What autism really is.

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I posted about it on a forum where virtually everyone thought I was in denial. After reading it again, I feel like I might be onto something

Things like this, or any disorder, or behavior, or phenomenon, can't be defined by some vague box of random traits of varying degrees that have to have a certain amount attached to each other in order to qualify. I really think there are core symptoms which work as moving parts in order to operate a system, in the case of Autism, a wavelength. That's really what it comes down to. It's a wavelength of processing. You have people who self-diagnose themselves online because they're reclusive, don't consistently shower, have a really offbeat sense of humor, and only eat Mexican pizza and plums. It's BS. I've known people in technical school and elsewhere that have some of those traits and more. They're not AS. You know how people say everyone has a touch of Autism, or whatever? Everyone has a touch of Autism, because people, even some "professionals", throw around random traits, instead of boiling those traits down to certain processes and then contrasting them to figure out what the f**k is going on.

I observe my behavior constantly. I'm like an expert on myself, what I've discovered about myself that is. It's pretty f****n sad. I observe the frequency and intensity of my behavior, try to see what could fit to the Autism spectrum, how I'm expressing myself and my behavior, etc. and it often doesn't seem like I really express myself similar to the ASD wavelength. Yeah, if you're an aspie you can train yourself to learn 'typical wavelength' processes, but it's not like they're going to come naturally. I really can't recall training myself, at least consciously, to pick up on these certain things. And virtually every ASpie has stated they get really stressed or worn out during and after going through these NT processes. If anything, I get stressed out because of anxiety and depression. Otherwise, I'm fine. If I'm an ASpie and didn't really train myself, why am I picking up on these things all of a sudden? Did a miracle suddenly happen and my brain expanded to reach for the impossible? If I'm an ASpie, then why am I not being worn out from an NT process/wavelength for reasons other than anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem? It's just a sketchy sketch. When you factor in the other conditions, and how most of my "autism behaviors" (internally and externally) could be explained by these other conditions and life circumstances, and especially how this is the brain that is being dissected and analyzed, I think there's a real possibility for margin of error. Even if that margin of error appears to be an 'outsider' in reality.

That's what I kinda mean by "true autism" - again, it's a wavelength of processing information, internally and externally. A wavelength that can vary extensively once you look at the finer details. But it's a wavelength because there's similar behavior in how one is reacting to the NT wavelength internally and the type of anxiety that is going on with that reaction.

insight on my own insight? Could I be onto something here? Or is this just me in denial, coming up with some BS alternative just to make it look like people like me aren't actually autistic. I mean, it's heavily based off of the fact that ASD is a different way of being; but since it's a different way of experiencing the world and considering the world generally has a way of experiencing life which is accustomed to the world itself, and how autistic people have stressful times operating in the world because their way of being is not very attuned to the world. I think that's why it's considered a disability -- when autistics migrate onto the other wavelength, they stress the f**k out, or, in other cases where they've learned to compensate a bit, it's a massive energy drain. I don't think treating it as just a difference is really the way to go, honestly.

and yeah, this is probably going to get a lot of crap but I really think that certain people are in denial, in some ways. Not about themselves as a person, as a character, but about what Autism is. People think it gives them certain talents and abilities, but they don't realize that they are abilities that they developed through experience like any other person would. People argue about the positive aspects of it but it really seems like they're speaking for themselves, through their personal experiences as an autist, rather than generally speaking for what Autism really is. Autists get offended or feel threatened when people speak negatively about it because they personally feel identified with the phenomena, but they're not really seeing that character is ultimately detached from brain structure. It all takes away from the fact that autism, generally speaking, is a disorder, a disability -- and that's what my 'wavelength' theory mainly plays off of.

I'm not saying autists are scum of the earth that don't belong, just that they have a hard time being in the world. That's why some autists feel more comfortable "in their own world" (hence why Alex Plank thought "Wrong Planet" was a good fit for his site name). If one is diagnosed with autism yet compensates for all of their symptoms and difficulties to the point where they can operate without stress in the NT way of being, it should be questioned if that person really was autistic.

You could be an autistic person who is able to adapt his/her autism to other modes of thought. Complement their "autistic" wavelength to more "neurotypical" wavelengths.

