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

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

#121

Post by ddmf »

funnym0nk3y wrote: post #54

I wonder how that ties into the hyperconnectivity induced by various psychoactive substances like psilocybin. All the research about GABA and glutamate seems too low level to me and not specific enough for treatment targets. Somewhat like using body weight to determine that disease.

hmm - still feel autistic on psilocybin and other tryptamines but more aware (and it works like a reset switch), however I've never felt as normal (or more like the people around me) as I did that first summer I binged mdma - when I managed to stay awake that is...

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

#122

Post by ddmf »

My clinical psychiatrist crudely described autism as taking many - sometimes longer - pathways through the brain to do things and monotropism could be simply a sticky myelin sheath.

But both could be true - a myelin sheath disorder along with hyperconnectivity could explain so many sensory issues and such singular processing.

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

#123

Post by 0u89e »

sanitycheck wrote: post #42
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there a survival and reproduction advantage from that? Low-grade autism is overrepresented in Silicon Valley. That wealth absolutely confers a reproductive advantage.

Any evidence the reproduction rate is higher among tech workers, or even among the wealthy in general? From what I've gathered in the past autistic people are more likely than average to not reproduce.

That is not how things work. Females are the main drive to reproduction and decide demographic trends in societies where they are not oppressed(also, diagnosed autism levels in minority grpups is higher compared to classical white populations - make from it what you want, but I will avoid comments for this here). And female autism works differently than male autism and a lot of that does not show up, because less females would be diagnosed for the very simple reason that diagnosis is not a disease but how well a person can function in society and females differ from males in that as they are doing better than males. We do not exaclty know variable for amount of females, that have "autistic" genes, but they seems to be main drive to spread autism and very successful at that, regardless how diagnosed male autists are multiplying less. Also, people seem to have wrong idea about how genes spread - it takes SINGLE successful case to spread dominant and successful genes over the next generations.

The main issue that people are thinking of autists, that they are somewhat different from other people - even on biological level and it does not help, that among autistic people there arte those that think in the levels of "autistic nation", because genetically we are even less different to other humans than a lab rat to other rats. And like I mentioned before, spread of succesful autistic genes is irrevelant of the number of direct descendants that person produces, and with genes you can't assume, that they are only present to those that have diagnosis.

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

#124

Post by 0u89e »

AngryData wrote: post #97
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, look at Elon with his X children.

Elon isn't autistic, he is just an asshole who wanted an excuse to deflect blame for his actions.

Elon Musk has diagnosis. He is part of autists. Generally my observation on autistic people is that they are assholes in one way or other and Elon Musk to me does not look like an exception. Neither are you.

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

#125

Post by fvvybfbfbyg »

chubbyFIREthrwy wrote: post #89
Aurornis wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Example: In a Job interview, when you get asked why you did apply. Its the social norm to lie and make up some reason that sounds good, and saying the truth "i need money to pay my rent" makes you the weird one This question has been included (not by my choice) in some hiring loops where I’ve been an interviewer. There are a lot of good answers that are definitely not lies. You see a lot of candidates who actually…

Good points, I appreciate the perspective! But, as someone probably on the spectrum, I still feel like the point about "NT people can't talk about facts" holds up. Like, if someone replies, "I need the money etc" why can't NTs better clarify what they mean? For example, "Okay but why this company/role/specialty" as opposed to ?" If someone lacks the self-awareness to narrow down what they're looking for in a case lik…

To be fair being able to understand which facts matter in which situation and which are irrelevant can be a very important aspect of some jobs.

I mean before replying “I need the money" etc. one should consider if that’s not obvious and why would the interviewer care about the information. It’s not particularly subjective.

> who's making no effort

Having to always be very literal and explicit is not very efficient though. That person might prefer spending their time doing something else.

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

#126

Post by [deleted] »

blueflow wrote: post #50
hiciu wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The double empathy problem explains why it may not be a deficiency, just a "different brain language" between ND and NT people. Basically, from autistic perspective, it's the non autistic people who have deficiencies in communication. There's been a whole lot of research about that in the last 10-15 years or so. And a lot of memes in the community.

