How to Fix Autism

Based on these data I would speculate that in autism stressful alterations of the right amygdala occur prenatally due to untoward intrauterine influences of the social and physical environment that substantially compromise the very early development of the midbrain reticular formation – bioaminergic (dopaminergic, noradrenergic, serotonergic) nuclei that innervate the fetal amygdala. These bioamines, central to emotional functioning, have energy regulating, arousal generating, and trophic functions. For example,in utero early pathological mechanisms within midbrain ventral tegmental dopaminergic subnuclei could alter dopamine’s trophic functions and impair mesolimbic dopaminergic innervation of the central (and then basolateral amygdala). These systems may also be sensitive to gestational neurotoxic pesticide exposure, which has also been implicated in autism (Shelton et al., 2012). Allen Schore


Allan Schore is a freaking genius. No one understands the complexities of human socioemotional development than he does. No one else in the science world writes as sophisticated-sounding as he does. He combines the latest insights into human interpersonal and intrapsychic phenomenology with developmental neuroscience. Combines the two, tracks them together: what happens phenomenologically at day 15? What was the interactive context that provoked this response in the infant? Why did the mother act as she did? And what is happening neurobiologically on day 15?

Humans have never understood the development of our own selves better than we do today. Forget mysticism, philosophy and anything else: the raw science is in, and not surprisingly (if you trust the logic of evolution) we find that the core-functions of human development are socio-emotional. This makes sense on multiple different levels.

Evolution operates on the principle of preservation of the past and novel adaptations. The two processes craft out organisms by 'selecting' new forms from some preadaptation in the present structure. Thus, our brain is described by many neuroscientists as "triune": with the reptilian era of animal development as the core metabolic regulatory architecture (cardiopulmonary), otherwise known as the brainstem; above this lies the limbic system, or a socioemotional layer that corresponds to the later social-turn in evolution with the emergence of mammals. Notice the "layering" or encephalization, as its called by neuroscientists. The final, most abstract layer of the brain is the cortex. In human beings, the cortex surrounds the socioemotional prehistory of mammals and the reptilian brainstem. The hierarchical logic of evolution, and a cardinal principle of biology, is the economic calculus of energy production. Organisms self-organize towards a state of equilibrium that we call homeostasis. Allostasis is the organisms tendency towards greater complexity - predicting changes, which means incorporating "more" information from the environment.

Social emotions represent a unusual turn in evolution from individualistic organisms (reptiles) to inter-communicating organisms (birds and mammals). This is an ontologically significant event, where organisms move from regulating at the individual level to regulating at a multiple level. The turn to the social is a turn to multiply regulation, where each individual member of a species 'self-organizes' towards a state that harmoniously interacts with other members. The 'state' is found in the test-ground of interaction. Every organisms individual state seems to bias the organism towards relating, and so, organizing experience in terms of the compatibility of species-specific behaviors.

Human thought is built atop this edifice, ultimately servicing core-homeostatic needs, cloaked as emotions and feelings, and rationalized by narrative-dominated thinking processes that indulge in narcissistic feelings of ones own intelligence. Human thought, working as it does to provide "fixes" to the generalized action-scripts of socioemotional sequences, is the adaptation in our evolutionary lineage that creates in us, as an emergent function, the sense of ourselves as "selves". Notice the emergence here: language, relying upon social-emotional co-regulatory networks, is able to experience a very real sense of selfhood. The ability to convey to ourselves through speech the nature of our experience of the world, in fact generates a profound illusion: the sense of being an ontologically "fixed" being. The process is ultimately dyadic, and thus social-emotional, but atop of this various ideas and cliches construct a sense of how the world is. That we take this seriously and with deep earnestness speaks to the success of the law of adaptation: it works. Were happier living as story-tellers, even if it carries with it the somewhat despicable (morally speaking) logic of "good" or bad" for the individual organism, i.e. the body, and thus the emotional currents that provide grist for the narrative self.