Temple Grandin had to do that; otherwise, her inventions would not have gotten off the drawing board. She had to adjust to the NT world, and the NT world had to adjust to her. She was able to make that connection; hence, she is where she is today.

It's not just about the way you apply yourself externally. It's also about, and moreso, about how one is reacting internally. If an "autistic person" isn't generally stressed, drained, and exposed from a more common wavelength for autistic reasons, why is that person autistic? Temple has expressed that she feels lost in the world (a place where the more common wavelength is universally implemented), and has anxiety interacting with it. Doesn't matter how well she's integrated herself, she's autistic because she experiences everything differently; she automatically reacts against the common (NT) wavelength. Not saying she or any autistic person can't interact with it effectively, it's just not a natural reaction.

Ultimately, it is impossible to know if we are truly experiencing the world differently from other people. All we can know is that it *feels* like we are experiencing things differently. We cannot enter into another person's brain and know for sure whether or not they are processing things the same or differently than we normally do. And even if we could do that, it would be mighty hard to do that simultaneously to being in our own brain knowing exactly how we are processing it at the same time. How do we even know how we process anything anyways, really...

It is an existential and epistemological dilemma.

NT's sometimes feel the same way as autistics. They sometimes feel lost in their world. On average, autistics probably feel "lost" in the NT world more often, and more intensely, than NT's in that same world--but NT's are not immune to this.

Temple Grandin might have felt anxious--she might have felt "cognitively dissonant"--she might have felt lost. And she certainly felt all this "internally." But that didn't stop her from her achievements.

^^that's not really true though, thanks to neuroscience and the scanning technology we have now (fMRIs, etc). autistics tend to have an overabundance of neural connections in areas of the brain responsible for receiving and processing sensory information (as well as other areas, but i think the hyperconnected sensory pathways are most common, from what i've read), and this is what causes the sensory sensitivities that are so prevalent in the autistic population. this happens because our brains develop differently than NTs--we experience a surge in the formation of neural connections around 6 months-2 years old, and where the hyperconnections form dictates what cluster of symptoms the autist will experience.

I agree that because it is an internal process, one cannot know per definite what is really going on. But you can definitely make analytical observations, and not just from looking at brain scans; but also by discerning social patterns, and contrasting those patterns with one another. You can start to figure out how people operate fundamentally based on how they execute their communication (directly and indirectly) and how they react to the world around them. There are many variations, but there appears to be a fine line between Nts and Autists. Like I said before, the autist can learn to compensate to varying degrees, but the preferred internal process remains. Virtually everyone on the spectrum has reported not only feeling drastically different from others, but noticing the way they operate compared to others is different. That's probably due to the fact that they have an internal process of core symptoms (sensory, perception and communication abnormalities). Their processing becomes exposed in the common wavelength, which leads to issues. Compare this to NTs, which also can vary in perception in personality but do not have such processing deficits. That's how you draw the line. It's not all that abstract.

It's also interesting to think about why Autism is a disability, in this reality we live in. Because it reacts against the common wavelength and it's standards. From an inverted perspective, if the common wavelength was favored by autistic processing, you could argue that it wouldn't be a disability -- but at the same time, think about how that type of society would operate?

You are right - I stand corrected. I had recently read that, too, but forgot.

Are they going to start using MRIs to diagnose, then?

I guess what I mean is how do we *really* know that the reason we are responding differently or having a different internal reaction is because we are on a different wavelength? That is, unless we have an MRI done?

Who here has been diagnosed with an MRI? It seems when people talk about diagnoses, they are talking with a therapist or psychologist who is assessing observable behaviors. And then, some people have said that it is hard to get a diagnosis if the behaviors are not as noticeable as when they were younger. Wouldn't the brain still be working with an overabundance of neural connections.

It seems that in that case, probably those with higher-function ASD have developed some ability to harness or control the overabundance of connections in some way. Or maybe, those with more severe ASD simply have a greater number of overconenctions than those with higher-functiong ASD.

Lots of questions.

As far as I know, no autistic person has ever been diagnosed on the basis of an fMRI/MRI.

I've seen many case studies where the EEG has turned out to be normal In other autistic cases, especially those of a "syndromic" nature, abnormal EEGs have been noted.

