3 ms·

Autism seems more like a symptom than a condition. "Stomach ache" is not a spectrum disorder, even though is comes in many severities. It's a symptom of dozens

Autism seems more like a symptom than a condition. "Stomach ache" is not a spectrum disorder, even though is comes in many severities. It's a symptom of dozens of different medical conditions. I suspect "autism" is similar.

jermaustin1 11mo ago
Autism isn't a symptom because Autism Spectrum Disorder isn't a singular "thing" it is a combination of features that manifest in various "symptoms" - eye contact avoidance (or the opposite), sensory processing (over- or under-stimulating), restrictive interests (singular focus), etc. A stomach ache is a single manifestation of something happening. A stomach ache can have varying degrees and reasons behind it. The stomach ache is the signal. The disorder that causes it could be psychological (GAD) or external (someone punched you, and the flesh is bruised) or internal (someone fed you a weeks old egg salad sandwich). In autism the 'symptom' could be model train enthusiasm or being nonverbal. There are a lot of symptoms the fit under the umbrella of the disorder.
- LoganDark 11mo ago
  From my lived experience and also from the preprint I love very much https://www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/untangling-biological-threads-from-autisms-phenotypic-patchwork-reveals-four-core-subtypes https://www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/untangling-biologica... the autism spectrum is basically a collection of ways a brain can largely work differently than "normal". There's a limited number of these (4 according to current research). It's not that there's just individual small features that manifest in things like eye contact avoidance, over/understimulation, etc. it's that the entire brain will work a specific differently and result in a certain set of symptoms consistent with an autism diagnosis. I feel like autism helps form the basis that other neurological differences happen on top of, because it has such a large impact on how thinking and learning even works in the first place. Even in conditions like schizophrenia, psychosis, etc. you see thought loops or detachment from reality or delusions or any number of those kinds of dysfunctions but it all still happens on a base where there can be basically one of the four autisms; the autism seems to be a difference in the foundation that the rest of the brain is built on top of. It's very fascinating to me (I am very autistic). Of course I don't mean to say at all that each autistic type always results in the same brain function but just that usually other difficulties or differences are less fundamental than how autism changes practically everything.
453yuh46 11mo ago
To me autism is defined by how some of our genes work(or doesn't work). I'm not into analogies, but the difference between normal Aspie and nonverbal person is not that big - by using your analogy both of them have stomach pain, but the result seems to be wildly different - one of them is able to communicate almost like other normal humans and they can't even tell that Aspie has a stomach pain. As for different medical conditions - imagine, that previously mentioned Aspie in different environment can have stomach pain, because it is caused by environment and not by stomach pain. Yes - there are some medical conditions, that also comes from genetical conditions and those just happen to be in neighbourhood to autism for no other reason than just general damage to DNA. And the issue here is that we actually do not fully know how DNA functions - only some of the bits.
LorenPechtel 11mo ago
I definitely agree. It shouldn't be "autism spectrum", it should be "autism syndrome". When we have a cluster of symptoms that travel together we can see there's an underlying issue without knowing what that underlying issue is. And we normally use the word "syndrome" for that. For example, AIDS or IBS. And society tends to dismiss it for as long as possible because to face it is to admit there's a problem with no answer. For an example that's still in the denial phase, look at long Covid. There's clearly something there, like AIDS it's a slew of apparently unrelated issues. Which says that, like AIDS, there's probably some underlying issue that is itself very hard to see and we are only seeing the secondary effects.

jermaustin1 11mo ago

Autism isn't a symptom because Autism Spectrum Disorder isn't a singular "thing" it is a combination of features that manifest in various "symptoms" - eye contact avoidance (or the opposite), sensory processing (over- or under-stimulating), restrictive interests (singular focus), etc. A stomach ache is a single manifestation of something happening. A stomach ache can have varying degrees and reasons behind it. The stomach ache is the signal. The disorder that causes it could be psychological (GAD) or external (someone punched you, and the flesh is bruised) or internal (someone fed you a weeks old egg salad sandwich). In autism the 'symptom' could be model train enthusiasm or being nonverbal. There are a lot of symptoms the fit under the umbrella of the disorder.

LoganDark 11mo ago
From my lived experience and also from the preprint I love very much https://www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/untangling-biological-threads-from-autisms-phenotypic-patchwork-reveals-four-core-subtypes https://www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/untangling-biologica... the autism spectrum is basically a collection of ways a brain can largely work differently than "normal". There's a limited number of these (4 according to current research). It's not that there's just individual small features that manifest in things like eye contact avoidance, over/understimulation, etc. it's that the entire brain will work a specific differently and result in a certain set of symptoms consistent with an autism diagnosis. I feel like autism helps form the basis that other neurological differences happen on top of, because it has such a large impact on how thinking and learning even works in the first place. Even in conditions like schizophrenia, psychosis, etc. you see thought loops or detachment from reality or delusions or any number of those kinds of dysfunctions but it all still happens on a base where there can be basically one of the four autisms; the autism seems to be a difference in the foundation that the rest of the brain is built on top of. It's very fascinating to me (I am very autistic). Of course I don't mean to say at all that each autistic type always results in the same brain function but just that usually other difficulties or differences are less fundamental than how autism changes practically everything.

453yuh46 11mo ago

To me autism is defined by how some of our genes work(or doesn't work). I'm not into analogies, but the difference between normal Aspie and nonverbal person is not that big - by using your analogy both of them have stomach pain, but the result seems to be wildly different - one of them is able to communicate almost like other normal humans and they can't even tell that Aspie has a stomach pain. As for different medical conditions - imagine, that previously mentioned Aspie in different environment can have stomach pain, because it is caused by environment and not by stomach pain. Yes - there are some medical conditions, that also comes from genetical conditions and those just happen to be in neighbourhood to autism for no other reason than just general damage to DNA. And the issue here is that we actually do not fully know how DNA functions - only some of the bits.

LorenPechtel 11mo ago

I definitely agree. It shouldn't be "autism spectrum", it should be "autism syndrome". When we have a cluster of symptoms that travel together we can see there's an underlying issue without knowing what that underlying issue is. And we normally use the word "syndrome" for that. For example, AIDS or IBS. And society tends to dismiss it for as long as possible because to face it is to admit there's a problem with no answer. For an example that's still in the denial phase, look at long Covid. There's clearly something there, like AIDS it's a slew of apparently unrelated issues. Which says that, like AIDS, there's probably some underlying issue that is itself very hard to see and we are only seeing the secondary effects.