3 ms·

> Autistic adults have significantly low blood serum levels of AEA. Autistic people’s neurons prune slower. Schizophrenic people’s neurons prune faster. These

> Autistic adults have significantly low blood serum levels of AEA. Autistic people’s neurons prune slower. Schizophrenic people’s neurons prune faster. These are all group-level findings, meaning they aren't true for every individual. You can do a study and find that there is a statistically significant difference in mean X between two samples – autistic vs control or schizophrenic vs control. But pretty much always, although there is a statistically significant difference in the mean, the two samples overlap – which is consistent with this being a factor which only explains some of the cases. > It seems the ECS system is the principal driving mechanism behind both conditions. Claims like that ("the principal driving mechanism behind psychiatric diagnosis X is biological difference Y") have been made many times before, and few of them have gone anywhere. I'd be surprised if this one turns out differently. Both autism and schizophrenia are bundles of different conditions which we've grouped together on the basis of nothing more than overlapping systems. Two people can both have "autism", yet at a biological level they've got two completely different things. The same applies for two people with "schizophrenia". This is why a number of researchers have been arguing that diagnosis-centric research is a dead-end. I wouldn't be surprised if ECS system issues (or any other system in the brain) turn out to be the cause of some cases of autism and some cases of schizophrenia; but there will be other cases of both in which it isn't the "principal driving mechanism" at all.

DiscourseFan 4y ago
You know whats really interesting? Autism and Schizophrenia used to refer to the same condition. The term "autism" was invented by Bleuler, who worked with Freud, as a shortened version of his "autoerotism" and referred to a state where a patient was totally absorbed in their own fantasies to the point of hallucinating them. This becomes clear if you look at Jung's "introvert/extrovert" dichotomy (Jung, who worked in Bleuler's lab!), where someone extremely introverted could be BOTH autistic--not communicating with others--and schizophrenic--absorbed in their own fantasies, not concerned with the real world. Now, clearly, mainstream psychology disassociated these terms sometime in the 60s, when the goal with autism diagnoses was moreso to find and identify "abnormal" children (Hans Asperger famously used Autism diagnoses to euthanize children, that's who "Asperger's Syndrome" is named after!), and Schizophrenia gained its own separate classification. But its interesting to note that there was a time when social disaffection in general was considered a single set of disorders.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > (Hans Asperger famously used Autism diagnoses to euthanize children, that's who "Asperger's Syndrome" is named after!) Asperger was assigned to identify autistic children for exterminatiom, but mafe the case that certain ones were useful to the Reich, which is why “Asperger’s Syndrome” became the name for the manifestation of autism that was seen as a leader impairmemt.
  - skissane 4y ago
    He wasn't assigned to identify "autistic children" specifically for extermination. Hans Asperger was a psychiatrist. Psychiatrists in Nazi Germany (post-Anschluss Austria in his case) were expected to evaluate all of their patients for potential extermination, children included. Some psychiatrists refused to cooperate with the regime, at great personal cost to themselves. Other psychiatrists signed up to become enthusiastic members of the Nazi Party. Asperger chose a middle path – he chose not to join the NSDAP, but he joined some of their affiliated organisations; he chose to cooperate with the regime, and be supportive of it–not in an overly enthusiastic way, but with sufficient enthusiasm to ensure his Nazi superiors would not stand in the way of his career advancement. He did successfully argue that some more intelligent children should be spared, on the grounds they had unique skills which could be valuable to the regime. However, less intelligent children, he was happy to refer to be murdered (in most cases without the knowledge or consent of their parents). He wasn't evil in the way in which many devout Nazis were, just in the more banal way of the many who collaborated in the regime's crimes out of personal self-interest, or through coming to believe its propaganda.
    - Haga 4y ago
      [dead]
    - Phlarp 4y ago
      That sounds like "just following orders" with extra steps.
      - 4y ago
dataangel 4y ago
> This is why a number of researchers have been arguing that diagnosis-centric research is a dead-end. Just sounds like they've been diagnosing by symptom because they didn't know the actual etiology. Once it's known shouldn't they just change the diagnosis to be the new, more specific condition? Seems like diagnosis is still the goal?
- skissane 4y ago
  > Just sounds like they've been diagnosing by symptom because they didn't know the actual etiology. Once it's known shouldn't they just change the diagnosis to be the new, more specific condition? Seems like diagnosis is still the goal? Well, we don't know the aetiology (in most cases), so while restructuring diagnosis on the basis of aetiology is defensible as a long-term goal, we are nowhere being able to achieve that yet. The argument is, designing research around the current symptom-focused diagnostic categories is blocking progress in research. Two people with the same diagnostic label may have completely different aetiologies, two people with the same aetiology may have completely different labels, two people with the same aetiology one of them may have a label and the other may have none – the same underlying brain dysfunction may manifest with very different symptoms in different individuals, depending on its interaction with other biological factors, and their social environment. If we want to understand "what's really going on", it can be better to put everyone in the same sample (both diagnosed with various diagnoses and undiagnosed), then look for patterns in that big sample. I think this paper is a great example of doing that, with the help of machine learning – https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-019-0631-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-019-0631-2 – but it needs replication.