As far as I know, the diagnostic process is as Nerdygirl stated: A conversation with a therapist, the observation of behaviors by the therapist, and a look at a person's past history. With Asperger's, during the DSM IV days, self-assessment, and the assessment of a friend/family member was also significant within the diagnostic format.

I also believe there could quite possibly be a variance in brain presentation based upon different "causes" of autism. Research using fMRI's, I believe, will reveal that autism is, truly, a spectrum. One lobe might be affected in one autistic person; another in another autistic person.

People with autism think along very different "wavelengths." One might be an extremely "visual" thinker: like Temple Grandin. Another might shine in the verbal realm, and have a relative weakness in visual learning

I'm gonna pull the neuroscience card. Though we can never know for certainty that my experience of blue is the same as your experience of blue, we can still agree that on a sunny day, the sky is blue for both you and me. Theoretically, with a screw driver and a bit of neuron rewiring, I would see the sky as what I had formally experienced as red and blood as what I formally experienced as blue. Of course you'd have to take my word for it, but I'm sure we could come up with a few behavioral experiments to see if my claims pan out.

Based on fMRI studies, there is an actual physical difference between the brain of someone who is autistic vs someone who isn't. Though our current picture of the brain is not yet sophisticated enough in terms of interpreting how these differences affect experience, we have enough reason to believe that this anatomical/physiological difference does translate in qualitative differences in experience.

A butterfly can look like a leaf, or an orchid can look like an insect.
It's the code underneath that determines the true difference, - the algorithm.

Through observation and specific tests you can take many various expressions combined with each respective environmental condition, and then reverse-engineer the process that produced the expressions. The environment provides some of the conditionals, and the subjects' perception and processing of reality provides the rest of the conditionals.

It is not impossible to reverse engineer a perception of reality.
The question isn't one of certainty at all. There is a huge difference between knowledge and certainty. Knowledge provides predictability within a range of tolerance. Certainty is not applicable to the physical world.
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Example:
Let's take 4 birds of the same species in the same environmental conditions.

Bird #1 has a normal brain and normal chemistry and under test conditions builds a nest.
Bird #2 has a normal brain but abnormal but natural brain chemistry and fails to build a nest.
Bird #3 has a normal brain but has ingested chemicals that affect the brain and fails to build.
Bird #4 has an abnormal brain and fails to build a nest.

Birds 2,3, and 4 may exhibit similar expressed behaviors or lack of behaviors, but they were caused by a developmental brain difference only in bird #4.
Technically, we might be able to say that only bird #4 was "truly" autistic.

The cause of behavior in bird #4 was genetic in nature, but that genetic difference could have been caused by an environmental factor.
Therefore in all 3 cases of failure, the cause is genetic, environmental, or a combination of the two.

That's an analytic, yet still simple way to describe the observations.

An even simpler way to describe the observations is to back up and look at a slightly larger picture, in terms of the nature of the nest building behavior and how it gets expressed in the first place. Many decades ago such a behavior (bird #1) would commonly be described as instinct, and the failure of the other 3 birds was a failure of the instinct to be expressed.

Instincts are essentially intuitions, and not a product of what we call conscious thought or reason. We simply have an emotional perception, and thus chemical releases and reactions that cause us to "feel" an urge to do something, a chemical reward for doing so, and sometimes a chemical punishment for not doing so.

If we asked the birds why they behaved how they did, assuming they could reason and talk, then bird #1 would not likely be able to explain to us reasonably why it built the nest. The remaining 3 birds would probably also be unable to explain, other than they were just doing what they felt they should do at the time. That's how intuition works.

Since intuition is not a product of conscious thought, then it must be the end information (solutions to problems) produced in the subconscious of the brain that bubbles up into conscious thought in a suggestive manner, and thus contaminates our conscious thought. The process may be a little similar to subliminal messaging or suggestion. We modify our behaviors, possibly thinking that it was completely our idea or free-will, but may be unable to explain the real reason for doing so, other than rationalizing after the fact.

To play ping-pong, or ride a bike, we use intuition, - the subconscious brain. We must move with such quickness and perfect balance that it would be impossible for our conscious thought to run our learned formulas in our heads and come up with results in the alloted time. We move how we feel is right, and the quantum probability calculations that are done in the brain's native language produce the solutions in the subconscious for us. It is many times quicker than the conscious thought process. That's another example of how the intuition works.

