1/20 children in Northern Ireland have autism

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s going to get worse. I am a school psychologist and when I look at the younger siblings of students at the school I am at really worried about how many if them are in strollers staring at screens. Phones and tablets are an effective and cheap babysitter. It’s a low income school where kids don’t have the opportunity to get signed up for activities where they interact.

If there are kids on the spectrum who are borderline with a lot of socialization with parents, siblings, friends, quality pre-schools, attending story times, etc. they might not ever have enough symptoms to have issues or get diagnosed. Now add COVID lock down to that mix where kids didn’t socialize at all for a year not even with cousins. We are seeing kids who are coming in to K with lower language and socialization skills across the board. It’s really, really concerning.

I do NOT think though that you can screen time your way into autism. you can screen time your way into poor socialization, but not into the fundamental brain differences, visible on MRIs, that exist in the brains of true autistic individuals from birth.

That’s not how autism is currently diagnosed. If you don’t have a chance to socialized and have experiences using language and instead are staring down at screens almost all your waking hours then when given tasks in the ADOS-2 you are not going to do well.

researchers are actually well on their way to using brain imaging studies to dx autism. they have already been using them to ascertain that there are in fact 4 distinct subtypes of asd, each with very different neuro mechanisms.

https://www.bbrfoundation.org/content/four-subtypes-autism-spectrum-disorder-are-distinguished-helping-explain-individual

lol no, no such thing. it’s well known that brain imaging is a wild goose chase. https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/brain-imaging-do-over-offers-clues-to-fields-replication-crisis/

That’s… not at all the takeaway of that article. Did you read it?

If you think that article shows brain imaging is “well on its way” to anything useful … well

Sorry but I think you are being slow here.
Autism never was one single thing. The idea of ‘autism’ is a construct we made up bc we couldn’t think of anything better/ didn’t know better yet. The purpose of mris in autism research is to find out what brain differences correlate to what behavioral difference. Them not finding one singular autism mri marker is the whole point. Of course it isn’t surprising there isn’t one. Of course ‘autism’ isn’t just one thing. The whole point of all this is to find out what all these things actually are and then solve for the subjectivity and random bs and actually use science

That’s all interesting and will soak up research funding, but it will not produce anything translational to actually help people.

Aside from the fact that the study you shared was only looking at one specific brain difference among many many many they are researching as markers for all kinds of asd traits, do you honestly think this is as good as it’s going to get? If you think in 100 years, we’ll still diagnose neurodiversity with a human in a room essentially guessing you are crazy (and also why you seem to want that to be the outcome is bewildering)
We are in the infancy of our understanding of all this and we are totally failing right now. I for one will celebrate a time where this gets a hell of a lot better

I think we are throwing scarce research dollars into areas that give professionals career advancement but will never result in any therepeutic benefit. This is unfortunately how a lot of medical research goes - and it’s even worse for social science research that cannot be conducted through a RCT. Just look into the history of Alzheimers research.

Taking a step back, a lot of this research isn’t intended to help people with autism at all. It’s intended to demonstrate how they are different, an oddity of human development, not how they can be helped. All geared towards a deficiency model.

Finally, autism is a social-communication disorder. It is *always* going to be diagnosed with reference to clinical impairment and symptoms, not biomarkers.

To the extent you are bullish on biomarkers, what do you think they will be used for? Prenatal diagnosis and abortion of autistic fetuses. If I’m wrong and we develop good biomarkers, then we will abort all of our future engineers, most creative artists, and out of the box thinkers.

You mean the Alzheimer’s research that’s yielded new drugs that inhibit the build up of specific plaques in the brain that they uncovered as a mechanism for Alzheimer’s using…. Research?
I am bullish on brain scans yielding definitive information about the changes in the brain that lead to neurodiversity leading to greater understanding of its constituent parts and sub categories, leading to more targeted and effective therapies and drugs. You can’t create a drug without first knowing what you are solving for. If mris show that people with greater proclivity towards repetitive behavior have overactivity in a certain area then that’s the mechanism scientists need to target with therapies.
I honestly can’t understand why you need this to be explained

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yeah it's because quirky/nerdy/introverted people are being diagnosed as mild autism.

I also think a lot of this is that kids don't have friends anymore the way prior generations did. Kids used to spend afternoons and summers with their friends. They had close bonds. Now there is just a lot of screens and planned activities. Kids might see each other on the baseball field, but they don't have time to talk to each other before being shuttled to the next activity. I live in a kid neighborhood, with social kids and it's like pulling teeth to get playdates. When kids have no friends they just turn to screens.