> it's the non autistic people who have deficiencies in communication Example: In a Job interview, when you get asked why you did apply. Its the social norm to lie and make up some reason that sounds good, and saying the truth "i need money to pay my rent" makes you the weird one. People say ND people are blunt and frank... but the other side of the same coin would be that NT people can't talk about facts.

[deleted]

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

#127

Post by robwwilliams »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #90
robwwilliams wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I am not sure what you mean by interleaved here. In 2013 I am not sure that site differences were as appreciated as they are today. Today, in studies that use multi-site imaging data, ComBat Harmonization is often the method that is employed to account for site effects in two ways: (1) it models site-specific scaling factors and (2) it uses empirical Bayes to improve the estimation of the site parameters for small sa…

By interleaved I mean that cases and controls were not each in their own run batches, but ideally run A ,B, A, B, Yes ComBat can some of the batch effect if sample sizes are large enough. But here as you point out they are on thin ice.

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

#128

Post by ok_dad »

0u89e wrote: post #124
AngryData wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon isn't autistic, he is just an asshole who wanted an excuse to deflect blame for his actions.

Elon Musk has diagnosis. He is part of autists. Generally my observation on autistic people is that they are assholes in one way or other and Elon Musk to me does not look like an exception. Neither are you.

That’s really rude, autistic people are a diverse bunch.

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

#129

Post by computerthings »

0u89e wrote: post #114
qwertox wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wa…

>>>This is like assuming that cancer is good? More cells, better body? There are many things in our build up, where evolution have been outcome from viruses. However I do not like your comparision to cancer - cancerous cells are generally shredding cells from the unity of your organism - they might be making new organism, but that organism is not part of your evolution anymore. Changes that are happening in autistic…

from the article:

> Brain hyperconnectivity may limit flexible resource allocation, resulting in the rigidity and need for sameness that is often observed in individuals with ASD.

Hence "more (all the time) isn't always better". If I just run all programs on my computer at once, I don't get more done. Don't forget it's a spectrum, including nonverbal.

I think we don't so much discard information, but filter data (the raw sensory input etc.), and otherwise process it, in order to derive information from it. Without any filter or structure it's just raw data, or even noise. There'd be nothing to "store" either, you can't store a full resolution reality feed at "full frame rate". I know nothing and still claim that :P

That said, also I'll claim most of the suffering of autistic people, way too much at any rate, doesn't come from anything "wrong" with them, but the friction with societies that mostly ranged and ranges from ignorant to outright cruel. So please don't take my insistence that the article does indeed describe problems, not superpowers, as denying the amazing things many autistic people do, or saying even those who don't achieve anything special or struggle are lesser for it.

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

#130

Post by Anotheroneagain »

saghm wrote: post #99
lubujackson wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have experienced these feelings personally, but to bring up a high school metaphor - at some point I realized the popular kids weren't just dumb pretty people but spent a lot more time and mental energy on thinking through how they appear, how others regard them and understanding the social relationship amongst each other. Realizing this, getting called "socially retarded" wasn't just an insult but somewhat descrip…

> So I doubt the cause is a lack of ability or capabilities that leads to magical social awareness but actual compounding effort over years and decades. If you talk to a NT person about a situation they say "it's obvious" but if they break it down you see there actually is a richer decision tree underneath where they are empathizing with the other person's perspective and triangulating on their overall objectives and…

He's wrong. He's probably from a country where NTs are not predominant.

First, NTs don't ever consider anybody except themselves, they only care about their own good. Even when they seem like they're helping you, they only think they get some benefit from being seen doing so.

Second, they don't think like you do: What you consider a failure is a success to them. They memorize the phrase, and learn how they're supposed to react to it. You think they understand the phrase and come up with their own reply like you do, but they don't, because they can't.

There is nothing that can be understood about the NT world, it's all just rote learned. It's a cargo cult remnant of what people created when they were still normal, mixed with some random nonsense creativity of the schizophrenics who work on "improving" it. The only reason why you think you're failing at it is that the difference in intelligence between you and them is so vast.

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