Is Autism A Spiritual Problem

The following information is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease. It should not be used as a substitute for speaking with a competent healthcare expert.

We know that autism is caused by a variety of factors. Autism is thought to be caused by a combination of hereditary and nongenetic, or environmental, factors.

These factors appear to enhance the likelihood of a youngster developing autism. It's vital to remember, though, that greater risk isn't the same as causality. Some autism-related gene alterations, for example, can be discovered in persons who do not have the illness. Similarly, not everyone who is exposed to a risk factor for autism will get the condition. In truth, the vast majority will not.

Autism's genetic risk factors

Autism appears to run in families, according to research. Changes in some genes enhance a child's likelihood of developing autism. If one or more of these gene alterations are carried by a parent, they may be handed down to a kid (even if the parent does not have autism). These genetic changes can also occur spontaneously in an early embryo or in the sperm and/or egg that unite to form the embryo. The bulk of these gene alterations, once again, do not cause autism on their own. They simply raise the disorder's risk.

Autism's environmental risk factors

Environmental factors may also enhance – or decrease – autism risk in those who are genetically predisposed to the illness, according to research. Importantly, any increase or decrease in risk for any of these risk variables appears to be minor:

No effect on risk

Vaccines. Each family's experience with an autism diagnosis is different, and for some, it coincides with their child's immunization schedule. Simultaneously, experts have spent the last two decades conducting intensive study to see if there is a link between childhood immunizations and autism. Vaccines do not cause autism, according to the findings of this study. A detailed list of this study has been compiled by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Differences in brain biology

How do these genetic and nongenetic factors contribute to the development of autism? The majority appear to have an impact on critical areas of early brain development. Some appear to have an impact on how brain nerve cells (neurons) communicate with one another. Others appear to have an impact on how entire brain areas communicate with one another. These differences are still being researched in the hopes of creating therapies and services that will improve quality of life.

Is autism an emotional problem?

A research in England monitored 126 autistic people from preteen to age 23 and found little progress in their behavioral and mental issues1.

Emotional and behavioral issues are more common in children with autism than in their neurotypical classmates. According to previous studies, up to 84 percent of these kids are nervous, and up to 47 percent are depressed. Between 30 and 80 percent of autistic children also fit the criteria for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (ADHD).

According to the experts, 70 percent of autistic children aged 10 to 12 years old have additional mental and behavioral issues2. According to the latest research, these children's emotional and behavioral characteristics only minimally improve.

What is wrong with your brain when you have autism?

“It's tough to describe the neuroanatomy of autism,” Dr. Culotta says. As a result, it might be easier to discuss brain anatomy and how the autistic brain differs.

So, what's different about this three-pound organ's structure? Let's start with a refresher on anatomy: To begin with, the brain is divided into two hemispheres. We acquire the concept of a left and right brain from these two hemispheres. In reality, our cognitive and mental processes alternate between the two sides. “In autism, communication between the left and right hemispheres of the brain is a little more challenging. According to Dr. Anderson, “there aren't as many strong connections between the two hemispheres.”

Science has recently discovered that the hemispheres of ASD brains are slightly more symmetrical than those of a normal brain. According to a study published in Nature Communications, a slight change in asymmetry isn't enough to diagnose ASD. And it's still unknown how the symmetry affects autism's characteristics.

Here's what scientists have discovered thus far. Asymmetry between the left and right sides of the brain is an important component of brain organization. Some brain functions are dominated, or lateralized to use the technical phrase, by one side of the brain. Speech and comprehension are one example. It's processed in the left cerebral hemisphere for the majority of humans (approximately 70% of left-handers and 95% of right-handers). People with ASD have a lower rate of leftward linguistic lateralization than the normal population, which could explain why they are more lefthanded.

The brain's differences don't end there. Another brief overview of Biology 101: There are four lobes in each half: frontal, parietal, occipital, and temporal. Structures that control everything from movement to thinking are housed within these lobes. The cerebral cortex, often known as grey matter, is located on top of the lobes. This is where the information is processed. The surface area of the cerebral cortex is increased by the folds in the brain. The more grey matter or surface area there is, the more data can be processed.

Now we'll get a little more technical. Grey matter ripples into gyri and sulci, which are peaks and troughs, respectively. According to San Diego State University experts, these deep folds and wrinkles may develop differently in people with ASD. The left parietal and temporal lobes, as well as the right frontal and temporal areas, have much more folding in autistic brains.