I'm an extrovert and I'm sure people would say I'm NT, but I have a lot of social anxiety. I have to force myself to make small talk, shake hands, look people in the eye. It doesn't come natural. I also feel little to no emotion around things that so many people find traumatic- like miscarriages. I have 3 kids I love more than life (and I had infertility and did IVF), but those miscarriages I had? Didn't bother me in the least. I struggle to understand how other women are as affected and I wonder what's wrong with me. I often wonder if I'm autistic.

You’re not autistic if the attributes don’t cause clinical impairments.

I think what you note about social opportunities for kids is true, but doesn’t cause autism per se. It makes it worse, and maybe tips some kids from “no clinical impairment” to “impairment.” It may also cause some misdiagnosis of kids who actually can socialize but don’t due to lack of opportunity.

Yes , the lack of socialization is tipping kids who were only on the verge into autism. It's a spectrum and the kids are getting more impaired on the spectrum due to lack of socialization.

Likewise, I've seen autistic kids reverse a lot of behaviors with therapy and coaching. I think autism is always there, but the severity can be increased or decreased.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s going to get worse. I am a school psychologist and when I look at the younger siblings of students at the school I am at really worried about how many if them are in strollers staring at screens. Phones and tablets are an effective and cheap babysitter. It’s a low income school where kids don’t have the opportunity to get signed up for activities where they interact.

If there are kids on the spectrum who are borderline with a lot of socialization with parents, siblings, friends, quality pre-schools, attending story times, etc. they might not ever have enough symptoms to have issues or get diagnosed. Now add COVID lock down to that mix where kids didn’t socialize at all for a year not even with cousins. We are seeing kids who are coming in to K with lower language and socialization skills across the board. It’s really, really concerning.

I do NOT think though that you can screen time your way into autism. you can screen time your way into poor socialization, but not into the fundamental brain differences, visible on MRIs, that exist in the brains of true autistic individuals from birth.

That’s not how autism is currently diagnosed. If you don’t have a chance to socialized and have experiences using language and instead are staring down at screens almost all your waking hours then when given tasks in the ADOS-2 you are not going to do well.

researchers are actually well on their way to using brain imaging studies to dx autism. they have already been using them to ascertain that there are in fact 4 distinct subtypes of asd, each with very different neuro mechanisms.

https://www.bbrfoundation.org/content/four-subtypes-autism-spectrum-disorder-are-distinguished-helping-explain-individual

lol no, no such thing. it’s well known that brain imaging is a wild goose chase. https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/brain-imaging-do-over-offers-clues-to-fields-replication-crisis/

That’s… not at all the takeaway of that article. Did you read it?

If you think that article shows brain imaging is “well on its way” to anything useful … well

Sorry but I think you are being slow here.
Autism never was one single thing. The idea of ‘autism’ is a construct we made up bc we couldn’t think of anything better/ didn’t know better yet. The purpose of mris in autism research is to find out what brain differences correlate to what behavioral difference. Them not finding one singular autism mri marker is the whole point. Of course it isn’t surprising there isn’t one. Of course ‘autism’ isn’t just one thing. The whole point of all this is to find out what all these things actually are and then solve for the subjectivity and random bs and actually use science

That’s all interesting and will soak up research funding, but it will not produce anything translational to actually help people.

Aside from the fact that the study you shared was only looking at one specific brain difference among many many many they are researching as markers for all kinds of asd traits, do you honestly think this is as good as it’s going to get? If you think in 100 years, we’ll still diagnose neurodiversity with a human in a room essentially guessing you are crazy (and also why you seem to want that to be the outcome is bewildering)
We are in the infancy of our understanding of all this and we are totally failing right now. I for one will celebrate a time where this gets a hell of a lot better

I think we are throwing scarce research dollars into areas that give professionals career advancement but will never result in any therepeutic benefit. This is unfortunately how a lot of medical research goes - and it’s even worse for social science research that cannot be conducted through a RCT. Just look into the history of Alzheimers research.

Taking a step back, a lot of this research isn’t intended to help people with autism at all. It’s intended to demonstrate how they are different, an oddity of human development, not how they can be helped. All geared towards a deficiency model.

Finally, autism is a social-communication disorder. It is *always* going to be diagnosed with reference to clinical impairment and symptoms, not biomarkers.

To the extent you are bullish on biomarkers, what do you think they will be used for? Prenatal diagnosis and abortion of autistic fetuses. If I’m wrong and we develop good biomarkers, then we will abort all of our future engineers, most creative artists, and out of the box thinkers.