So, what about Autism? Autism research has been dominated by a strain of thinking called cognitive developmental neuroscience. Cognitive neuroscience, more generally, is a movement of thought that has dominated philosophy, psychology, anthropology, and biology for the last 50 or so years. It gained steam in the 60's with Chomsky and later Jerry Fodor. To put it bluntly, their ideas (and many others; pinker, plyshkin, etc) thought about the human mind in terms of the computer. With the development of computer scientists, psychologists got a little over-excited and started to believe their metaphor of the brain as computer, and thus "mind as computer". Lost in this misty take was the emotional reality of our psychological phenomenology. The fact that humans operated at a deeper, more unconscious level, emotionally (as psychoanalysis contended) was conveniently, or perhaps excitedly ignored, as cognitive scientists depreciated the human mind from it's relational origins.

Of course, the whole enterprise has been anything but a failure. We have important ideas like working memory, semantic memory, declarative memory, episodic memory and procedural memory, ideas crucial to understanding how the brain processes aspects of our conscious experience. I love reading cognitive science, even when I sense that the author doesn't realize how emotional dynamics affect his attentional processes, and thus his attitude towards a field like psychoanalysis (or analyzing the emotional dynamics of intra and inter psychological processes).

Autistic people seem to be people on the extreme end of social-emotional developmental dysfunction. The amazing thing is the way relational processes FEED INTO the processes that keep the brain developing as is. The brain at birth is hardly finished growing. It grows 110% the first year in volume (mostly white tract matter). And another 15% in the second. All of this growth is being REGULATED by the types of interactions the baby has.



More and more complex rapid, spontaneous and thereby implicit right-lateralized visual-facial, auditory-prosodic, and tactile–gestural communications lie at the psychobiological core of the emotional attachment bond between the infant and primary caregiver. - Allan Schore


The autistic baby is ENORMOUSLY sensitive. Yet, research shows that many parents of autistic children RE-ENFORCE the fearful-amygdular over-activity by flooding the baby with high energy "visual-facial, audit

a reply to: Astrocyte

As a person who works with people with Autism I fail to see anything to fix tbh.
Autism is part of the human condition and has a massive wide spectrum containing many people, some of those on the spectrum are very beneficial to the human race.
Interesting read though S&F.

a reply to: Astrocyte

How do we fix autism, though? I missed that part.

-prosodic, and tactile-gestural communications".

It is important to consider how this style of communicating, essentially aggravating the baby's aberrant emotion-processing areas (in sensing, and organizing experience), will likely promote further aberrant response.

The "controversial" autistism specialist Raun Kaufman, author of the book "autism breakthrough" has essentially pioneered what I consider to be an absolutely genius program for fixing many types of autism.

He works from a very simple premise: pay attention to the baby's or child's phenomenology; that is, their overall intentional state, affect, emotion, attention and perception. Kaufmans own parents helped him overcome his autism by intuitively sensing the importance of "coming into" their baby's experience.

By coming into a baby or child's experience, that is, taking an authentic interest in whatever they seem to be paying attention to, you all of a sudden enter their phenomenological field of "joint awareness". With this, through time, the baby's amygdular system might calm down and actually register what its designed to register: safety. When the adult spends time with autistic child in this way, when the sensor goes down and emotional expression (expressed interest) is shown, the adult had gained "access" into the autistic child's phenomenology. The brain has just recorded its first "positive social interaction". The intuitive adult will understand that this represents a small 'window" within the baby or childs brain. The idea is to open it, SAFELY, which means slowly if needed. Dampen affect is needed. Slow down if the baby or child seems overwhelmed. If you attune to the affective information present in their behavioral cues, you can operate quite carefully, as well as compassionately, "setting open" possibilities that wouldn't open otherwise in an autistic brain destined for an awkward life.

