Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Identical twins both grew up with autism, but took different paths

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 214 posts

Re: Identical twins both grew up with autism, but took different paths

#171

Post by donalhunt »

scottlamb wrote: post #54

This 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. >…

Some autistic people are gestalt language processors so they think and use words / sentences in a different manner to the general population.

Re: Identical twins both grew up with autism, but took different paths

#172

Post by pbhjpbhj »

iamleppert wrote: post #35
apothegm wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twins can be born with the same genes (because they originated as a single embryo that split), or with different genes (they originated as two separately fertilized embryos). The former are considered identical twins even if you can tell them apart. They’re genetically identical, which scientists find useful in teasing out nature vs. nurture hypotheses. They especially like to compare them against twins with differen…

Isn’t it obvious they aren’t physically identical? They have the same genes but are not identical!

"Identical twins" is not a description of the twins character, specific physical features, behaviour, nurturing. Instead, 'identical twins' is a noun-phrase meaning two children from a single zygote, ie 'monozygotic'.

It does not mean "twins who are literally identical"; though you could think of it as twins who are genetically indistinct.

I'm a physicist with no biology qualifications, but it just sounded to me like you may have misunderstood the linguistic meaning. Apologies if I was wrong about that.

Re: Identical twins both grew up with autism, but took different paths

#173

Post by abj »

djhope99 wrote: post #159

My 8 yr old identical twin daughter’s have severe autism but one is definitely worse than the other, one of them can use some words but the other is completely unable to communicate. I have absolutely no explanation for this, I cannot think of anything different that happened to them. They didn’t have antibiotics or surgery at a young age like in this story either.

[flagged]

Re: Identical twins both grew up with autism, but took different paths

#174

Post by sentfromrevolut »

reilly3000 wrote: post #164
mkoubaa wrote: post #28

Wasn't there a theory that autism was affected by ultrasounds during pregnancy?

It’s strongly correlated with genetics down to a handful of SNPs. There is also a lot of evidence to suggest physiological differences in amygdala mass as well as hormone production. No exterior factor has been proven. No scapegoat is needed either, autists tend to like who they are and have unique and important value.

[flagged]

Re: Identical twins both grew up with autism, but took different paths

#175

Post by [deleted] »

abj wrote: post #173
djhope99 wrote: post #159

My 8 yr old identical twin daughter’s have severe autism but one is definitely worse than the other, one of them can use some words but the other is completely unable to communicate. I have absolutely no explanation for this, I cannot think of anything different that happened to them. They didn’t have antibiotics or surgery at a young age like in this story either.

[flagged]

[deleted]

Re: Identical twins both grew up with autism, but took different paths

#176

Post by djhope99 »

burnte wrote: post #170
djhope99 wrote: post #159

My 8 yr old identical twin daughter’s have severe autism but one is definitely worse than the other, one of them can use some words but the other is completely unable to communicate. I have absolutely no explanation for this, I cannot think of anything different that happened to them. They didn’t have antibiotics or surgery at a young age like in this story either.

There's genetics, but then there's gene expression which is affected by the world, so they clearly grew differently.

Thank you this is helpful. The genetic part makes sense to me, my wife has PCOS and they have a history of ovarian problems in their family. There are studies linking PCOS and autism and to high levels of testosterone.

The mystery to me was why they are so different.

Re: Identical twins both grew up with autism, but took different paths

#177

Post by tomasGiden »

One of my sons had a heart defect needing open heart surgery when he was 5 days old (it went fine!). In connection to that he was enrolled in a scientific study. Apparently when you are in a heart and lung machine as an infant (<1 month old) the pressure in the machine is so great compare to the normal pressure that the blood cells break creating free radicals. These free radicals can in turn create damage in the brain which can later on cause problems with executive functions and complex reasoning. Autistic people also have problems with executive functions (my other son has Asperger’s). Now I’m not saying that free radicals cause autism but maybe they modulate it when the same parts of the brain are affected by them during infancy.

Re: Identical twins both grew up with autism, but took different paths

#178

Post by AnthonyMouse »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #90
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You keep referring to the magnitude of the vector itself rather than the magnitude of its components. > Vectors with larger magnitudes have larger magnitudes than vectors with smaller magnitudes do? Vectors with more dimensions have larger magnitudes than vectors with fewer components, for the same average magnitude of the components. The distance between the origin and (1,1) is less than the distance between the ori…

> Vectors with more dimensions have larger magnitudes than vectors with fewer components, for the same average magnitude of the components. Is this related to something that's been said so far? >> [sidethread] The next step is them doing a black knight and pretending they didn't put in the requirement by hand. Obviously, I didn't. It was already there before I made my first comment. Look up: >>> Two complex numbers c…

> Is this related to something that's been said so far?

Are you considering what all of this is supposed to be an analogy for?

Suppose autism has different components, something like this:

https://getgoally.com/blog/autism-spectrum-wheel/

You rate someone on each factor using the same scale, e.g. a real number from 0 to 1, or a scale of 1 to 10. The scale is arbitrary but consistent.

Then someone whose "average" rating is 0.5 on a scale of 0 to 1 can be farther away from someone else whose "average" rating is 0.5 when there are more factors. On a linear scale two people both at 0.5 have distance zero. On a two dimensional scale, you could have one at (0, 1) and one at (1, 0) and then each of their averages is still 0.5 but their distance is ~1.4.

That's what we're talking about.

Re: Identical twins both grew up with autism, but took different paths

#179

Post by rpmisms »

genericresponse wrote: post #168
ChiperSoft wrote: post #162

This article annoys me to all ends. It started out badly by referring to autism as a disability, but it got worse in the fact that they’re assuming all of John’s symptoms are because he’s autistic. All of his disabilities can much easier be ascribed to brain damage post-partum. That hole in his heart meant he was getting less blood flow and less oxygen at a critical time in his brain development. The fact that both t…

Definitionally, at least in the US, Autism is a disability. It's a qualifier for the Americans with Disabilities Act. The specific definition: "A disability is a physical or mental impairment that makes it harder for a person to perform certain activities or interact with the world around them." For many ASD makes it harder to interact with the world around them, whether that's overstimulation, communication challeng…

That's an over-broad definition. I really hate ASD as a monolith, because there's a harsh difference between brain damage and brain misconfiguration.

Re: Identical twins both grew up with autism, but took different paths

#180

Post by tail_exchange »

abj wrote: post #173
djhope99 wrote: post #159

My 8 yr old identical twin daughter’s have severe autism but one is definitely worse than the other, one of them can use some words but the other is completely unable to communicate. I have absolutely no explanation for this, I cannot think of anything different that happened to them. They didn’t have antibiotics or surgery at a young age like in this story either.

[flagged]

As a word of caution to the readers: the Children's Health Defense is a group known for antivax, water fluoridation, and 5g disinformation.
Post reply on HN