You mean the Alzheimer’s research that’s yielded new drugs that inhibit the build up of specific plaques in the brain that they uncovered as a mechanism for Alzheimer’s using…. Research?
I am bullish on brain scans yielding definitive information about the changes in the brain that lead to neurodiversity leading to greater understanding of its constituent parts and sub categories, leading to more targeted and effective therapies and drugs. You can’t create a drug without first knowing what you are solving for. If mris show that people with greater proclivity towards repetitive behavior have overactivity in a certain area then that’s the mechanism scientists need to target with therapies.
I honestly can’t understand why you need this to be explained

Yes exactly - the Alzheimer’s research that wasted decades of time & money and produced zero results and a major scandal about faked data and approval of very expensive but useless drugs.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/alzheimers-inc-when-a-hypothesis-becomes-too-big-to-fail/?amp=true

You seem pretty naive about the state of biomedical research. That’s a nice just-so story that “fMRIs will show an overactive brain region that can be targeted with medication and therapies!” But far from what anyone can reasonably expect to happen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a theory there’s a connection between autism and lack of vitamin D. Curious how rates in sunnier countries with similar medical infrastructure and SES compare.

I know a lot of people from Italy with autism. They just have an easier more simple life so there is less of a "show" of it.

[Anonymous]

There are major tech and fintech hubs in Ireland. So, a population of highly-educated parents and tech geeks similar to the Silicon Valley ones. Those are also the ones who don't let kids use screens too much and have money for screening. I think it's genetics and higher rates of testing for ASD.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s going to get worse. I am a school psychologist and when I look at the younger siblings of students at the school I am at really worried about how many if them are in strollers staring at screens. Phones and tablets are an effective and cheap babysitter. It’s a low income school where kids don’t have the opportunity to get signed up for activities where they interact.

If there are kids on the spectrum who are borderline with a lot of socialization with parents, siblings, friends, quality pre-schools, attending story times, etc. they might not ever have enough symptoms to have issues or get diagnosed. Now add COVID lock down to that mix where kids didn’t socialize at all for a year not even with cousins. We are seeing kids who are coming in to K with lower language and socialization skills across the board. It’s really, really concerning.

I do NOT think though that you can screen time your way into autism. you can screen time your way into poor socialization, but not into the fundamental brain differences, visible on MRIs, that exist in the brains of true autistic individuals from birth.

That’s not how autism is currently diagnosed. If you don’t have a chance to socialized and have experiences using language and instead are staring down at screens almost all your waking hours then when given tasks in the ADOS-2 you are not going to do well.

researchers are actually well on their way to using brain imaging studies to dx autism. they have already been using them to ascertain that there are in fact 4 distinct subtypes of asd, each with very different neuro mechanisms.

https://www.bbrfoundation.org/content/four-subtypes-autism-spectrum-disorder-are-distinguished-helping-explain-individual

lol no, no such thing. it’s well known that brain imaging is a wild goose chase. https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/brain-imaging-do-over-offers-clues-to-fields-replication-crisis/

That’s… not at all the takeaway of that article. Did you read it?

If you think that article shows brain imaging is “well on its way” to anything useful … well

Sorry but I think you are being slow here.
Autism never was one single thing. The idea of ‘autism’ is a construct we made up bc we couldn’t think of anything better/ didn’t know better yet. The purpose of mris in autism research is to find out what brain differences correlate to what behavioral difference. Them not finding one singular autism mri marker is the whole point. Of course it isn’t surprising there isn’t one. Of course ‘autism’ isn’t just one thing. The whole point of all this is to find out what all these things actually are and then solve for the subjectivity and random bs and actually use science

That’s all interesting and will soak up research funding, but it will not produce anything translational to actually help people.

Aside from the fact that the study you shared was only looking at one specific brain difference among many many many they are researching as markers for all kinds of asd traits, do you honestly think this is as good as it’s going to get? If you think in 100 years, we’ll still diagnose neurodiversity with a human in a room essentially guessing you are crazy (and also why you seem to want that to be the outcome is bewildering)
We are in the infancy of our understanding of all this and we are totally failing right now. I for one will celebrate a time where this gets a hell of a lot better

I think we are throwing scarce research dollars into areas that give professionals career advancement but will never result in any therepeutic benefit. This is unfortunately how a lot of medical research goes - and it’s even worse for social science research that cannot be conducted through a RCT. Just look into the history of Alzheimers research.

Taking a step back, a lot of this research isn’t intended to help people with autism at all. It’s intended to demonstrate how they are different, an oddity of human development, not how they can be helped. All geared towards a deficiency model.

Finally, autism is a social-communication disorder. It is *always* going to be diagnosed with reference to clinical impairment and symptoms, not biomarkers.

To the extent you are bullish on biomarkers, what do you think they will be used for? Prenatal diagnosis and abortion of autistic fetuses. If I’m wrong and we develop good biomarkers, then we will abort all of our future engineers, most creative artists, and out of the box thinkers.

