Brain Scan Can Detect Autism In Infants 166
kkleiner writes "A new study shows that brain scans can detect autism in children as young as 6 months old. Researchers at University of North Carolina's Institute for Developmental Disabilities imaged the brains of 92 children who were at high risk for autism. Scans were performed when the children were 6 months, 1-year, and 2-years old. At 2 years, the age when children are typically diagnosed, 30 percent of the children were found to have autism. The researchers then compared the brain images of the autistic children with the others. They saw differences in the brain's white matter, the axon-laden pathways that transmit electrical signals to distant parts of the brain. Of the 15 pathways analyzed, 12 were significantly different between autistic and non-autistic children."
But I thought... (Score:3, Funny)
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Beat me to it!
Brain scan introduces radiation into the brain (Score:1, Troll)
If I can recall correctly, brain scan does introduces radiation into the brain
What are they thinking?
Scanning the little brains of little babies will only do more harm than good to those babies
I do not object of performing brain scan on babies - but on those babies who may have cancer or other fatal illness in order to diagnose their condition
Autism may be serious, but at least, it's not a fatal sickness
Re:Brain scan introduces radiation into the brain (Score:5, Informative)
If I can recall correctly, brain scan does introduces radiation into the brain
Depends on the type. PET scans do have some radiation. The study in question - http://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleid=668180&RelatedWidgetArticles=true [psychiatryonline.org] used diffusion tensor imaging which is a variant of MRI, which uses strong magnetic fields and does't produce any radiation. The technique is essentially harmless.
Re:Brain scan introduces radiation into the brain (Score:5, Funny)
The technique is essentially harmless.
Except that 30% of those scanned in the study now have autism... coincidence? ;)
Re:Brain scan introduces radiation into the brain (Score:5, Funny)
The technique is essentially harmless.
Except that 30% of those scanned in the study now have autism... coincidence? ;)
I bet most of that 30% also were exposed to that super-dangerous Dihydrogen Monoxide, too. That's where I'd put my money. After all, some kids have autism without ever being scanned, and most of them were probably exposed to DHMO. Parents give that stuff to their kids like it was water, without ever realising how dangerous it is!
I'd go on, but I have to go take my kids to their swimming class.
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I hate you.
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But even weak magnets have a biological effect. They must do - magnet therapy is a billion dollar industry.
If a $2 ferro-magnet can cure cancer, the massive field of an MRI must be able to cause disease. This relationship is proven by the homeopathic principle.
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Well in all fairness there is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_magnetic_stimulation [wikipedia.org]
Single or paired pulse TMS causes neurons in the neocortex under the site of stimulation to depolarize and discharge an action potential. If used in the primary motor cortex, it produces muscle activity referred to as a motor evoked potential (MEP) which can be recorded on electromyography. If used on the occipital cortex, 'phosphenes' (flashes of light) might be perceived by the subject. In most other areas of the cortex, the participant does not consciously experience any effect, but his or her behaviour may be slightly altered (e.g. slower reaction time on a cognitive task), or changes in brain activity may be detected using sensing equipment.
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That lies my original statement --- the radiation from brain scans - except perhaps for MRI --- is that they introduce enough radiation into the brain in order to be able to "read" the result
The amount of radiation introduced in any brain scan is definitely not "negligible"
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Are you kidding? That's nothing. Technically-minded people on Slashdot have no sense of how much ionizing radiation they're exposed to from perfectly ordinary and unavoidable sources in the course of a day. Forget regular people understanding anything about non-ionizing radiation.
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No, diffusion tensor imaging is done with magnetism. No radiation is required and there is no risk of cancer or other fatal illness.
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These infants all had their entire 2-year regimen early :)
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Brain scans caused autism in 30% of the children scanned!
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Until someone with polio gets the flu and coughs on you.
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You can't cough in an iron lung
This is one of those things... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like a smoke detector which is telling you your house is already on fire, but can do nothing about putting it out or preventing it from happening.
Might be useful in some way for consulting with parents, but a knife-edge decision there, to decide whether to tell people their child might develop Autism, with the possibility you culd be wrong. While it is interesting information the practice side of how to use it raises some questions.
Re:This is one of those things... (Score:5, Insightful)
1) How close was the correlation between the odd brain scans and incidence of autism? what was the error rate?
2) Can the brain scan be used to predict autism, rather than as a 20/20 hindsight study?
