we already mentioned.

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Eye movements.

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The saccatics.

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And attention and gaze.

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Which makes sense our eyes determine.

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Where we will likely send our attention.

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Regardless of the signal or noise.

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This is mostly volunteering movements.

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Okay.

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Eference.

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The outputs.

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From the frontal eye fields include.

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Feedback to the superior colliculus.

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The sense projections.

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Of course to the thalamus.

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And two subdivisions of the thalamus.

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The primary visual subdivision of the thalamus is.

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Pulvinar.

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Which assist with attentional shifts.

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And spatial locations.

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The second thalamus area is.

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Medeodorsal.

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Nucleus.

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Which involves recruiting higher order functions.

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For attention and vision.

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This area will feed back up to the cortex.

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Another area of the brainstem is a cool area called.

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Reticular formation.

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This is the pons.

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And the half football shape area.

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On the front of the brainstem.

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We can absolutely parse out different reticular formations within the brainstem.

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We will not.

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Do that at this time.

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Ultimately an area.

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If interested is the so called.

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Reticular activating system.

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Other areas include the parietal lobe.

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And a frequent discussion area.

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The basal ganglia.

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Specifically the dorsal striatum.

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Because you know by now the dorsal striatum.

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Is the input area.

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The part receiving projections from the outside regions for the basal ganglia.

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And sensory processing is rarely singular.

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Especially for typical developed.

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Not just autistics.

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Sensory integration provides more data points for our brain.

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It enjoys multiple sensory inputs.

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Remember the thalamus.

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And how much work our thalamus does.

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And the thalamus is personal assistant.

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Covered in the basal ganglia.

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The subthalamic nucleus.

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The thalamus has a team working on what and how and when we are going to integrate our

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sensations.

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And where and how to respond.

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Think about sensation perception.

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And how different people are.

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How much different we are navigating the environments.

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Think about how autism's criteria.

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Social communication and interaction.

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And the restricted repetitive behaviors.

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The thalamus underlies these.

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Remember in the autism and adaptive responses episode.

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We covered the medial prefrontal cortex.

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Including an area called the interior singulate cortex.

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In that episode.

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When the living organism is navigating the world.

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Keeping up making great choices.

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Responding to environmental stimuli.

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In a way that is optimal for that living organism.

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The medial prefrontal cortex and ACC lead the way.

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That so called top down control.

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Those areas control the more emotional subcortical regions.

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Remember an area called the ventral medial prefrontal cortex.

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And rodents in scientific literature studying rodents studying these circuitries on rodents.

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This is called the infralimbic.

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These areas are generally speaking a toggle switch for action selection.

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Now I want to be careful on labeling that a toggle switch.

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But it is absolutely equipping the living organism with certain tools, certain skills

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used to navigate the environment.

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So if you followed along with the basal ganglia episodes.

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These areas are dictating or orchestrating or conducting our actions.

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Remember you don't define motivations.

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When we discuss action selections or movements.

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Our nervous system and neuroplasticity defines motivation.

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The very first step in this is sensory processing and understanding eyes and eye movements.

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What data are extracting from the environment?

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And what does that mean to us at that time?

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With that so called leading the way.

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The ACC has powerful inputs on error detection and conflict monitoring and effort evaluation.

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So before we continue you can piece together that astro sight and or epinephrine.

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And that internal calculator in this equation.

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Conflict monitoring.

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In autism you know the outside world is chaotic.

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It is hard to keep up with and it causes avoidance.

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Now I want to connect another previous episode.

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The roles of oxytocin.

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Or more specifically the synthesis of this oxytocin from magnocellular and parvocellular

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paths.

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Think about those two distinct pathways and what the differences are for oxytocin.

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Parintole bonding.

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Effective.

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Emotional empathy.

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And buffering.

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Meaning reducing the impact of something stressful.

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So the physiology here see autism and anxiety as we parse that out.

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Antisemitism and anxiety episode and also psychological impact.

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Essentially buffering here is the sensation perception role.

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Magnocellular is both central and peripheral nervous system.

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With roles in motion and gaze direction.

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Parvocellular is used for fine details and more emotional regulation.

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Parvocellular which is all central nervous system at small amounts.

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Parvocellular supports social reward, social cognition and more peer to peer bonding.

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Or pair bonding.

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Parvocellular when socialness is rewarding it requires oxytocin and serotonin to converge

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in the nucleus accumbens.

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Why this is crucial in this episode is simple.

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Data coming in from the eyes determines this.

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The eyes as our largest source of sensations allows the living organism to navigate the

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world.

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If the mango of the central nervous system is to move the living organism.

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The eyes seem important for this task.

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The eyes are connected to the eyes in the lateral geniculate nucleus.

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Which is the thalamus.

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This is where it picks up the magnocellular and parvocellular functions.

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This is easy to understand.

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But now think about the roles in autism.

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Both from our biology and from experience.

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The neuroplasticity.

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These areas are known as our so called decision makers.

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Okay so there you go.

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They define motivation.

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Here is an example of why and how we don't define motivation.

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But you might if it was in self help or self care or biasing yourself into action or learning

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to do x, y, z.

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You set a goal and now you are motivated to accomplish that goal.

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That is not motivation from the sense of the central nervous system.

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I didn't say that you cannot do it.

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I did not say that you cannot determine your motivation.

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Or you cannot change.

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I know we can change.

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And I know it takes work.

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With autism there are so many things keeping us in contrast to the social norms.

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This whole time we have been talking about sensory processing and biasing our attention.

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Society says we must look at you.

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The biology that gives us autism says it is not that simple.

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And think about how much predicting we are doing.

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We are constantly predicting.

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All people do this.

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Think about what is moving the most from other people or on other people.

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One person or within a group of people.

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The eyes move the most.

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Imagine a month old or a two year old or whatever age especially around the critical period.

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How much innate learning is happening.

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If you are listening to the episode or listening to the podcast please leave a review or rating.

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And podcasting reviews, ratings and downloads are huge.

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And I very much appreciate your feedback.

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You can contact me on X at RPS 47586.

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And I love your conversations, any conversation about autism that you want to dive into.

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You can check out the Hoplink for links to all of the shows across different platforms

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of podcasting.

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You can contact me in email info.fromthespectrum.com.

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And thank you for listening to From the Spectrum podcast.