make pop -ups okay so we're going to cover corollary
discharge it's a prediction machine we talk about
we talk about vision a lot we talk about sensory
processing a lot there's four things that every
autistic person battles four things that every
autistic person has the autistic phenotype one
is sensory processing fast sensory processing
problems with sensory processing we talk about
the destination point a to point b we're going
to really map that out here how some are fast
and then they're delayed and then a second phenotype
that every autistic person has is speech and
language the third one are gi problems it's no
surprise that gi is helping the autistic phenotype
and then circadian rhythms circadian rhythms
these four we could even throw in mitochondria
because mitochondria is probably maybe upstream
of all of these. Every autistic phenotype, every
person with autism has these four problems. Now
the severity of them is different. So we're going
to talk about sensation perception and this little
corollary discharge. Every sensation, every sensory
process has this. It's a prediction machine.
It's happening before the actual movement. It's
very fascinating. So we're going to just talk
about vision though because We're going to do
a video about reading. When I explain, I think
it's going to be personal about my complications
with reading. And then with the visual thinking.
This will be involved with the visual thinking
and how the autistic phenotype, the vision, visual
cortex, and all the vision sensations are just
heightened. It's just why eye gaze, eye gaze
is not that complicated for the autistic phenotype.
Now, You might think it's complicated because
people want you to think that the autistic phenotype
is hard to explain. It's not. They just want
the confusion. So I kind of pre -drew this out
but I think we'll just do it bigger. We're just
going to do this bigger. So I might even let's
just say let's just do the retina here okay.
Looks like a lot of different sketches that we've
done. So the retina into the thalamus here. I
really want this to be big. That way we can see
it. Remember, I'm going to draw these two little
humps. But the medial geniculus and then the
lateral geniculus. The medial geniculus is for
auditory, auditory relay. And then the lateral
geniculus is for vision, visual relay. And then
just right under it is the superior colliculus.
And then right under the superior colliculus
is the inferior colliculus. And then we have
the mesencephalon here, and then the pons, and
then the brainstem. The mesencephalon is right
here. Remember, these have spatial relationships
here. The mesencephalon and this part of the
thalamus. If you spice the mesencephalon, if
you spice the brainstem, you can see parts of
the thalamus on the mesencephalon. These are
so close that they can just reach out and high
-five each other. These are fast -acting processes.
With vision, there are two pathways. That's what
we're going to map out here. That way we can
really see it. And I'll do it in different colors,
okay? So this first pathway, the one that involves
the corollary discharge, we will do this in red,
I guess. I had to make a decision there. Remember,
with these two different pathways, the superior
colliculus here receives 10 to 15 percent of
the fibers. So we're going to the retina to the
superior colliculus here. Okay? The superior
colliculus is a machine -like structure. This
thing is very fascinating. So like with things
like barn owls, those types of species, it's
called optic tectum. There's a lot of good research
about the optic tectum in barn owls. They have
those funky head movements and their vision.
They can just pick up targets very fast and accurate.
It's because they're optic tectum. so about 10
to 15 percent of the projections coming in from
the retina will go to the superior colliculus
retina to the superior colliculus the superior
colliculus will kind of stop will talk amongst
this little neculi okay this is the raw information
coming in this is what i know about that raw
information coming in so it will have some crosstalk
here within it and also draw out if we're really
looking at it from the back side here remember
this is the midline right here so ipsilateral
each hemisphere and then contralateral or both
hemispheres okay so i should say ipsilateral
this way contralateral this way now you know
probably like the vision it kind of does this
number right here it kind of crosses hemispheres
we're we're going to bypass that that's not important
for the corollary discharge so the lateral geniculate
is here and the superior colliculus is here superior
colliculus is above the inferior colliculus so
vision vision vision vision auditory down here
and auditory in the medial so the superior colliculus
will talk within itself and then there's a nuclei
here in the thalamus right here medial dorsal
nuclei subdivision of the thalamus Now, this
is a relay station, but it's not for sensation.
It's for prediction relay, essentially. So the
superior colliculus will send some information.
It will talk up to the medial dorsal thalamus,
MD. So the next spot is superior colliculus to
the MD. Within the superior colliculus though,
before it speaks up to the MD, it's formulating
a map. this corollary discharge is putting together
these instructions and then it sends it up to
this thalamus remember the thalamus is workhorse
it's a sensory relay station plus it's receiving
a bunch of information from the cortex the medial
dorsal thalamus will speak up way up here it's
a distal connection to the frontal eye fields
the frontal eye fields are roughly right here
so we have we'll just call it right here F E
F frontal eye fields. Corollary discharge is
going with it. CD. The frontal eye fields will
continue to speak back and forth to the medial
dorsal thalamus. It's kind of a feedback loop.