3) If the test does reliably predict autism, how practical is it to put it into use? I can't imagine it would make much sense to do it to every 6-month-old--the cost would be prohibitive, particularly since it's a relatively small percentage of the population which are autistic. Would this become something that is only used for children who have a high risk of developing autism?
/parent of an autistic son
Re:This is one of those things... (Score:5, Informative)
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That presumes there is effective treatment for autism in infants, which there is not. The best you can hope for is to warn the parents what they may be facing.
Re:This is one of those things... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, nobody knows whether there is effective treatment for autism in infants. Until autism can be reliably diagnosed in infants, there is no way to test whether any kind of early intervention will improve outcome.
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There were two hypothesis developed from the study that showed that a B vitamin regimen reduced sy
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Studying the brain development of infants, who later are diagnosed as having autism, provides important information as to the root causes of autistic. And understanding the root cause is important in creating effective treatments.
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There are a couple questions I have about the study:
Those sound less like questions about this study and more like questions about the next study that they haven't done yet...
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3) If the test does reliably predict autism, how practical is it to put it into use? I can't imagine it would make much sense to do it to every 6-month-old--the cost would be prohibitive, particularly since it's a relatively small percentage of the population which are autistic. Would this become something that is only used for children who have a high risk of developing autism?
Unless or Until there is a early intervention/prevention treatment, finding these children early seems expensive and not that helpful.
AutismSpeaks [autismspeaks.org] is big on therapy but statistical evaluation of success seems pretty spotty at best, since no two kids are the same, and none of these seem appropriate for autism at 6 months to 1-year, which scans might detect.
Since normal detection typically occurs at 2 years, therapy has at best 12 to 18 months additional time to "work" if scans are performed. But all the th
Not predictive (Score:2)
They need to do another experiment. It's not right to look at the scans AFTER you know which ones have a problem. Otherwise you start to "see things" to support the conclusion. They don't really need to re-scan, they could just show all the scans to
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It IS right to look at the scans AFTER you know which ones have a problem if your goal is to identify differences. An eventual later goal would be to prove that the differences are definitive and useful for diagnosis. That's not what these researchers were doing. RTFA. They don't claim that this IS diagnostic, but that their research results found differences that are interesting, and might lead down the road to predictive tests. They make no claim that it is a predictive test.
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I haven't checked if the study is double-blind, but if it isn't, it doesn't even prove the differences exist. It's very easy to see differences when you expect them to be there.
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That's what I said.
Re:This is one of those things... (Score:5, Interesting)
FWIW, this seems to be just the latest in research that has been coming out in the last few years that seem to add to the evidence that autism onset is really early or preterm.
For instance, that this paper that came out in 2005 [ucsd.edu] attempted to more systematically document the early signs of autism by using a longitudinal study which comparing a set of high risk infants (who had an older sibling diagnosed w/ some ASD), with a control set at 6 months, 12 months, and 24 months.
Of course today, autism is defined in terms of behavior. The key is the origin or eitology of autism. Is this odd brain scan an indicator of the origin, or is it something else and this is merely correlated. Nobody knows.
However, we do seem to have strong indication of certain specific chromosomal problems that can lead to autistic behavior: FragileX, Rett Syndrome, and Tuberous Sclerosis. Fragile X and Rett's are X chromosome related. This is suspiciously related to the observation that incidence of ASD are higher in boys and boys only have 1 "X" chromosome. TS is not X related, but can cause calcium deposits to develop in the brain or in some cases tuber-like growths in the brain (as special case, since tuber-like growths occur all over the body w/ this condition).
Because of the accumulated research, many people speculate that there are actually many pathways to autistic behaviour. You might even think of autism as a symptom of many diseases and conditions (like a cough is a symptom of many diseases), so many experts are not optimistic that will be a "cure" for autism, but perhaps in the future there will be a way in some situations to blunt the symptoms early enough to avoid many of the problems in many of the common cases.
Reality is often much more complicated that the headlines.
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2) Autism is a very poorly defined disease, and so probably encompasses many. I seriously doubt a region-specific white-matter analysis of an MRI image will prove useful in predicting it. Perhaps a subset of the patients have a white-matter cause of their disorder, but it would still be very hard to detect. The inspiration for this approach was the similar test done (usually with ultrasound) for Down's, which is a much more clearly defined disorder. But even with that test there are plenty of false positive
Re:This is one of those things... (Score:5, Funny)
It's like a smoke detector which is telling you your house is already on fire, but can do nothing about putting it out or preventing it from happening.
On the other hand, you can get a 2-year jump-start on locking the kid in the attic.