When we properly conceive of ourselves as 'emotional for survival' (and the evolutionary logic therein), we can better understand the autistic infant and child as exhibiting an overly responsive social-emotional responsive system. Therapeutic strategies that aim at 'getting into' the phenomenological experience of the infant (establishing joint attention) may in fact guide the developmental process away from the problems stemming from prenatal and perinatal development.

originally posted by: boymonkey74
a reply to: Astrocyte

As a person who works with people with Autism I fail to see anything to fix tbh.
Autism is part of the human condition and has a massive wide spectrum containing many people, some of those on the spectrum are very beneficial to the human race.
Interesting read though S&F.

Raising a High Functioning Spectrum Autistic - - - which seems to run in my family.

I'll stay tuned.

Reading into more of the fella I suggest caution.
He was diagnosed with autism 30 years ago at 18 months? sorry but even nowadays it is very hard to diagnose at that age and even If they are diagnosed a few years later they can show no signs at all.
Would actually like to see some proof he has fixed autism tbh.
You can help people with autism through therapies and behavioral/social training and it does improve their understanding but what you have described many do anyway parents and carers.

He runs a private business with no actual evidence apart from anecdotal evidence.

researchautism.net...

So without actual evidence...research needs to be done more.

a reply to: Astrocyte

By some standards, I am autistic.

Autism is a spectrum of conditions and part of the spectrum of human existence.

It is an alternate developmental path, a divergence from the 'normal'.

Autistic people have different capabilities that 'normal' people often fail to understand.

In my case, my inner life is such that I really don't need the 'noise' of constant human interaction. I am happy to be by myself for extended periods. My world is full of complexity, interest and wonder and many of the more normal things one may fill their time with are by contrast, dull, petty and pointless.

I don't want to be 'cured'!

Are some born with it and some develop it during childhood? Just wondering.

not sure how the overstimulation relates when using binaurals or anything that unites hemispheres, but I would be trial and error, carefully introducing all the things that rewire the neurology, ie trampolines, jumping, music, hemisync, meditation, sungazing, nature, birdsong, art, creativity, music, and there are some herbs that do this as well, including one that they're trying to declassify. From what I understand, you can't change the pathways, but you can introduce new ones. And that is the same thing as change.

originally posted by: boymonkey74
a reply to: Astrocyte

As a person who works with people with Autism I fail to see anything to fix tbh.
Autism is part of the human condition and has a massive wide spectrum containing many people, some of those on the spectrum are very beneficial to the human race.
Interesting read though S&F.

That's fair to say, however, I am reminded of cases people with extreme autism that have been effectively trapped in a shell of zero communication, that would literally be living hell for any of us. That young girl who found a way to communicate using her computer, and astounded everyone by being a bright, aware, intelligent, observant and expressive young lady, who for her entire life had been considered 'not there' and treated as such.

her autism caused her so much overwhelming input that she shut off, had no way to express anything other than non-verbal jerky movements.

Knowing that inside this otherwise broken human being was a completely working soul, puts some emphasis on seeking others in that situation, in my mind at least, because the thought of solitary confinement like that happening unbeknownst to me, potentially anywhere, doesn't let my mind sit at ease..

One of the Autistic kids at our High School just woke up from his Autism one day normal. He went downstairs and asked his mom for blueberry pancakes. He had never said a complete sentence his whole life. After he woke up that morning he was normal. One in a million. His mother was a big whole foods natural foods with no additives type hippie chick. I think the kid does survey work now and leads a normal life. He could even do complex math in high school after his wake up. Very strange case. Im not sure what the kids name was he had graduated before I worked at the school but my coworkers had him in their life skills class, which is a class for kids with down Syndrome and autism and special needs. I think the huge rate of Autism in this country is from vaccinations. The mercury in the vaccinations. We subject our kids to too many vaccinations while they are young. Do some research online and on you tube. The medical community here in the states is dominated by big pharma and they cover up their mistakes with their own subject studies and denial. Im not anti vaccination Im just worried about what they put in the stuff that makes it unsafe. As should everyone. Just my opinion.

a reply to: Astrocyte

Brilliant thread. Falling on deaf ears by the looks of it.

Valid points made on the interactions of the socio/physical environment on the development of the brain. A subject which touches on many conspiracy theories too.