Conscious thought is what we use when answering a word problem on our math test.
It's slow, awkward, and is most normally done in dichotomies, and not in probabilities.
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The difference in perception will lie in the realm of the separation and filtering that is done in the brain between conscious thought and subconscious thought.

From my own observations, the most significant difference in filtering the information lies in the conditionals that sort the real or physical world from the conceptual or imaginary world.

In NTs, I see them storing, retrieving, and processing conceptual information as if it were real information. There is a huge list of implications with this that I won't get into here.

The bottom line is that the NTs are each a part of a larger conceptual (imaginary) machine, or set of shared algorithms. They connect to this INTUITIVELY. The interaction is based on probabilities and is extremely quick. It would feel "natural" because the urges to behave so come in the form of feelings, rather than the result of conscious calculation. To the NT, a concept (a word) can intuitively "feel" as real to them as a rock, and they treat it as such in their behaviors.

Autistics imitate/simulate this process, but using conscious thought. The outward behaviors can appear similar, but the mechanism generating them is vastly different. Telltale signs are the struggle, and measurable difference in speed when interacting socially, which consists almost entirely of conceptual (imaginary) problems. They are slower, more awkward, and make what NTs describe as large errors in judgement. They are also unable to accurately predict what NTs may be perceiving intuitively. The process of social interaction that NTs use easily is not intuitive to autistics.
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If the intuitive process used by the NTs is a product of learned development by some mechanism like conditioning, then one might speculate that the social acceptance was encouraged by a chemical reward in the brain, thus resulting in the majority of humans being just like a drug addict and giving them the special interest of social acceptance.
The additional speculation would be that the physical and/or chemical difference in the autistic brain would present some impediment to the addiction process, thus failing to condition children to crave social acceptance.

Aside from the chemical reward pathway and possible addiction, the differences in how information is shared and filtered between the conscious and unconscious would be enough to create significant differences in the perception of reality.

At age fifteen and a half, after over 1250 goes at killing myself and finding myself back in my body, I realised that was futile, so I tried a new tack - self-induced amnesias - the full works - retrograde, anterograde, psychogenic and dissociative - using self-hypnosis - marvellous what you can find in books if you are determined enough - and switched off my memory and personal identity back as far as I could remember to - and ended up not knowing who I was, where I was. how I got there, not able to read and write, eat my food with a knife and fork, drink my tea without spilling it all down my front and scalding my nuts, didnt even recognize my mother when she visited me in hospital - and that phase of my life lasted until i had a nervous breakdown 35 years later and had hypno-regression to realise what I had done - in the meantime I had gotten myself an incredible job, won an international design competition that kept me in full time employment for my entire 50 year working career, married my teenage sweetheart, had a child, and moved to an incredibly beautiful part of the world - and why? - because I wiped out all memory of my being labelled autistic by doctors and teachers - I coped with being a nobody better than with being a somebody - oddly, after the diagnosis and treatment by 12 sessions of hypno-regression therapy my performance at work rocketed and I was promoted three years running until I was the highest paid principal engineer in the place I worked and I was asked to coach and counsel others with aspergers and suspected aspergers and did that for the remainder of my career using the intranet and went wider afield with the internet after I retired and have written four best sellers about my life of autism and aspergers syndrome and am a featured blogger in the largest circulation newsheet in the USA at the Editor-in-Chief's behest

So I'm kind of drawn to your notion about wavelength but I have other axes to grind in my autie/aspie awareness activism so I'll just say, dont give up on an idea because other people say it's stupid, tell them they are stupid because they cant even hear what you are saying, otherwise they would understand what you are saying and be a bit more constructive in their criticism than telling you to go boil your head

Do you have documentation that those are the specific reasons people self diagnose and that it has nothing to do with coming upon info of the disorder and seeing how they can relate to it and how perhaps it explains some things, or maybe has to do with real difficulties they have with social interaction...much of the time people don't lean towards that self diagnoses thing unless they have reason to believe something could be wrong.

Also cannot say I ever got on the NT wavelength, also not so sure the autistic wave-length is lesser than the NT one....so not sure I'd see becoming aware of that wave-length and being able to be on that same page as a miracle happening and your mind expanding if your mind really expanded I doubt it would resemble being 'neurotypical' you'd probably come off even more strange to people.