You mean the Alzheimer’s research that’s yielded new drugs that inhibit the build up of specific plaques in the brain that they uncovered as a mechanism for Alzheimer’s using…. Research?
I am bullish on brain scans yielding definitive information about the changes in the brain that lead to neurodiversity leading to greater understanding of its constituent parts and sub categories, leading to more targeted and effective therapies and drugs. You can’t create a drug without first knowing what you are solving for. If mris show that people with greater proclivity towards repetitive behavior have overactivity in a certain area then that’s the mechanism scientists need to target with therapies.
I honestly can’t understand why you need this to be explained

Yes exactly - the Alzheimer’s research that wasted decades of time & money and produced zero results and a major scandal about faked data and approval of very expensive but useless drugs.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/alzheimers-inc-when-a-hypothesis-becomes-too-big-to-fail/?amp=true

You seem pretty naive about the state of biomedical research. That’s a nice just-so story that “fMRIs will show an overactive brain region that can be targeted with medication and therapies!” But far from what anyone can reasonably expect to happen.

Actually I’m a journalist who covers health.
And don’t dredge up a 2021 article then tell someone they are ill informed. Cursory google news search shows the fda just approved a drug based on the same mechanism. But apparently medical research is a total waste of time

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are major tech and fintech hubs in Ireland. So, a population of highly-educated parents and tech geeks similar to the Silicon Valley ones. Those are also the ones who don't let kids use screens too much and have money for screening. I think it's genetics and higher rates of testing for ASD.

Oh interesting. So similar to the Silicon Valley autism bubble

[Anonymous]

Ireland has the highest rate of prenatal drinking. I bet at least some of those kids are showing the effect of alcohol consumption. It's less offensive to call it autism than fetal alcohol syndrome.

https://m.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/health/alarm-over-pregnancy-alcohol-levels/31357054.html

Ireland had the highest prevalence of any alcohol consumption pre-pregnancy (90%) and during pregnancy (82%), and the highest reported binge consumption before (59%) and during (45%) pregnancy.[\quote]

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ireland has the highest rate of prenatal drinking. I bet at least some of those kids are showing the effect of alcohol consumption. It's less offensive to call it autism than fetal alcohol syndrome.

https://m.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/health/alarm-over-pregnancy-alcohol-levels/31357054.html

Ireland had the highest prevalence of any alcohol consumption pre-pregnancy (90%) and during pregnancy (82%), and the highest reported binge consumption before (59%) and during (45%) pregnancy.[\quote]

Yeah. That's a more likely cause than the screens addition

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are major tech and fintech hubs in Ireland. So, a population of highly-educated parents and tech geeks similar to the Silicon Valley ones. Those are also the ones who don't let kids use screens too much and have money for screening. I think it's genetics and higher rates of testing for ASD.

There has never been any studies that have indicated that the entirety of the increase is due to greater diagnosis and many that have suggested that there is also just an increase in incidence. The genetic connection is obviously there but can that really explain rising numbers as opposed to some sort of steady state?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s going to get worse. I am a school psychologist and when I look at the younger siblings of students at the school I am at really worried about how many if them are in strollers staring at screens. Phones and tablets are an effective and cheap babysitter. It’s a low income school where kids don’t have the opportunity to get signed up for activities where they interact.

If there are kids on the spectrum who are borderline with a lot of socialization with parents, siblings, friends, quality pre-schools, attending story times, etc. they might not ever have enough symptoms to have issues or get diagnosed. Now add COVID lock down to that mix where kids didn’t socialize at all for a year not even with cousins. We are seeing kids who are coming in to K with lower language and socialization skills across the board. It’s really, really concerning.

I do NOT think though that you can screen time your way into autism. you can screen time your way into poor socialization, but not into the fundamental brain differences, visible on MRIs, that exist in the brains of true autistic individuals from birth.

That’s not how autism is currently diagnosed. If you don’t have a chance to socialized and have experiences using language and instead are staring down at screens almost all your waking hours then when given tasks in the ADOS-2 you are not going to do well.

researchers are actually well on their way to using brain imaging studies to dx autism. they have already been using them to ascertain that there are in fact 4 distinct subtypes of asd, each with very different neuro mechanisms.

https://www.bbrfoundation.org/content/four-subtypes-autism-spectrum-disorder-are-distinguished-helping-explain-individual

lol no, no such thing. it’s well known that brain imaging is a wild goose chase. https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/brain-imaging-do-over-offers-clues-to-fields-replication-crisis/

That’s… not at all the takeaway of that article. Did you read it?