DiscourseFan 4y ago

You know whats really interesting? Autism and Schizophrenia used to refer to the same condition. The term "autism" was invented by Bleuler, who worked with Freud, as a shortened version of his "autoerotism" and referred to a state where a patient was totally absorbed in their own fantasies to the point of hallucinating them. This becomes clear if you look at Jung's "introvert/extrovert" dichotomy (Jung, who worked in Bleuler's lab!), where someone extremely introverted could be BOTH autistic--not communicating with others--and schizophrenic--absorbed in their own fantasies, not concerned with the real world. Now, clearly, mainstream psychology disassociated these terms sometime in the 60s, when the goal with autism diagnoses was moreso to find and identify "abnormal" children (Hans Asperger famously used Autism diagnoses to euthanize children, that's who "Asperger's Syndrome" is named after!), and Schizophrenia gained its own separate classification. But its interesting to note that there was a time when social disaffection in general was considered a single set of disorders.

dragonwriter 4y ago
> (Hans Asperger famously used Autism diagnoses to euthanize children, that's who "Asperger's Syndrome" is named after!) Asperger was assigned to identify autistic children for exterminatiom, but mafe the case that certain ones were useful to the Reich, which is why “Asperger’s Syndrome” became the name for the manifestation of autism that was seen as a leader impairmemt.
- skissane 4y ago
  He wasn't assigned to identify "autistic children" specifically for extermination. Hans Asperger was a psychiatrist. Psychiatrists in Nazi Germany (post-Anschluss Austria in his case) were expected to evaluate all of their patients for potential extermination, children included. Some psychiatrists refused to cooperate with the regime, at great personal cost to themselves. Other psychiatrists signed up to become enthusiastic members of the Nazi Party. Asperger chose a middle path – he chose not to join the NSDAP, but he joined some of their affiliated organisations; he chose to cooperate with the regime, and be supportive of it–not in an overly enthusiastic way, but with sufficient enthusiasm to ensure his Nazi superiors would not stand in the way of his career advancement. He did successfully argue that some more intelligent children should be spared, on the grounds they had unique skills which could be valuable to the regime. However, less intelligent children, he was happy to refer to be murdered (in most cases without the knowledge or consent of their parents). He wasn't evil in the way in which many devout Nazis were, just in the more banal way of the many who collaborated in the regime's crimes out of personal self-interest, or through coming to believe its propaganda.
  - Haga 4y ago
    [dead]
  - Phlarp 4y ago
    That sounds like "just following orders" with extra steps.
    - 4y ago

dataangel 4y ago

> This is why a number of researchers have been arguing that diagnosis-centric research is a dead-end. Just sounds like they've been diagnosing by symptom because they didn't know the actual etiology. Once it's known shouldn't they just change the diagnosis to be the new, more specific condition? Seems like diagnosis is still the goal?

skissane 4y ago
> Just sounds like they've been diagnosing by symptom because they didn't know the actual etiology. Once it's known shouldn't they just change the diagnosis to be the new, more specific condition? Seems like diagnosis is still the goal? Well, we don't know the aetiology (in most cases), so while restructuring diagnosis on the basis of aetiology is defensible as a long-term goal, we are nowhere being able to achieve that yet. The argument is, designing research around the current symptom-focused diagnostic categories is blocking progress in research. Two people with the same diagnostic label may have completely different aetiologies, two people with the same aetiology may have completely different labels, two people with the same aetiology one of them may have a label and the other may have none – the same underlying brain dysfunction may manifest with very different symptoms in different individuals, depending on its interaction with other biological factors, and their social environment. If we want to understand "what's really going on", it can be better to put everyone in the same sample (both diagnosed with various diagnoses and undiagnosed), then look for patterns in that big sample. I think this paper is a great example of doing that, with the help of machine learning – https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-019-0631-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-019-0631-2 – but it needs replication.