It's giving updates. Okay, this is what's happening.
This is how I need to adjust. Remember, because
this is a relay station for predictions. This
is helping the frontal eye fields receive information
about, okay, what's next? The frontal eye fields
will speak over to the parietal lobe. There's
a subdivision called the lateral parietal and
the posterior parietal. Lateral, intraparietal,
and the posterior parietal. It's kind of this
garbage nomenclature. You don't need to know
this. But what you do need to know is the parietal
lobe is kind of piecing together the information
from the corollary discharge and the information
from the frontal eye fields to help sensory integration
okay so we have MD to the frontal eye fields
frontal eye fields to the parietal the parietal
will speak back down to the thalamus now here's
a big part that i really want us to remember
we have the thalamus has this thalamic reticular
nucleus okay This projection here is going to
be heavily guarded by the thalamic reticular
nucleus because the TRN is protecting the lateral
geniculate. So the parietal to the TRN because
the final destination here is the lateral geniculate
nucleus. Remember this is all inhibition. Parv
albium interneurons is the majority of this and
then there's some somatostatin. Both of them
are inhibition. Parv albium are the GABA -A type
receptors, ionic trophic, and those are fast
acting. The somatostatin inhibition or metabotrophic,
and they're just kind of zoning this whole area
here, just providing some inhibition. That parvalbumin
is more precise inhibition, especially for something
like this with vision, because it's so fast,
even if you don't have autism. Vision comes in
so fast. There's so much going on. So parietal
down to the TRN into the thalamic reticular nucleus
and then to the lateral geniculate nucleus. Okay,
a big problem is already happening. But since
we're at the lateral geniculate and the lack
of GABA, we're adding on problems because we
always talk about with sensory processing is
point A to point B. If you're in a destination,
if you have a destination. point A to point B,
visual cortex essentially. And there's different
stops along the way. Stop one, stop two, stop
three, stop four, stop five. And then finally
stop six will get you to the visual cortex. For
the autistic phenotype, this stop right here,
the stop right here goes fast. This distal connection
up is slow. This connection right here is a problem
for the autistic phenotype. This corollary discharge
comes weak. and slow. So now the frontal eye
field is behind. It has to speak over to the
parietal and it's downstream. All of these things
downstream are implicated. Once this pathway
right here gets to the lateral geniculate, the
eye movement finally happens. All of this is
before the eye movement happens. So in this pathway,
this is the first path. The parietal will speak
over to the visual cortex as well and the information
coming down that reaches the lateral geniculate
will bypass V1. V1 is out here okay if you if
you ever look at the visual cortex it's this
kind of you know visual cortex one then two three
four and so forth it goes to the back and then
works its way back towards the middle this pathway
will skip V1 and just go to V2. It doesn't need
the V1 because that's raw sensory information.
There's nothing about this that is raw sensory.
This is all a motor pathway to prepare the living
organism to eye gaze. The second pathway of the
retina we will do in green if it shows up. So
the retina to the lateral geniculate this is
85 to 90 percent of the the projections from
the retina okay so it hits the lateral geniculate
again heavily guarded by the trn and then it
it goes to the v1 and then it will go through
the visual cortex and so it it will kind of meet
these pathways will kind of meet at v2 and then
kind of just put together more sensory integration
making more more sense of what is happening because
this is what we're talking about sensation to
perception okay so the second pathway is kind
of simple for what we're covering retina to the
lg in lg in to the visual cortex 85 to 90 percent
because this is all raw information coming in
remember the sensation to perception because
that's what we're talking about here sensations
are extracting physical phenomena from the environment
that allows the living organism to understand
its surroundings so it can have that information
and so it can move. It can navigate life. A big
part of what's going on in this pathway though
is orienting the attention of the living organism
to the environment. The frontal eye fields will
also speak down to these cranial nerves. We talked
about those in the mesencephalon episodes. There
are some powerful cranial nerves especially for
eyes. cranial nerve three, four, and six are
big with this. Ocular motor, tricular, and abducens,
okay? Three and four are in the mesencephalon
here. Abducens, cranial nerve six, is just kind
of posterior of that. Abducens is the easy one.
It's, it makes sure your eyes are moving identically.
Now, The eyes are independent structures. They
are not connected so much. But they move with
precise timing and accuracy. That's because of
cranial nerve 6. That's the only role that it
has. Most of the other cranial nerves, or maybe
even all of them, have multiple roles. Multiple
functions. 6! That's it. That's all it does.