“These changes are frequently linked to changes in neural network connections,” Dr. Culotta notes. “Indeed, it has been postulated that during development, tightly linked cortical regions are pulled together, with gyri emerging in between. Hypoconnectivity, or a lack of connectivity in the autistic brain, permits weakly connected regions to drift apart, producing sulci between them.” The deeper these sulcal pits are, the more language production is impaired, according to research.

Is autism inherited from the mother or father?

The researchers discovered that women passed on only half of their structural variants to their autistic offspring, a frequency that would be anticipated by chance alone, implying that maternal variants are unrelated to autism. Surprisingly, dads passed down significantly more than half of their mutations. According to the findings published today in Science, autistic children may have inherited risk mutations in regulatory areas from their fathers but not from their mothers.

Sebat's team investigated a second, larger sample of 1771 families to see if their findings held up. Autistic children acquired more structural variations from their fathers than from their mothers, albeit the effect was not as substantial in this second sample.

Sebat says, “This is entirely opposed to… what we had previously assumed.” Peixoto is surprised by the paternal bias, despite her suspicions that the genetic component of autism would be more visible in noncoding regions. Variants in regulatory areas are usually less common than mutations in protein-coding regions “Effects are minor but additive. And when your impact is minimal, it's much more likely to be passed down from generation to generation.”

Sebat proposes a more complex model of how autism develops based on these findings, in which mothers pass on mutations affecting coding regions, which have large effects that women are protected from, and fathers pass on variants affecting noncoding regions, which have much smaller effects and may only cause symptoms when combined with risk variants from mothers.

The study delivers “quite intriguing preliminary findings,” according to Dalila Pinto, a molecular geneticist at Mount Sinai's Icahn School of Medicine. She said she'll be eager to see if the findings are confirmed in larger genome databases, as well as whether other variants are discovered. Although the research is still in its early stages, Peixoto agrees that it “opens a door in a different way.”

Which parent is responsible for autism?

Initially, experts believed that mothers are more likely to pass on autism-causing gene abnormalities to their children. Because girls have a lower prevalence of autism than males, and women are thought to have the same genetically programmed risk factors as men but without the symptoms of autism, this is the case. However, if a mother passes those genes on to her sons, she is not protected in the same way and suffers as a result.

Can autistic people love?

• People with autism are sometimes stereotyped as being incapable of feeling romantic love.
• People with autism can, in fact, experience romantic love and place a high importance on their intimate connections.
• An addiction to routines, social interaction challenges, and communication issues are common problems in these relationships.
• Autistic people and their partners can benefit from relationship management practices that help them have happy, loving relationships.

Can autism Be Cured?

There is no cure for autism spectrum condition, and no single treatment works for everyone. The goal of treatment is to improve your child's capacity to function by minimizing symptoms of autism spectrum disorder and promoting development and learning.

Are autistic brains different?

According to a major imaging study1, the brains of people with autism have a number of anatomical abnormalities from those of controls. The alterations can be found throughout the brain, not just in the affected areas.

The findings imply that autism affects many more brain regions than previously assumed.

“According to senior researcher Jan Buitelaar, professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, “it's possible that anomalies are more evident in the social brain, but not purely and exclusively in the social brain.”

Some of the structural changes identified in patients with autism are also seen in brain scans of some controls, implying that they are not a biomarker of the disorder.

“One of the difficulties in finding illness associations is dealing with how variable humans are in general,” says Armin Raznahan, chief of the Developmental Neurogenomics Unit at the National Institute of Mental Health in the United States, who was not involved in the work.

Do people with autism have empathy?

Previous study has suggested that persons with autism lack empathy, but is this still a widely held belief? Rebecca Armstrong, a researcher, looks into past and current studies.

Empathy is described as the ability to recognize and understand the situation and feelings of another person; it is also known as empathy “Walking in someone else's shoes” is a phrase that means “walking in someone else'

It gives us the ability to sense how someone else is feeling or thinking. It enables us to deduce others' intentions, predict their actions, and feel an emotion triggered by their feelings. In a nutshell, empathy enables us to interact effectively in social situations.