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Yeah, if I were a politician I'd have to apologize to the victims of attic-imprisonment.
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Believe it or not, you can simultaneously care about things AND retain your dark sense of humor.
Otherwise I agree with everything else in your comment.
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Re:This is one of those things... (Score:4, Interesting)
Phenylketonuria and celiacs are both very common with autism. By carefully controlling the diet at a younger age many behaviors might be curbed or avoided altogether. With this as with all medical conditions, the earlier you know the better.
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It's being narrowed down to genetics so hopefully they can identify a gene combination sooner or later. Then potential parents could have a test.
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Our son was diagnosed with autism at just under 2 years old and put into early intervention preschool right when he turned 3. Between that and the things we've done at home, we now have a 9 year old he is doing well in a regular ed class with an aide and who will probably be able to graduate high school and get a job and hopefully live on his own some day.
If we would have known at 6 months old we could have gotten started earlier and he would be miles ahead of where he is now. The things that kids learn bet
Re:This is one of those things... (Score:4, Insightful)
In 2003, they would not even attempt a diagnosis of Autism before age 3, even though all the research was pointing toward early intervention with socialization therapy as highly effective at mitigating the worst of the debilitating effects of ASD.
Getting this diagnosis at 6 months can kick off a course of ABA and socialization focus at a time when it matters most to the child's future.
I just spoke with a surgeon this morning, married to another surgeon, who have a 16 year old son with straight As and no concept of what a friend is - if they had noticed earlier and done something about it, he might (according to the literature) have more of a social life at this point. Maybe he's happy the way he is, but at some point, social withdrawal has a negative impact on the ability to pro-create, and even though children have a negative correlation to happiness, it is sad to not be able to have them if you really want to.
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The earlier an autistic child starts therapy the better the chances are that s/he will do better. Better diagnostic techniques that let parents know about autism in their children sooner is valuable.
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Early intervention with autism probably makes a huge difference. I would agree with your assessment if it didn't though.
If they can positively identify a brain layout that correlates to autism, and then try various early intervention techniques and measure the results, in the future we may be able to say "early intervention definitely makes a huge difference".
Oh, I Call Shenanigans (Score:1)
It's at least a clue to the cause (Score:2, Insightful)
If the brain is showing abnormality at birth or close to it then we can at least rule out post-natal causes (e.g vaccines). Perhaps epidemiologists should start looking into diet deficiencies or exposure to toxins during pregnancy.
Re:It's at least a clue to the cause (Score:4, Insightful)
If the brain is showing abnormality at birth or close to it then we can at least rule out post-natal causes (e.g vaccines).
Well they already have been, but maybe this'll convince the Oprah/Jenny McCarthy/Jim Carey crowd.
Re:It's at least a clue to the cause (Score:5, Insightful)
Not a chance, they aren't being rational to start with so evidence and facts are irrelevant.
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Those evil scientists surely faked their data because they were paid by the medial-industrial complex! Where is autismgate?
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If the brain is showing abnormality at birth or close to it then we can at least rule out post-natal causes (e.g vaccines).
Well they already have been, but maybe this'll convince the Oprah/Jenny McCarthy/Jim Carey crowd.
I don't think you can do anything to convince them. About all you can do is just ignore them enough until they cease to be as vocal about this topic and until they find some other cause célèbre to occupy their time.
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Already been done. Is the entire population of Denmark not a big enough sample size for you?
The anti-vaccine crowd doesn't have a valid argument. It's all based on emotional hyperbole and has shit all to do with science.
Differences can be seen at six months looking back (Score:5, Informative)
The study results do not detect autism (which most people will read as a diagnosis). When looking back over the scans, differences from normal development could be seen starting as early as six months, but this is retrospective after it was diagnosed at the common ages. This study may at least provide some clues on how autism develops even if it doesn't provide a means of diagnosing it earlier.
Re:Differences can be seen at six months looking b (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. Next they need to scan another group of babies at 6 months, identify the autistic type scans and see if that predicts autism 2 years out.
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No validation cohort (Score:2)
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Autism is on the run (Score:1)
Once autism can be detected in fetuses, they will be aborted routinely.
Count on it.
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Once autism can be detected in fetuses, they will be aborted routinely. Count on it.
Thankyou Captain Obvious! You saved the day!
Prenatal test (Score:3)
Assuming autism is mostly genetic (which I don't claim), and assuming they can come up with a prenatal test for it (not this one), would it be moral to abort if a test showed positive for autism?