Because it's a big task. So we're orienting the
attention of the living organism to the environment
here. Okay? At this point here, and at this point
here, the eye movement happens. Everything here,
especially with this corollary discharge, is
preparing the living organism about what it might
see, about the outcome of this motor action that
I'm about to do. In large part, this is built,
remember, from the superior colliculus, based
off of experience, based off of expectation.
The brain is a prediction machine. That's exactly
what the corollary discharge is. It's a prediction
machine. That way it's informed. Now if you just
think about something, think about how much better
off you are whenever you know what to expect
in life versus when you don't know what to expect
in life. That's preparing. This is making the
sensory processing and sensation to perception
easier because one of the main goals of the brain
It's survival and conserving energy. It allocates
based off of this information from the sensory
integration. It will allocate, activate, and
inactivate regions so it can perform the task
that it's deciding at this point that it needs
to do. One thing that the brain is doing is providing
predictions for itself. The central nervous system,
the brain and spine, those are only involved
in organisms that move. This is what we're talking
about though. Sensation to perception and navigating.
Now with the autistic phenotype, there's some
big problems here that I will highlight. I don't
know which color to do them in now though. We'll
do blue. So at this point, this one is delayed.
So that means everything downstream is delayed.
This is delayed. This is delayed. Remember, this
is the this is the eye movement delayed delayed
delayed so if this prediction is delayed it makes
it complicated for the living organism to orient
to the environment a second thing that i want
to mention is how much input is this getting
the lateral geniculate because it is flooded
because of in large part the lack of inhibition
coming here both the superior colliculus pathway
and straight to the lateral geniculate. Here's
another good example about point A to point B.
Bretina to the lateral geniculate to V1 and then
through V1. Because V1 isn't really making a
whole lot of sense of the information coming
in. That's why there's up to seven kind of areas
of the visual cortex. You can get into like the
extra striate. If you want to look up the nomenclature
to that, like striate, extra striate, and then
a lot of interactions. Remember, as well, with
each downstream connection, each downstream connection,
regions and projections will branch off more
and more. So, the retina has two projections,
basically. Superior colliculus, lateral geniculate.
But the superior colliculus will start to speak
to more areas, like the thalamus and the medial
dorsal. and then the medial dorsal will speak
to other areas but the frontal eye fields once
it gets to here there's so many more projections
that are happening here same with the lateral
geniculate the visual cortex once it's through
the visual cortex projections are just everywhere
one thing about the lateral geniculate with his
eye movement is in addition to the inhibition
like an inhibition and with the space -time complication
the thing is mentioned quite in quite detail
quite frequently with the autistic phenotype
especially with sensation perception is signal
to noise signal or salient attention what is
important what does the brain need to remember
with the allocation the activation and inactivation
what does it need to send attention to versus
noise whenever things are just chaotic overwhelmed
doesn't know what to do kind of it loses its
role as a director as a um as an orchestrator
a conductor remember we used conductor before
so because of this corollary discharge and this
pathway i hear is delayed there's a lot more
noise involved with an autistic phenotype in
the outside world so if you remember what autism
translates into autos automatic automobile means
self this is in large part because The central
nervous system, remember, is designed to receive
information from the environment so we can move.
It relies on information from the environment.
The autistic phenotype, too much. So their bias
is inward. Whenever autistic children that's
not making eye contact with you, especially if
you're going to accuse them of not listening,
paying attention, you're wrong. And with that
experience and expectation and neuroplasticity,
you are harming them. You're not satisfying anything
except for yourself. A lot of what humans do
with speech is just satisfying the self. Lisa
Feldman Barrett is really good on that. The Sense
of Shoulds, I believe it's called. The human
will speak just to calm themselves. And that's
a bad thing. But with this with these pathways
being kind of overwhelmed, sensory overwhelm,
overload, and that's biasing the organism to
the self. Remember from the OCD episode, okay?
Let's just say we extract a specific cell out
of here, okay? We draw a specific cell. It doesn't
have to be perfect, okay? We got a cell here.
Yep, pretty good one. And then these axons down
here will have connection, right? it will it
will go connect to something and each connection
is building a summary building a story of what
is happening as we repeat things with repetition
heavy in learning and so forth and cells that
fire together wire together remember the serotonin
and sensory map remember we're already diffused
we're not refined in these connections if we
if we zoom in here to this these cells communicating
to each other. The more we repeat things, the
bigger that connection grows in size. Morphology.