All parents to be should read more of this!

a reply to: Astrocyte

Pardon me for posting right away without finiThe hierarchicalshing your OP, but: I never in a million years thought that I would see this posted here...

Allan Schore is a freaking genius.

He sure as hell is.

I am so looking forward to diving in to your thread. It's late here but I'll be back.

Thanks, Astrocyte!

The hierarchical

ETA: Hey, I'm going to give it a few more reads, but I really enjoyed the first run-through of your OP.

When I first became aware of the anatomical hierarchy that you mention I couldn't help but be reminded of the "Pagoda" sequence from Bruce Lee's Game of death.

Have a good night,

a reply to: sn0rch

I work with people who have severe autism from just none verbal to catatonic autism and yes it can be very harsh on them until they get the right support.
I urge caution because I know of parents who have paid thousands thinking someone can cure their child and they get conned.
Reading more about it has left ne scratching my head because much of what he talks about we do already.

I urge everyone to watch this about Temple Grandin btw.




Makes me cry everytime this speech.



"Different not less".

a reply to: Astrocyte

By coming into a baby or child's experience, that is, taking an authentic interest in whatever they seem to be paying attention to, you all of a sudden enter their phenomenological field of "joint awareness". With this, through time, the baby's amygdular system might calm down and actually register what its designed to register: safety. When the adult spends time with autistic child in this way, when the sensor goes down and emotional expression (expressed interest) is shown, the adult had gained "access" into the autistic child's phenomenology. The brain has just recorded its first "positive social interaction". The intuitive adult will understand that this represents a small 'window" within the baby or childs brain. The idea is to open it, SAFELY, which means slowly if needed. Dampen affect is needed. Slow down if the baby or child seems overwhelmed. If you attune to the affective information present in their behavioral cues, you can operate quite carefully, as well as compassionately, "setting open" possibilities that wouldn't open otherwise in an autistic brain destined for an awkward life.

This "genius" just figured out what every parent of a autistic child already knows. And as far as "fixing" autism?
BS.
I hate this crap. Some guy runs a for profit business and offers a "cure" to parents that may very well be at the end of their rope and ready to put their child in long term care. Throw a bunch of big words at them, confuse them even more and make money from their despair. With luck, they'll get a care giver like Boymonkey....or they get put in a place that treats them like animals to be tranquilized, abused and ignored.
And yes, I have an autistic child myself and have worked with others one on one and in care facilities.

a reply to: DAVID64

Well said and thanks .

I made a Temple Grandin thread .

www.abovetopsecret.com...

originally posted by: boymonkey74
a reply to: Astrocyte

As a person who works with people with Autism I fail to see anything to fix tbh.
Autism is part of the human condition and has a massive wide spectrum containing many people, some of those on the spectrum are very beneficial to the human race.
Interesting read though S&F.

Aren't you the least bit interested in preventing condition or reversing the epidemic in progress?

a reply to: InverseLookingGlass

I see no epidemic I see the spectrum of autism getting larger thus more people will be diagnosed with it.
Also no I wouldn't stop people having autism, I see it as a gift and we wouldn't be here today as we are without people with autism.
Einstein, Jobs and many others have autism and have been very beneficial to humanity.
Watch the video I posted with Grand speaking. (in the other thread I made).

originally posted by: boymonkey74
Reading into more of the fella I suggest caution.
He was diagnosed with autism 30 years ago at 18 months? sorry but even nowadays it is very hard to diagnose at that age and even If they are diagnosed a few years later they can show no signs at all.

Yes. He is a clinical psychiatrist. He is not a doctor or scientist.

So, basically this is what he believes from observation and perhaps personal studies.

I do appreciate all and any reasonable information. But, his approach seems moore common sense that anyone could come up with.

Diagnosed 30 years ago at 18 months seems a stretch. My daughter was diagnosed ADD in about 1973. It was really at the beginning of taking it seriously in school. Autism wasn't even mentioned yet.

My grandson was first recognized as being part of the Spectrum at 18 months, but his preschool teacher was training as a specialist in the field.