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What exactly are "desirable characteristics"? Desirable to who? We have entered a period of time where human interaction is going by the way side. Emotions are irrelevant on in the modern internet connected society. Could it be that the most "desirable characteristics" are lack of affect? The exact characteristics that define autism? If Autism truly is on the rise, and I'm not saying it is, then maybe Autism is the most desirable characteristics for human survival.
In the near future we will have computer
People marry early (Score:2)
because there are study that marrying and being pregnant late can increase the chance of autism in the child.
There are also there are study that people early marry have higher chance of divorce, bankruptcies, home foreclosure, and delinquent children due to not having the proper financial foundation to begin with.
I don't know much how autism is being treated here in America, but being acquainted with the eastern culture, tiger-mom tactics and oppressive military-style training are quite popular in combating
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It needs to be detected in utero, so that the fetus can be aborted.
-Rick Santorum
(aka Rick with the silent 'P')
He will be Rick the Lionhearted if elected.
Re:Not early enough. (Score:4, Insightful)
My friend's family was also at the mercy of their extremely well-built and violent retard son. Aside from almost drowning his brother in the backyard pool(a story I mentioned here as AC), he flashed everybody at his brother's birthday party, shot up his whole house with a BB gun, he tried to rape his own mom after getting into the liquor cabinet. They were an otherwise-perfect, well-off family.
Sanctity of life, indeed. "If the fetus is a Downs, grip it out by the crown" is my motto.
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I am extremely disturbed by the lack of compassion in your sociopathic comments and the fact that others voted you up. I am not here start a flame war, but I know a child that is autistic but extremely high functioning. He(six) learned the solar system, computers, and the how the body works at intricate level. He has more knowledge then most adults.
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You know one child that is autistic but extremely high-functioning. First, is he really hardcore autistic, or just some book-smart kid with poor social skills who was diagnosed with an autistic-spectrum disorder to make excuses for genetic weakness and/or poor parenting? Did mommy spend all her time socializing, working, and trying to lose the baby weight; or did she actually try to bond with the baby? Did she breast-feed the baby? Did the parents care more about their careers and just delegate caretaking d
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Genetic weaknesses, however, is a much more likely cause.
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Re:Not early enough. (Score:5, Interesting)
heya,
You do realise that's the sort of rhetoric that only brainwashed religious nutjobs spout, right?
I'm definitely not 100% comfortable with advocating open season for abortions, and I think it's a tragedy whenever it happen, but to declare moral equivalence between abortions and shooting a child is a logical fallacy that only an idiot or a self-deluded fool could commit.
Look, I don't know if you're ever actually worked with autistic kids. I don't mean movie-style Rain Man style, but an actual real flesh and blood kid, complete with temper tantrums, screaming and violent outbursts. If it was your kid, I'm sure you'd still love them, but I can see why some parents would crack.
I used to help teach special needs kids, and on the bad days, even those couple hours a week could be seriously draining.
And also, many of these have a genetic factor - so it's just like hereditary diabetes - the incident rate today is going up, simply because people with the genes are living longer, and having more kids. Diabetes - sure, you can argue it's not a huge deal if you pass it onto all your kids, but other things, like say Huttingtons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huntington's_disease), if I knew I was a carrier, I'd think twice before having my own biological children (there are alternatives to abortion, believe it or not).
Cheers,
Victor
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You do realise that's the sort of rhetoric that only brainwashed religious nutjobs spout, right?
I do realise that's the sort of argument that an anti-abortion advocate would make that would incite pro-abortionists to resort to calling names because they can't find a good counter-argument to it.
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Yes I have. My wife's much younger cousin will never speak. She has the ability to imitate sounds, but she has no concept of language. We're probably going to be responsible for her when her parents can't look after her any more. It's going to be a big responsibility, but I'm not bitter. It's my lot in life - I just have to deal with it.
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Actually, the killing of deformed infants has numerous historical precedents. So does the killing of the children of slaves, and of the children of native populations by invaders. Even the killing of children too small to work in families facing starvation is not unheard of, historically: look up some of the tragic stories of the Irish potato famine in the 1740's.
So there are certainly logical _comparisons_, if not equivalence, between reasons given to justify abortion and the killing of children. It's not
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I'm definitely not 100% comfortable with advocating open season for abortions, and I think it's a tragedy whenever it happen, but to declare moral equivalence between abortions and shooting a child is a logical fallacy that only an idiot or a self-deluded fool could commit.
Or Peter Singer, highly regarded ethics professor at Princeton, who favors both abortion on demand and the right of parents to kill their children up to some unspecified age.