The bigger the connection is, the more the brain
is going to prefer that connection. So we just
become who we are. These are just basic trait
building, personality building. We are who we
are because of this. That's 101. These bigger
connections will be preferred. it has to work
the brain and the living organism has to work
for this one to hit for this one to connect and
have meaning because the brain the central nervous
system just wants to respond it's passive so
this connection whatever this connection means
will get preference and it doesn't matter if
you're autistic you have this ability to be comfortable
within yourself and you have an ability to just
absorb information at high rates of speed or
or not or you're you you're a mathematician or
you're an electrician or you're a basketball
player whatever skills you have these connections
are going to be bigger larger morphology for
the things that you need to do to execute those
tasks so some benefits of this situation here
are obviously not external. The benefits here
are internal, again with the accelerated learning,
because we can grab so much information at high
rates of speed, because these projections coming
in early are loaded. Now, you can find information
with event -related potentials, ERPs, and using
things like DTIs, Diffusion Tensor Imaging, and
they will use something called Fractional Enterosophie.
Enterosophie. And it's called FA. It measures
the water movement of connections to see which
ones are stronger. So you can see data with ERPs.
You can see data with EEGs. Remember, they use
a measurement instrument like N170, but you'll
see N with the EEGs. And then 170 is just the
time. Whatever this is. Whatever this is. Doesn't
matter. Just how much time it takes to get through
here. MeGs will use an M. And then the time.
M170. Remember, EEGs are better at measuring
kind of local connections. MEGs are better at
measuring distal connections. Okay? And then
fMRI. But over the last month there was some...
controversy with using fMRI and the accuracy
of it. So tread lightly with that. Now earlier
I mentioned, I mentioned all of this is happening
before the eye movement. So this is happening
minus 60 milliseconds before the eye movement.
Let's get closer. The superior colliculus will
begin to speak to one another from side to side
and within each other. And that happens at roughly
minus 50 milliseconds. It will the superior colliculus
will reach up to the medial dorsal thalamus at
about minus 45 milliseconds. Okay? This is normal
rate. The medial dorsal thalamus to the frontal
eye fields will happen roughly minus 25 milliseconds
from eye movement. And then the frontal eye fields
over to the parietal at about minus 15 seconds
before eye movement. And then this is Minus 15
to minus 5. Let's say minus 5. And then the eye
movement happens. Now with the autistic phenotype,
these are delayed. And they're weak. The information
isn't as strong. Because of that myelination
in large part. Things like the leukoborin will
help myelinate these. And that's in large part
of what leukoborin is doing. I guess before we
wrap up is the gamma waves as well. Gamma waves
are useful whenever we're hitting the visual
cortex because we want that fast sensation but
the autopsy phenotype is higher gamma waves and
remember there are things like alpha and beta
and this thalamic reticular nucleus that's help
modulating it is off so the brain waves are also
important here but i wanted to cover corollary
discharge and this independent visual processing
pathway that's independent of visual processing
because it will be heavily involved with the
reading episode and visual thinking and understanding
why the autistic phenotype has problems with
eye gaze and this rate of information coming
in is flooded. So one thing to just always remember
is just understand that the autistic is paying
attention. Don't be self -serving. don't be self
-satisfying and think that the autistic is not
paying attention. The autistic knows exactly
what is happening in the environment more so
than what you could ever know because of the
rate of information coming in. Stop harming them.
Stop overwhelming this autistic phenotype especially
the children because they're running off and
you're not helping. This is very very fascinating
because you don't even know you're doing this.
The brain ability to survive and prepare the
living organism for all of the information coming
in is fantastic. Two other things before we wrap
up is, now whenever an autistic is being assessed,
does this child have autism or not? One thing
that they probably will do are processing speed
test assessments. Now the thing about that is
it requires motor movement. It's not just vision.
you have to receive the information that you're
looking at, process it in both of these, and
then activate the sensory motor here and the
basal ganglia. Remember, the FEF, the frontal
eye fields, will attach down to the dorsal striatum
too to help input the motor movement, provide
some information. But the basal ganglia will
have to be recruited in areas of the brain stem
to execute the motor movement. because there's
a lot of tracking and identifying and marking
with processing speeds with assessments so it's
not uncommon that the autistic can have a lot
of information coming in but they can't they
can't execute and coordinate the movement that's
appropriate and it's not uncommon that motor
movements things like apraxia even for the more
severe are complicated for autism the autistic
phenotype there's no doubt about that i guess
before we wrap up is this is also used in touch
and audition the auditory will do this so it's
a very powerful thing with the corollary discharge
so we'll we'll use this as kind of a introduction
because we will process the visual cortex visual
thinking and the reading problems and how it's
hard to have fluid eye gaze and process all of
the information coming in like especially with
reading and the visual thinking transposing everything
all those visual words into movies and so forth
so there's a lot going on for the autistic phenotype
it's very complicated stuff