Impairment in social functioning and communication is one of the key symptoms of autism. Some research, such as that conducted by Baron-Cohen, has indicated that people with autism lack the ability to recognize and understand the thoughts and feelings of others, and hence do not respond appropriately to them. While it is true that autistic people have a harder time detecting social signs, this does not mean that they lack empathy. This study came to the important conclusion that persons with autism do not care and, as a result, lack a crucial part of being a compassionate human. However, personal experiences and current research contradict this viewpoint.

It's crucial to look at contemporary understandings of empathy and autism in the context of their history. The “theory of mind” or “mind blindness,” devised by Baron-Cohen and used to comprehend autism, is one of his most influential theories. Theory of mind is defined as the ability to assign mental states to oneself and others, similar to cognitive empathy. Individuals with a functioning theory of mind may comprehend and predict the intentions and actions of others as a result of these attributions. It has been claimed that a core problem in autism is defective theory of mind, and that many symptoms associated with people on the autism spectrum can be explained by an inability to perceive others (Krahn & Fenton, 2012).

As a result, the hypothesis of the extreme male brain was born (Baron-Cohen, 2002). According to this idea, people with autism merely fit an extreme of the male profile, with a strong desire to systemize and a weak desire to empathize. The former is traditionally connected with male-specific abilities, whereas the latter is traditionally associated with female-specific abilities.

It is clear that the excessive male brain theory is influenced by how boys and girls are socialized and is based on gender stereotypes. These depictions of gender differences in behavior, cognition, and emotion can be deceiving.

Although Baron-Cohen described brain profiles in terms of where people sit on a scale for empathizing and systematizing, gendering them makes little sense because males and females did not solely fit into male or female type brains. It would have been more advantageous to identify and state links between behaviors and brain types before gender-neutralizing the labels. As a result of extreme male brain theory, the vocabulary used to define autism is saturated with gender expectations and connotations. The way autism has been discussed over the last three decades recalls cultural gender understandings and ignores the multitude of individual development elements.

This could also explain why there are so few girls diagnosed with autism, given the high male-to-female ratio. Young girls with autism who have mild to no intellectual impairment have fewer social and communicative difficulties than boys (Smith, 2009). Girls with autism may be subjected to socialization pressures that are similar to early intervention in certain ways. Due to heightened expectations of girls to behave in a sympathetic or nurturing manner, people around girls with autism may be able to effectively provide a mechanism for them to engage with others. Boys with autism, on the other hand, may be harmed by the lack of expectations and social pressures for empathy from boys.

Emma Goodall, PhD, has a wealth of expertise and experience in the subject of autism. Goodall, who has Asperger's syndrome, has worked for the Ministry of Education and as a resource teacher of learning and behavior (RTLB) before launching an autism and Asperger's consulting firm. She shares her own personal experiences of empathy in her book Understanding and Facilitating the Achievement of Autistic Potential. She emphasizes that emotional expression in people with autism is abnormal, not non-existent, and that ordinarily developing people may misread the emotions. Although there is less expressive face movement and altered body language, the emotions are sensed quite strongly (Smith, 2009). Others have said that people with autism don't understand other people's sentiments because of this strong experience and unique expression. Another explanation could be that neurotypically developed people are unable to comprehend the emotions of people with autism.

There are a variety of reasons for a lack of measured empathy. Those on the spectrum have had to modify their behaviors in order to be more socially acceptable, which means they may have lost some expressiveness as a result. Many persons on the spectrum have processing challenges, which can cause them to respond slowly or appear aloof (Smith, 2009; Goodall, 2013). It could also be due to a concept called “emotional primacy” by Goodall. She gave the example of a person dying after a long time of pain. Autistic persons are more likely to empathize with pain and be relieved when it is ended, rather than with death itself. They may be unable to comprehend others' emotional states due to the logic of knowing the person was sick and dying (Goodall, 2013).

Every autistic person is different; some struggle with empathy, while others are absolutely overwhelmed by other people's emotions, and then there are some in the between. It appears that autistic empathy expression is unusual. More research is needed, as well as a change away from labeling this expression as a lack of empathy. Emma Goodall put it succinctly in her book, saying, “If Aspies were no longer labeled as un-empathetic, perhaps our kind of empathy would be welcomed and cherished by the general public, rather than just those who knew us well” (p.126).

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S. Baron-Cohen and S. Wheelwright (2004). Adults with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism and typical sex differences were studied for the empathy quotient. 163-175 in Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

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