If you think that article shows brain imaging is “well on its way” to anything useful … well

Sorry but I think you are being slow here.
Autism never was one single thing. The idea of ‘autism’ is a construct we made up bc we couldn’t think of anything better/ didn’t know better yet. The purpose of mris in autism research is to find out what brain differences correlate to what behavioral difference. Them not finding one singular autism mri marker is the whole point. Of course it isn’t surprising there isn’t one. Of course ‘autism’ isn’t just one thing. The whole point of all this is to find out what all these things actually are and then solve for the subjectivity and random bs and actually use science

That’s all interesting and will soak up research funding, but it will not produce anything translational to actually help people.

Aside from the fact that the study you shared was only looking at one specific brain difference among many many many they are researching as markers for all kinds of asd traits, do you honestly think this is as good as it’s going to get? If you think in 100 years, we’ll still diagnose neurodiversity with a human in a room essentially guessing you are crazy (and also why you seem to want that to be the outcome is bewildering)
We are in the infancy of our understanding of all this and we are totally failing right now. I for one will celebrate a time where this gets a hell of a lot better

I think we are throwing scarce research dollars into areas that give professionals career advancement but will never result in any therepeutic benefit. This is unfortunately how a lot of medical research goes - and it’s even worse for social science research that cannot be conducted through a RCT. Just look into the history of Alzheimers research.

Taking a step back, a lot of this research isn’t intended to help people with autism at all. It’s intended to demonstrate how they are different, an oddity of human development, not how they can be helped. All geared towards a deficiency model.

Finally, autism is a social-communication disorder. It is *always* going to be diagnosed with reference to clinical impairment and symptoms, not biomarkers.

To the extent you are bullish on biomarkers, what do you think they will be used for? Prenatal diagnosis and abortion of autistic fetuses. If I’m wrong and we develop good biomarkers, then we will abort all of our future engineers, most creative artists, and out of the box thinkers.

You mean the Alzheimer’s research that’s yielded new drugs that inhibit the build up of specific plaques in the brain that they uncovered as a mechanism for Alzheimer’s using…. Research?
I am bullish on brain scans yielding definitive information about the changes in the brain that lead to neurodiversity leading to greater understanding of its constituent parts and sub categories, leading to more targeted and effective therapies and drugs. You can’t create a drug without first knowing what you are solving for. If mris show that people with greater proclivity towards repetitive behavior have overactivity in a certain area then that’s the mechanism scientists need to target with therapies.
I honestly can’t understand why you need this to be explained

Yes exactly - the Alzheimer’s research that wasted decades of time & money and produced zero results and a major scandal about faked data and approval of very expensive but useless drugs.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/alzheimers-inc-when-a-hypothesis-becomes-too-big-to-fail/?amp=true

You seem pretty naive about the state of biomedical research. That’s a nice just-so story that “fMRIs will show an overactive brain region that can be targeted with medication and therapies!” But far from what anyone can reasonably expect to happen.

Actually I’m a journalist who covers health.
And don’t dredge up a 2021 article then tell someone they are ill informed. Cursory google news search shows the fda just approved a drug based on the same mechanism. But apparently medical research is a total waste of time

DP. They shouldn't have.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s going to get worse. I am a school psychologist and when I look at the younger siblings of students at the school I am at really worried about how many if them are in strollers staring at screens. Phones and tablets are an effective and cheap babysitter. It’s a low income school where kids don’t have the opportunity to get signed up for activities where they interact.

If there are kids on the spectrum who are borderline with a lot of socialization with parents, siblings, friends, quality pre-schools, attending story times, etc. they might not ever have enough symptoms to have issues or get diagnosed. Now add COVID lock down to that mix where kids didn’t socialize at all for a year not even with cousins. We are seeing kids who are coming in to K with lower language and socialization skills across the board. It’s really, really concerning.

I do NOT think though that you can screen time your way into autism. you can screen time your way into poor socialization, but not into the fundamental brain differences, visible on MRIs, that exist in the brains of true autistic individuals from birth.

That’s not how autism is currently diagnosed. If you don’t have a chance to socialized and have experiences using language and instead are staring down at screens almost all your waking hours then when given tasks in the ADOS-2 you are not going to do well.

researchers are actually well on their way to using brain imaging studies to dx autism. they have already been using them to ascertain that there are in fact 4 distinct subtypes of asd, each with very different neuro mechanisms.

https://www.bbrfoundation.org/content/four-subtypes-autism-spectrum-disorder-are-distinguished-helping-explain-individual

lol no, no such thing. it’s well known that brain imaging is a wild goose chase. https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/brain-imaging-do-over-offers-clues-to-fields-replication-crisis/

That’s… not at all the takeaway of that article. Did you read it?

