I've just read yet another news story from a research group that have concluded, based on their findings and their findings alone, they don't know how Autism works, they don't know why it's more prevalent in boys than it is in girls, and they don't know why we have more of it today compared to a few years ago.
I am constantly amazed at how many research programs there are that don't actually cross reference data from other research programs. If you put them all together you actually get a good picture as to why Autism works the way it does, why there are more boys diagnosed than girls and why there is a higher proportion of it nowadays.
Let's start with studies of the actual brain structure of people on the Autism Spectrum. Firstly, the grey matter is distributed unevenly. Some areas of the brain end up lacking in grey matter whilst other areas have excessive amounts of it. This explains why a person on the Autism spectrum can take longer to learn skills. The areas that are lacking have less neurological connections to play with in order to sort out which connections work the best. The areas that are excessive, on the other hand, have more neurological connections to play with which means it takes longer to sort through them all before the best connections can be made. For those who have excessive amounts of grey matter in the auditory centres of the brain, what would be a mild level of noise for anyone else can be a mind-numbing explosion of noise as the extra neurotransmitters go into overload trying to figure out what to do with the information that's being thrown at them.
A completely different study showed that for those on the Autism Spectrum, the brain's ability to turn off redundant neurological connections is impaired, meaning that even after a new skill is learnt, the excessive neurological connections are still firing away and the brain will still be in a state of learning for something that others would be able to master easily. Once a skill is learnt, the brain is still experimenting with the remainder of the connections, so the individual still has a hard time putting their new skill into practice.
Other studies have shown that the corpus callosum does not develop properly in those on the Autism spectrum, which impedes the flow of information between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. This can cause confusion if information presented needs to be processed by both hemispheres in collaboration with each other, such as something that involves emotions but also requires the logical side of the brain to lend a hand. There are also studies not usually related to Autism which have shown that the corpus callosum is usually larger for girls than for boys, which means a reduction in its size during development will not necessarily make that much of a noticeable difference for the girls, which can go towards explaining why there are more boys diagnosed on the spectrum than girls. It also explains why a lot of girls display different symptoms of Autism compared to boys as they can still have that little bit of extra communication between the left and right hemispheres of the brain to help them compensate for the other discrepancies.
So why is Autism more prevalent today? In addition to Autism being more readily accepted as a diagnoses and being more easily identifiable, we're also breeding. People with high functioning Autism might slip under the radar and not even realise they're on the spectrum. They grow up and have babies and pass on their genetic make-up to their offspring. A lot of us grew up in the 70's, for instance, just being socially awkward with Autism not even being thought of as a diagnoses for us. Now we have kids who have been diagnosed as being on the spectrum we can see that we also grew up on the spectrum and just didn't know it. Instead of getting help with it all we were shunned and labelled as the weird quiet kids at school, or the shy ones. As we got older we improved as our neurological connections finally started to sort it all out at our own pace.
Autism is not a static condition. There's always room for improvement given the right environments and nurturing as the individual learns and grows at the speed with which their brains can eventually sort it all out for themselves. It never goes away, but it does get better over time for some. Just remember that each individual on the spectrum is just that, an individual. What might work for some will not necessarily work for others. It all depends on how the grey matter is distributed, how much information can be exchanged between the left and right hemispheres of each individual's brain, and how long it takes for redundant neurological transmitters to finally deactivate themselves, if they are actually capable of eventually being deactivated.
A great deal of the pieces of the Autism puzzle have already been found. It just seems that no one is actually gathering all those pieces together to form a single bigger picture with them all. As shown in this blog, if you take a handful of the pieces and then place them on the board together, the picture starts to reveal itself. If researchers actually start collaborating with each other, instead of simply patting themselves on the back for finding a single piece of the puzzle and then scratching their heads as to what to do with it, we may one day find that last piece and eventually put it in its place with the rest of the pieces. Once we have a full understanding of Autism, we may then understand better how to help those on the spectrum to overcome the obstacles that they have to face.
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