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An immune molecule can sometimes influence the social behavior of mice: study

news.mit.edu

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Re: An immune molecule can sometimes influence the social behavior of mice: study

#61
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible that people so invested in the identity of having Aspergers that they hang out on /aspergers would tell you to fly a kite. That's hardly a representative sample of people with the condition. Most are probably living their lives and not hanging out on /aspergers.

Nice goalpost scoot. I'm telling you that if you ask any autistic person, they may express dissatisfaction with their autistic troubles, but they would tell you they would not want to be "cured" or "changed", because they would no longer be themselves.

> Nice goalpost scoot.

Please edit snarky swipes out of your comments here. The rest of this post would be just fine without that first bit.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: An immune molecule can sometimes influence the social behavior of mice: study

#62
post #2

And vaccines prevent infections. So in other words... :P

"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: An immune molecule can sometimes influence the social behavior of mice: study

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're thinking of high functioning autistic people, which is understandable because they're the only ones you are likely to meet - a severely autistic child might be non-verbal, and constantly screaming because of sensory overload. You will not meet those because they stay home or institutionalized.

Even high functioning autists tend to have issues. Sensory overload that can be hidden but is still stressful. Being very verbal without noticing that the other person isn't interested in what you've been talking about for the past hour.

Show me any adult that doesn't "have issues".

NT people are so broken in your own ways: relationships with parents, relationships with spouses, relationships with children, relationships with the environment: you don't get any of them right. You are all so broken and unhealthy! Why are you all on anti-anxiety meds, why are you all on anti-depressants? Every NT person I know makes so many weird decisions, against their own interests, against their own emotional health. You are broken in this world.

But for some reason it becomes so important that ASD people just "act more normal". Whatever.

Re: An immune molecule can sometimes influence the social behavior of mice: study

#64
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible that people so invested in the identity of having Aspergers that they hang out on /aspergers would tell you to fly a kite. That's hardly a representative sample of people with the condition. Most are probably living their lives and not hanging out on /aspergers.

Nice goalpost scoot. I'm telling you that if you ask any autistic person, they may express dissatisfaction with their autistic troubles, but they would tell you they would not want to be "cured" or "changed", because they would no longer be themselves.

I'm not trying to move the goalposts. I'll try responding in a different way.

I don't know why you have stated everyone would provide identical answers if asked about a cure for austism. A simple reddit search which I just did confirms there is a thread where some have been asked this question and said they would in fact sign up for a cure. Other answered "maybe". Many said "no". Nobody said "go fly a kite".

I will concede the majority of people appear to have answered no, but, again, that isn't a representative sample of the general population. More data would be needed to make a more general conclusion.

Re: An immune molecule can sometimes influence the social behavior of mice: study

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be, by choice or haste, missing the conditions in my post - profoundly autistic people at the ends of the spectrum are, by societal standards 'broken' and are indeed incapable of empathy or love. It's not a nice thing to say or admit, but it is .. well, true. I have an autistic uncle who is not profoundly so, but is hard to communicate with and has problems existing by himself, often getting into trouble…

"Lack of empathy" in ASD people does not refer to love of other people. It simply means ASD people have a hard time predicting the behavior of others. That's it. They can love just fine. It's a pervasive myth, unfortunately. Indeed ASD people often suffer from extreme empathy e.g. towards animals or something upsetting on the news (war/famine/etc.)

There's some ambiguity between cognitive and affective empathy. There are people who seem to be quite lacking in affective empathy and the pro-social emotions, that one might definitely call incapable of love. But autism is not like that, indeed it's very different; at worst, autistic folks might be said to have impairments in cognitive empathy, and AIUI even that's disputed to some extent.

Re: An immune molecule can sometimes influence the social behavior of mice: study

#66
post #32
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Although findings in mice do not always translate into human treatments, the study may help to guide the development of strategies that could help..." Pulled right from the article. Studies in mice are simply a way to point in the, hopefully, "right" direction without having to shoot in the dark with human test subjects needlessly.