If you think that article shows brain imaging is “well on its way” to anything useful … well

Sorry but I think you are being slow here.
Autism never was one single thing. The idea of ‘autism’ is a construct we made up bc we couldn’t think of anything better/ didn’t know better yet. The purpose of mris in autism research is to find out what brain differences correlate to what behavioral difference. Them not finding one singular autism mri marker is the whole point. Of course it isn’t surprising there isn’t one. Of course ‘autism’ isn’t just one thing. The whole point of all this is to find out what all these things actually are and then solve for the subjectivity and random bs and actually use science

That’s all interesting and will soak up research funding, but it will not produce anything translational to actually help people.

Aside from the fact that the study you shared was only looking at one specific brain difference among many many many they are researching as markers for all kinds of asd traits, do you honestly think this is as good as it’s going to get? If you think in 100 years, we’ll still diagnose neurodiversity with a human in a room essentially guessing you are crazy (and also why you seem to want that to be the outcome is bewildering)
We are in the infancy of our understanding of all this and we are totally failing right now. I for one will celebrate a time where this gets a hell of a lot better

I think we are throwing scarce research dollars into areas that give professionals career advancement but will never result in any therepeutic benefit. This is unfortunately how a lot of medical research goes - and it’s even worse for social science research that cannot be conducted through a RCT. Just look into the history of Alzheimers research.

Taking a step back, a lot of this research isn’t intended to help people with autism at all. It’s intended to demonstrate how they are different, an oddity of human development, not how they can be helped. All geared towards a deficiency model.

Finally, autism is a social-communication disorder. It is *always* going to be diagnosed with reference to clinical impairment and symptoms, not biomarkers.

To the extent you are bullish on biomarkers, what do you think they will be used for? Prenatal diagnosis and abortion of autistic fetuses. If I’m wrong and we develop good biomarkers, then we will abort all of our future engineers, most creative artists, and out of the box thinkers.

You mean the Alzheimer’s research that’s yielded new drugs that inhibit the build up of specific plaques in the brain that they uncovered as a mechanism for Alzheimer’s using…. Research?
I am bullish on brain scans yielding definitive information about the changes in the brain that lead to neurodiversity leading to greater understanding of its constituent parts and sub categories, leading to more targeted and effective therapies and drugs. You can’t create a drug without first knowing what you are solving for. If mris show that people with greater proclivity towards repetitive behavior have overactivity in a certain area then that’s the mechanism scientists need to target with therapies.
I honestly can’t understand why you need this to be explained

Yes exactly - the Alzheimer’s research that wasted decades of time & money and produced zero results and a major scandal about faked data and approval of very expensive but useless drugs.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/alzheimers-inc-when-a-hypothesis-becomes-too-big-to-fail/?amp=true

You seem pretty naive about the state of biomedical research. That’s a nice just-so story that “fMRIs will show an overactive brain region that can be targeted with medication and therapies!” But far from what anyone can reasonably expect to happen.

Actually I’m a journalist who covers health.
And don’t dredge up a 2021 article then tell someone they are ill informed. Cursory google news search shows the fda just approved a drug based on the same mechanism. But apparently medical research is a total waste of time

You’re a health journalist and don’t know about the major controversy surrounding Aduhelm and the amyloid hypothesis? What kind of journalism do you do - reprint university and drug company press releases?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are major tech and fintech hubs in Ireland. So, a population of highly-educated parents and tech geeks similar to the Silicon Valley ones. Those are also the ones who don't let kids use screens too much and have money for screening. I think it's genetics and higher rates of testing for ASD.

There has never been any studies that have indicated that the entirety of the increase is due to greater diagnosis and many that have suggested that there is also just an increase in incidence. The genetic connection is obviously there but can that really explain rising numbers as opposed to some sort of steady state?

There are likely other factors, indeed, e.g., environmental (drinking). Yet, the growing numbers may also reflect the growing genetic pool, such as more hub workers.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:It’s going to get worse. I am a school psychologist and when I look at the younger siblings of students at the school I am at really worried about how many if them are in strollers staring at screens. Phones and tablets are an effective and cheap babysitter. It’s a low income school where kids don’t have the opportunity to get signed up for activities where they interact.

If there are kids on the spectrum who are borderline with a lot of socialization with parents, siblings, friends, quality pre-schools, attending story times, etc. they might not ever have enough symptoms to have issues or get diagnosed. Now add COVID lock down to that mix where kids didn’t socialize at all for a year not even with cousins. We are seeing kids who are coming in to K with lower language and socialization skills across the board. It’s really, really concerning.

I do NOT think though that you can screen time your way into autism. you can screen time your way into poor socialization, but not into the fundamental brain differences, visible on MRIs, that exist in the brains of true autistic individuals from birth.

