I don't have much on the way of valuable insights or conversation starters, I just think this story is sweet and these 2 brothers obviously love the hell out of each other, made me happy to read :)
Identical twins both grew up with autism, but took different paths
51–60 of 214 posts
Re: Identical twins both grew up with autism, but took different paths
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a laymen, isn't the spectrum just 'less autistic tendencies' and 'more autistic tendencies'? Is this a myth, or does the spectrum refer to something else? I was always under the impression that some people could be more autistic than others.
That's exactly the issue, it is not as simple as "less" or "more" "autistic". I don't think I'll be able to explain it properly with my own words using english, sorry. I'll just quote nih.gov: > Autism is known as a “spectrum” disorder because there is wide variation in the type and severity of symptoms people experience. and wikipedia: > Autism is clinically regarded as a spectrum disorder, meaning that it can manif…
I see, wikipedia's definition is quite informative here. Thanks
Re: Identical twins both grew up with autism, but took different paths
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reading the article, it turns out the one twin who is "more autistic" had a hole in his heart that surgery had to correct. So I suspect the actual issue here is something simpler like a difference in brain development because of the difference in the amount of blood flow.
That’s possible but he did get crazy antibiotics as well. FTA: “The infection was from drug-resistant staph bacteria. So John went back to the hospital and spent a month on powerful antibiotics pumped directly into a vein near his heart.”
...or just being in the hospital environment for a month. The older theory they mentioned here:
> "The earliest twin studies really helped to debunk this theory that autism was caused by parenting," Morris says. Under this theory, moms took the brunt of the blame, supposedly for being "cold and distant and detached from their child."
...might not be entirely wrong. They've since shown genetics is a factor, and I'll ignore the institutionalized misogyny part, but being in a hospital for a month probably did mean having much less parent/care-giver interaction/touch during a critical period, and who knows how much of an effect that could have.
Re: Identical twins both grew up with autism, but took different paths
#54This is driving me oddly nuts:
> "I think there's an understanding that 'My twin isn't quite as capable of communicating in the way that they need to, so I'll help them with that,'" she says.
> That description fits Sam and John.
> When asked to name his favorite episode of Sesame Street, John blurts out a series of words: "Abby makes the seasons change." Sam understands immediately and quickly steps in to explain.
> "There's an episode with Abby Cadabby, Rosita and Zoe, where they dance around with the seasons changing," Sam says. "I think that's the one he's referring to."
I know that episode. It's actually called "Abby Makes Seasons Change", [1] so that "series of words" is the direct answer to the question. The point is probably true in general, but the example sucks.
[1] https://www.sesamestreetguide.com/2020/02/sesame-street-epis...
Re: Identical twins both grew up with autism, but took different paths
#55This is driving me oddly nuts: > "I think there's an understanding that 'My twin isn't quite as capable of communicating in the way that they need to, so I'll help them with that,'" she says. > That description fits Sam and John. > When asked to name his favorite episode of Sesame Street, John blurts out a series of words: "Abby makes the seasons change." Sam understands immediately and quickly steps in to explain. >…
Wow, great find. That's pretty unfair.
Re: Identical twins both grew up with autism, but took different paths
#56This is driving me oddly nuts: > "I think there's an understanding that 'My twin isn't quite as capable of communicating in the way that they need to, so I'll help them with that,'" she says. > That description fits Sam and John. > When asked to name his favorite episode of Sesame Street, John blurts out a series of words: "Abby makes the seasons change." Sam understands immediately and quickly steps in to explain. >…
Nice. Even without that being the episode name, it's one word away from being a more understandable answer - "When Abby makes the seasons change". Not exactly word salad.
Re: Identical twins both grew up with autism, but took different paths
#57This is driving me oddly nuts: > "I think there's an understanding that 'My twin isn't quite as capable of communicating in the way that they need to, so I'll help them with that,'" she says. > That description fits Sam and John. > When asked to name his favorite episode of Sesame Street, John blurts out a series of words: "Abby makes the seasons change." Sam understands immediately and quickly steps in to explain. >…
> I know that episode. It's actually called "Abby Makes Season Change", [1] so that "series of words" is the direct answer to the question. The point is probably true in general, but the example sucks.
Are the episode names of Sesame Street displayed in the episode?
Re: Identical twins both grew up with autism, but took different paths
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
My theory is that this causation is flipped. Something about whatever the precursor to autism is causes the body to experience more physical failures or malformed structures. Something like whatever mechanisms decode structure from the genome are faulty and produce slightly wrong structures throughout the brain and body. Anecdotally, I see a higher rate of general illness and physical birth defects in autistic people…
There appears to be some correlation between Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and autism https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7711487/ It makes a certain amount of sense that a collagen / connective tissue disorder is going to have wide-ranging effects, including the nervous system
Another way to think of this is that 'autism' is a broad series of disorders where individuals do not follow the social-relational cues we expect. There are many ways to violate unspoken social expectations, so there should be many ways to be autistic.
In this setting, it's not unreasonable that any genetic syndrome would be more associated with autism; indeed, it's more interesting to find lesions that have a lower proportion of autistic carriers compared to the general population.
Re: Identical twins both grew up with autism, but took different paths
#59Wasn't there a theory that autism was affected by ultrasounds during pregnancy?
There was never such a theory. At one point a few researchers had a hypothesis that fetal ultrasounds might cause autism, however multiple studies have failed to turn up any causative relationship.
Re: Identical twins both grew up with autism, but took different paths
#60Have they actually sequenced their genes and compared them? If there is a genetic explanation, then any mutations or replication errors during pregnancy would end up screaming into your face once you do the comparison.
They divided from the same oocyte, they have identical genomes.