A mouse model for human autism is contrived at best. The cynic in me feels that some researchers are running out of ideas. The only experimental apparatus are poor knockout mice. Arguably an analogy is trying to fix a compiled binary with a hex editor and replacing all your 0x11s with 0x0a. Then claiming the segfault is a good model of how another binary crashes (due to a null pointer exception or whatever really).

IMO this isn't really relevant to the discussion; none of us here, nor the article itself imply that the mouse model is directly translatable, or that this is a cure instead of an interesting finding.

Re: An immune molecule can sometimes influence the social behavior of mice: study

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even high functioning autists tend to have issues. Sensory overload that can be hidden but is still stressful. Being very verbal without noticing that the other person isn't interested in what you've been talking about for the past hour.

Show me any adult that doesn't "have issues". NT people are so broken in your own ways: relationships with parents, relationships with spouses, relationships with children, relationships with the environment: you don't get any of them right. You are all so broken and unhealthy! Why are you all on anti-anxiety meds, why are you all on anti-depressants? Every NT person I know makes so many weird decisions, against thei…

I don't know if there's a different meaning of "neurotypical" in the ASD community, but under the general definition, anyone who is on anti-anxiety or antidepressant medication (presumably prescribed) is, by definition, not "neurotypical." A neurotypical person is a person with a complete lack of issues recognized by the DSM-V.

But, putting that aside: these problems you're describing are all things that ASD people also have to deal with. People with ASD have strictly more problems than people without it, since they have all the "normal" problems, and then some other ones that only they suffer from (like the aforementioned sensory hypersensitivity.) The only differences that exist stem from people lowering their expectations of how people with ASD will perform on e.g. social tasks. Those tasks still need to get done; people on the spectrum just don't get the choice to be the one to do them, because other people make that choice for them. (Just like nobody asks a deaf person to transcribe audio for them, or asks a paraplegic to deliver a package for them.)

> But for some reason it becomes so important that ASD people just "act more normal".

I don't think anyone wants people with ASD to "act" any way that's hard for them. The point of the development of ASD treatments is to enable people to have the opportunity to choose how they want to be, rather than being locked into one part of behavior-space without having had such a choice.

To put it another way, by analogy to another community of sufferers: people with hearing can choose to put in earplugs. Deaf people cannot choose to put in hear-plugs. Because of this, being able to hear is a strict improvement over being deaf: you can choose to use it, or not, at any point.

Re: An immune molecule can sometimes influence the social behavior of mice: study

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even high functioning autists tend to have issues. Sensory overload that can be hidden but is still stressful. Being very verbal without noticing that the other person isn't interested in what you've been talking about for the past hour.

Show me any adult that doesn't "have issues". NT people are so broken in your own ways: relationships with parents, relationships with spouses, relationships with children, relationships with the environment: you don't get any of them right. You are all so broken and unhealthy! Why are you all on anti-anxiety meds, why are you all on anti-depressants? Every NT person I know makes so many weird decisions, against thei…

I don’t have any issues.

But more importantly... nobody is asking ASD people to act “normally”. It’s just being noted that they tend to act in particular ways and suffer from particular stimuli and are generally more difficult for NT people to relate to.

Re: An immune molecule can sometimes influence the social behavior of mice: study

#69
post #8
post #4

Autistic children are children, the same full irritating, exhuberant, noisy and magnet for troubles in a small package than before, but with a plus of cleverness, strange ways to do things, uncommon hobbies and extravaganza. The idea that an ill children tired and with less energy than usual would behave better is not a total surprise.

They say when having fever, the mice communicate with peers better. When children are under the weather, they don't seem to communicate better.

The problem is how they define a better communication between mice. From an human point of view?

Normal male mice fight. You enter in my zone, I'll bite you and chase you off. Normal female mice are more tolerant with relatives and pups, but not with any other female. They can fight also with strange females.

This is the rule for the species and the definition of perfect and normal communication. "pacifist" or mesiah mice is anomalous and probably would send a really confusing message for the other mice.

"I'm too feverish and tired to fight right now, so let me alone" is common among animals and not necessarily related with autistic behaviour.

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