That’s not how autism is currently diagnosed. If you don’t have a chance to socialized and have experiences using language and instead are staring down at screens almost all your waking hours then when given tasks in the ADOS-2 you are not going to do well.

researchers are actually well on their way to using brain imaging studies to dx autism. they have already been using them to ascertain that there are in fact 4 distinct subtypes of asd, each with very different neuro mechanisms.

https://www.bbrfoundation.org/content/four-subtypes-autism-spectrum-disorder-are-distinguished-helping-explain-individual

lol no, no such thing. it’s well known that brain imaging is a wild goose chase. https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/brain-imaging-do-over-offers-clues-to-fields-replication-crisis/

That’s… not at all the takeaway of that article. Did you read it?

If you think that article shows brain imaging is “well on its way” to anything useful … well

Sorry but I think you are being slow here.
Autism never was one single thing. The idea of ‘autism’ is a construct we made up bc we couldn’t think of anything better/ didn’t know better yet. The purpose of mris in autism research is to find out what brain differences correlate to what behavioral difference. Them not finding one singular autism mri marker is the whole point. Of course it isn’t surprising there isn’t one. Of course ‘autism’ isn’t just one thing. The whole point of all this is to find out what all these things actually are and then solve for the subjectivity and random bs and actually use science

That’s all interesting and will soak up research funding, but it will not produce anything translational to actually help people.

Aside from the fact that the study you shared was only looking at one specific brain difference among many many many they are researching as markers for all kinds of asd traits, do you honestly think this is as good as it’s going to get? If you think in 100 years, we’ll still diagnose neurodiversity with a human in a room essentially guessing you are crazy (and also why you seem to want that to be the outcome is bewildering)
We are in the infancy of our understanding of all this and we are totally failing right now. I for one will celebrate a time where this gets a hell of a lot better

I think we are throwing scarce research dollars into areas that give professionals career advancement but will never result in any therepeutic benefit. This is unfortunately how a lot of medical research goes - and it’s even worse for social science research that cannot be conducted through a RCT. Just look into the history of Alzheimers research.

Taking a step back, a lot of this research isn’t intended to help people with autism at all. It’s intended to demonstrate how they are different, an oddity of human development, not how they can be helped. All geared towards a deficiency model.

Finally, autism is a social-communication disorder. It is *always* going to be diagnosed with reference to clinical impairment and symptoms, not biomarkers.

To the extent you are bullish on biomarkers, what do you think they will be used for? Prenatal diagnosis and abortion of autistic fetuses. If I’m wrong and we develop good biomarkers, then we will abort all of our future engineers, most creative artists, and out of the box thinkers.

You mean the Alzheimer’s research that’s yielded new drugs that inhibit the build up of specific plaques in the brain that they uncovered as a mechanism for Alzheimer’s using…. Research?
I am bullish on brain scans yielding definitive information about the changes in the brain that lead to neurodiversity leading to greater understanding of its constituent parts and sub categories, leading to more targeted and effective therapies and drugs. You can’t create a drug without first knowing what you are solving for. If mris show that people with greater proclivity towards repetitive behavior have overactivity in a certain area then that’s the mechanism scientists need to target with therapies.
I honestly can’t understand why you need this to be explained

Yes exactly - the Alzheimer’s research that wasted decades of time & money and produced zero results and a major scandal about faked data and approval of very expensive but useless drugs.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/alzheimers-inc-when-a-hypothesis-becomes-too-big-to-fail/?amp=true

You seem pretty naive about the state of biomedical research. That’s a nice just-so story that “fMRIs will show an overactive brain region that can be targeted with medication and therapies!” But far from what anyone can reasonably expect to happen.

Actually I’m a journalist who covers health.
And don’t dredge up a 2021 article then tell someone they are ill informed. Cursory google news search shows the fda just approved a drug based on the same mechanism. But apparently medical research is a total waste of time

You’re a health journalist and don’t know about the major controversy surrounding Aduhelm and the amyloid hypothesis? What kind of journalism do you do - reprint university and drug company press releases?

Dude - I cover controversies in healthcare (and beyond) every day. That is the nature of news. It doesn’t mean science should stop.
Oye.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s going to get worse. I am a school psychologist and when I look at the younger siblings of students at the school I am at really worried about how many if them are in strollers staring at screens. Phones and tablets are an effective and cheap babysitter. It’s a low income school where kids don’t have the opportunity to get signed up for activities where they interact.

If there are kids on the spectrum who are borderline with a lot of socialization with parents, siblings, friends, quality pre-schools, attending story times, etc. they might not ever have enough symptoms to have issues or get diagnosed. Now add COVID lock down to that mix where kids didn’t socialize at all for a year not even with cousins. We are seeing kids who are coming in to K with lower language and socialization skills across the board. It’s really, really concerning.

