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Brain Hyperconnectivity in Children with Autism and Its Links to Social Deficits (2013)

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11–20 of 134 posts

Re: Brain Hyperconnectivity in Children with Autism and Its Links to Social Deficits (2013)

#11
Vinod, often flashy and interesting, also often plays a bit fast and loose..a strategy that seems to land his lab good journals, but questionable replication. So I immediately looked at the preprocessing steps in the methods...which is, annoyingly, in supplemental 1. A few comments:

It is written so vaguely, it is difficult to understand what preprocessing steps were done and in which order (which matters). The steps to avoid motion confounds mostly talk about why they didn't do certain things (e.g. GSR regression), and not what they did do (tissue signal covariates?), what about non-GSR based noise cleaning to remove physiological and motion related noise? The study may be good,I just wish it was written more straightforwardly, and less like they are weaving past potential reviewer objections.

Vinod (v) To Vinod a paper is to write it so loose and sexy, so fast and seductive, editors are bound to wake up the morning after with a new babe. (Just a little joke among some colleagues of mine).

Re: Brain Hyperconnectivity in Children with Autism and Its Links to Social Deficits (2013)

#12
post #2

What if growing bigger, more connected brains is the next evolutionary step? Doesn't seem entirely unreasonable to me.

This is like assuming that cancer is good? More cells, better body?

This is just a hypothetical counter-argument. More connectivity could be better, "more intelligent", and autism seems to be "cool" among nerds for this reason. But maybe it's just a fallacy, just a way to pretend to be something better.

Again, all hypothetical.

Yesterday I listened to a podcast episode about bird brains [0]. That some birds have a way more efficient brain than ours, even if they are not as intelligent as we are. They are smarter than other primates, but their brain just weighs around 10g, while the one of chimps, which are about as intelligent as some birds, weighs 400g and consumes a lot more energy. They have an underdeveloped cortex, so apparently it isn't as important as one might think. That it could be that the cortex is more dedicated to sensing, than to thinking. Birds, for example, don't have such complex sensory inputs like our hands or our entire skin surface, that "memory mapping" all those inputs requires such a big cortex.

[0] https://www-spektrum-de.translate.goog/podcast/spektrum-podc...

Re: Brain Hyperconnectivity in Children with Autism and Its Links to Social Deficits (2013)

#13
post #2

What if growing bigger, more connected brains is the next evolutionary step? Doesn't seem entirely unreasonable to me.

What do you mean by "next"? Evolution doesn't have a plan. It'd be more adapted for some things and less for others.

Re: Brain Hyperconnectivity in Children with Autism and Its Links to Social Deficits (2013)

#14
post #2

What if growing bigger, more connected brains is the next evolutionary step? Doesn't seem entirely unreasonable to me.

Over-excitation tends to create more redundant, less synergistic information in networks. The balance between excitation and inhibition is thought by some to be requisite for efficient and flexible cognition.

Re: Brain Hyperconnectivity in Children with Autism and Its Links to Social Deficits (2013)

#15

Vinod, often flashy and interesting, also often plays a bit fast and loose..a strategy that seems to land his lab good journals, but questionable replication. So I immediately looked at the preprocessing steps in the methods...which is, annoyingly, in supplemental 1. A few comments: It is written so vaguely, it is difficult to understand what preprocessing steps were done and in which order (which matters). The steps…

Amusing comments provided you are not Vinod. Three sites and I would hope that connectomes were computed interleaved between cases and controls and analyzed with blinding. Is that standard? Do you think behavioral difference in the scanner could generate false positive connectome differences?

Re: Brain Hyperconnectivity in Children with Autism and Its Links to Social Deficits (2013)

#16

Vinod, often flashy and interesting, also often plays a bit fast and loose..a strategy that seems to land his lab good journals, but questionable replication. So I immediately looked at the preprocessing steps in the methods...which is, annoyingly, in supplemental 1. A few comments: It is written so vaguely, it is difficult to understand what preprocessing steps were done and in which order (which matters). The steps…

[deleted]

Re: Brain Hyperconnectivity in Children with Autism and Its Links to Social Deficits (2013)

#17
post #2

What if growing bigger, more connected brains is the next evolutionary step? Doesn't seem entirely unreasonable to me.

What do you mean by "next"? Evolution doesn't have a plan. It'd be more adapted for some things and less for others.

[flagged]

Re: Brain Hyperconnectivity in Children with Autism and Its Links to Social Deficits (2013)

#18
post #2

What if growing bigger, more connected brains is the next evolutionary step? Doesn't seem entirely unreasonable to me.

Is there a survival and reproduction advantage from that?

Yes

Re: Brain Hyperconnectivity in Children with Autism and Its Links to Social Deficits (2013)

#20
post #2

What if growing bigger, more connected brains is the next evolutionary step? Doesn't seem entirely unreasonable to me.

Except than in brain development the general trend is to lose a large fraction of many neuron types, synapses, and excess axonal connections.
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