Mirror neurons work in autistic persons

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It looks like mirror neurons work in autistic persons. So maybe uncheck that off the list of how someone has an autisic brain ? Looks like it could be something else ?
Here are some links about this study.

http://www.cell.com/neuron/abstract/S08 ... %2900237-0 <--- Main page

http://download.cell.com/neuron/pdf/PII ... 002370.pdf

http://download.cell.com/neuron/mmcs/jo ... 0.mmc2.mp4 <---18 megabyte video
Brains parts were watched and it look very near the same as the non-autistic persons.

Guess I'll have to stop babbling about it now.

Interesting. Thanks for the links. I never was a fan of the mirror neuron hypothesis, so I'm glad that it's being thrown out the door. Autism is too complex a disorder and affects too much of the whole brain for there to be a sole solution in faulty mirror neurons. Furthermore, I know that I have learned the majority of social rules and such by "mirroring" neurotypicals' actions, so I would argue that autistics' mirror neuron systems work overtime.
-OddDuckNash99-

I was just about to start a thread about this.

This and the overconnectivity theory were considered the roots of Autism thanks to deception from the government/mainstream science (implying it as fact to the public.
Did anyone know that there's actually no evidence of an autistic brain? All theories publicized as fact by the scientific community. There's more evidence supporting Gluten as the cause of autism.

jametto... I'm sorry, but you need to go back and do more research, and read about well-designed experiments this time. It's got nothing to do with gluten (and that has been proven; autistic children don't improve when gluten is taken out of their diets, if you you remove from your testing the ones that have wheat allergies or celiac disease--both of which conditions occur among autistic children at a similar rate as they occur among typical ones.).

There's plenty of evidence for the autistic brain. On most parameters you care to measure, the autistic brain is different from the neurotypical brain--it's just that these differences are not specific enough and not universal enough to use as diagnostic markers.

My own belief about the cause of autism is that it's caused by a deficit in shared attention as put forth by Baron-Cohen. The idea chimes a great deal more with my experiences than the mirror neuron idea.

That sounds more like a result than a cause.

I suspected as much. Mirror neuron stuff had always struck me as not fitting the right pattern but I could never explain it more than that.

Herein is the issue at the source of the mystery of autism:

Our understanding of the human brain, and our ability to probe it, is in reality, still quite poor.

To quote the somewhat questionable source of Wikipedia:

"The human brain has been estimated to contain 50–100 billion (1011) neurons, of which about 10 billion (10^10) are cortical pyramidal cells. These cells pass signals to each other via as many as 1000 trillion (10^15) synaptic connections.[2]"

Finding the problem is not akin to finding a needle in a haystack. It's akin to finding a needle in a galaxy larger than the Milkyway.

Ok, I should say "a lack of the cognitive architecture that causes the drive to establish shared attention in a human infant" or something like that. The point is that establishing shared attention is an instinctive drive that facilitates learning as opposed to just a learned behavior.

The sort of thing I mean is a baby pointing at the moon and saying "moon" then looking to see if the mother's looking at the moon. In that way it learns that its mother is seeing what it sees and this is the first step in understanding other minds. The absence of this, called the declarative pointing gesture, is the earliest sign that a child might be autistic as far as I know. (It usually occurs around 18 months.)

Darn. Another one bites the dust.

Seemed like yet another theory based on the "lack of empathy" idea. I'm not sorry to see it go.

i always thought that i had the reflexes asscociated with mirror neurons. it was what made me doubt i was autitistic. things like this really make me think that autistics with some scientific background might well have many hunches and ideas that have not been figured out accedemically yet to be true.

i'll have a look at the links tomorrow but i find this stuff fascinating. Thanks

Of course I am diffrent from you humans. I am not truely a human. I am actualy a meerkat sent to study you humans and your weaknesses. My spelling is so off most of the time because it's SO hard to "peck" a letter at a time with such tiny paws. Timon, Compare the Meerkat and the Vodaphone comercials are all creations of us to deceive you into thinking that meerkats are nothing more than cute, furry harmless little animals. You are wrong...very wrong and it's going to cost you someday. Silly humans...