I do NOT think though that you can screen time your way into autism. you can screen time your way into poor socialization, but not into the fundamental brain differences, visible on MRIs, that exist in the brains of true autistic individuals from birth.

That’s not how autism is currently diagnosed. If you don’t have a chance to socialized and have experiences using language and instead are staring down at screens almost all your waking hours then when given tasks in the ADOS-2 you are not going to do well.

researchers are actually well on their way to using brain imaging studies to dx autism. they have already been using them to ascertain that there are in fact 4 distinct subtypes of asd, each with very different neuro mechanisms.

https://www.bbrfoundation.org/content/four-subtypes-autism-spectrum-disorder-are-distinguished-helping-explain-individual

lol no, no such thing. it’s well known that brain imaging is a wild goose chase. https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/brain-imaging-do-over-offers-clues-to-fields-replication-crisis/

That’s… not at all the takeaway of that article. Did you read it?

If you think that article shows brain imaging is “well on its way” to anything useful … well

Sorry but I think you are being slow here.
Autism never was one single thing. The idea of ‘autism’ is a construct we made up bc we couldn’t think of anything better/ didn’t know better yet. The purpose of mris in autism research is to find out what brain differences correlate to what behavioral difference. Them not finding one singular autism mri marker is the whole point. Of course it isn’t surprising there isn’t one. Of course ‘autism’ isn’t just one thing. The whole point of all this is to find out what all these things actually are and then solve for the subjectivity and random bs and actually use science

That’s all interesting and will soak up research funding, but it will not produce anything translational to actually help people.

Aside from the fact that the study you shared was only looking at one specific brain difference among many many many they are researching as markers for all kinds of asd traits, do you honestly think this is as good as it’s going to get? If you think in 100 years, we’ll still diagnose neurodiversity with a human in a room essentially guessing you are crazy (and also why you seem to want that to be the outcome is bewildering)
We are in the infancy of our understanding of all this and we are totally failing right now. I for one will celebrate a time where this gets a hell of a lot better

I think we are throwing scarce research dollars into areas that give professionals career advancement but will never result in any therepeutic benefit. This is unfortunately how a lot of medical research goes - and it’s even worse for social science research that cannot be conducted through a RCT. Just look into the history of Alzheimers research.

Taking a step back, a lot of this research isn’t intended to help people with autism at all. It’s intended to demonstrate how they are different, an oddity of human development, not how they can be helped. All geared towards a deficiency model.

Finally, autism is a social-communication disorder. It is *always* going to be diagnosed with reference to clinical impairment and symptoms, not biomarkers.

To the extent you are bullish on biomarkers, what do you think they will be used for? Prenatal diagnosis and abortion of autistic fetuses. If I’m wrong and we develop good biomarkers, then we will abort all of our future engineers, most creative artists, and out of the box thinkers.

You mean the Alzheimer’s research that’s yielded new drugs that inhibit the build up of specific plaques in the brain that they uncovered as a mechanism for Alzheimer’s using…. Research?
I am bullish on brain scans yielding definitive information about the changes in the brain that lead to neurodiversity leading to greater understanding of its constituent parts and sub categories, leading to more targeted and effective therapies and drugs. You can’t create a drug without first knowing what you are solving for. If mris show that people with greater proclivity towards repetitive behavior have overactivity in a certain area then that’s the mechanism scientists need to target with therapies.
I honestly can’t understand why you need this to be explained

Yes exactly - the Alzheimer’s research that wasted decades of time & money and produced zero results and a major scandal about faked data and approval of very expensive but useless drugs.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/alzheimers-inc-when-a-hypothesis-becomes-too-big-to-fail/?amp=true

You seem pretty naive about the state of biomedical research. That’s a nice just-so story that “fMRIs will show an overactive brain region that can be targeted with medication and therapies!” But far from what anyone can reasonably expect to happen.

Actually I’m a journalist who covers health.
And don’t dredge up a 2021 article then tell someone they are ill informed. Cursory google news search shows the fda just approved a drug based on the same mechanism. But apparently medical research is a total waste of time

You’re a health journalist and don’t know about the major controversy surrounding Aduhelm and the amyloid hypothesis? What kind of journalism do you do - reprint university and drug company press releases?

Dude - I cover controversies in healthcare (and beyond) every day. That is the nature of news. It doesn’t mean science should stop.
Oye.

Nobody said science should stop. I said science should focus on therapies instead of wasting time on research that will likely never result in any benefits. And moreover I expect a supposed health journalist of all people to be familiar with the replication crisis, short comings of fMRI, and the search for biomarkers. Anyone who credulously repeats “we will identify the autistic brain through imaging and create targeted treatment!” has falled for a press release pitch.