Re:Not early enough (Score:4, Informative)
Sure as hell I'd abort the fetus if they knew it was autistic.
Not only are they not productive members of society, they cost the taxpayers millions in entitlements.
There are already too many humans we don't need more broken ones.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_figures_sometimes_considered_autistic [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_autism_spectrum_disorders [wikipedia.org]
When my 2 year old was showing signs of ASD, we mentioned it to our pediatrician. She pointed out her window to the Johnson Space Center (Houston) and said "don't be too concerned, half the guys over there are autistic, too."
I've had 8 years to philosophize about it, and I still stand by my initial position that, if there were a magic cure that would make my son "normal," meaning just like the middle of the pack people I knew in High School, I wouldn't want it for him. There are already enough "normal" people in the world.
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Yes, but I bet yout kid would give anything to be 'normal'. My son is high-functioning autistic and he knows he is different and it broke my heart when he was ten and just wished to have real friends.
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The label "Autism" is about as descriptive of an individual as the label "Caucasian."
My sons (2, both diagnosed with Autism) are both well aware that they are different - neither of them has yet showed any desire to be normal, or to get normal people to like them.
The future is impossible to predict, we're just trying to equip them the best we can for the 40-ish years of life they're likely to have after we're gone.
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And if six months is fine, how old is too old? Or does age not matter?
A society can be judged by how it takes care of its weak and vulnerable.
Re:Not early enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
Lack of empathy that your displaying is also a frequent symptom of autism.
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It's not even lack of empathy, it's lack of competence. As someone with Asperger's, and an IQ of 191 - I can safely say the smartest people I have met in my life have had Asperger's, a high functioning form of Autism. If you manage to weed out Autism you will also be weeding out some of the most intelligent minds that would otherwise come. Yes social skills are a bit less, from the perspective of others at least - to those of us with Asperger's (and this is a practically universal view amongst us) social
Re:Not early enough. (Score:5, Interesting)
We're not talking about Aspergers, the highest-functioning and probably most abused disability diagnosis aside of ADD (shit, I feel ADD right now. Can I get some Adderall and have an extra 4 hours to take that test? It's the new affirmative action! )
We're discussing pure autism, and for somebody who claims to have a remarkably high IQ, you're pretty ignorant and have no personality or style. You reek of a pseudo-intellectual who can use 4-syllable words. But you're not a special snowflake, and your disability and/or parents' money will get you into that school of choice.
-- Ethanol-fueled
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We're not talking about Aspergers, the highest-functioning and probably most abused disability diagnosis aside of ADD (shit, I feel ADD right now. Can I get some Adderall and have an extra 4 hours to take that test? It's the new affirmative action! )
-- Ethanol-fueled
From the actual paper "At 24 months, 28 infants met criteria for ASDs and 64 infants did not.", so yes we are talking about Asperger's, PDD-NOS and HFA because thats what ASD means, Autistic Spectrum Disorders, the whole ball of wax .
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Pray tell, how do we reconcile your alleged intelligence with your inability to write a post that's not marred by multiple grammatical errors?
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NEVER go full retard.
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Aspberger's does not create consistent brilliance in all fields of endeavor, nor does it prevent RSI from interfering with casual typing. And an Aspberger's patient who is not well educated due to having their autism misdiagnosed may not have had the excellent education in English grammar available to some of us. In fact, early diagnosis of both learning problems and of genius can help children be exposed to, and supported in the material they can handle.
And there _is_ treatment for autism in children, espe
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It's probably why so few people understand Lisp, it just isn't for
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>> Yes social skills are a bit less, from the perspective of others at least - to those of us with Asperger's
>> (and this is a practically universal view amongst us) socialization is simply a lower form of thought that detracts from greater things.
I imagine other examples of lower thought that detracts from greater things:
Eye contact
Bathing
Navigation
Hand eye coordination
Moderation
Empathy
And as for "and this is a practically universal view amongst us"
NEWS FLASH: Group of people decide that what m
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Sheldon Cooper posts on slashdot?
Re:Not early enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
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No correlation (Score:2)
My IQ is in the normal to upper normal range (119) and I am diagnosed Aspergers. Quite convinced that had more been known about this neurological disorder in the 70s & 80s, I would have been DX'ed at a much earlier (and more helpful) age.
So no, there isn't a correlation between high IQ and Aspergers. We (aspies) are no more gifted than neurotypicals, though you may hear more about brilliant people on the autistic spectrum due to the phenomenon being seen as interesting or cool by society in general.
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