1/20 children in Northern Ireland have autism

[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.

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.

DP. We participate in longtudinal research at NIH. Pre-COVID, my DS went every year for a re-evaluation and an MRI. I'm glad they're not soley focusing on therapies. While insights may be slow in coming, it's all part of understanding the brain and functioning. I have no idea if autism could ever be diagnosed using brain imaging and don't care if it never can be. This research may not help my kid directly but it's likely to contribute to better understanding his disorder as well as other disorders.

I’m glad it gives you hope. But how much better would it be if they actually delivered evidence-based therapies to your kid and studied how well they worked.

It's not hope. It's science. It's statistically likely that research into the organic causes and structure of a disorder will lead to improved understanding and treatment of the disorder.

the naivety here is breathtaking.

It’s ‘breathtakingly naive’ to think that neuroscience will advance?
That seems like a reach.

To believe that there is some kind of manifest destiny that garbage, non-replicable fMRI studies (aka neuroscience) will lead to a cure for autism … yes that is naive and uninformed.

[Anonymous]

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.

Cool refrigerator mom theory, bro. But lower socialization/language skills do not an autistic child make. Unless you’re a psychologist who doesn’t know what they are talking about. Again, the problems with over expansion of a diagnosis.

And incidentally… My autistic son watched zero screens until he was 3.5 when I changed his routine a bit to help him diversify his interests. And they found a genetic CAUSE to his autism.

Brains in young children are very malleable, right? So why couldn't watching terrible videos over and over not change the brain to make it appear autistic, the way high quality interaction changes it beneficial ways?

[Anonymous]

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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.

DP. We participate in longtudinal research at NIH. Pre-COVID, my DS went every year for a re-evaluation and an MRI. I'm glad they're not soley focusing on therapies. While insights may be slow in coming, it's all part of understanding the brain and functioning. I have no idea if autism could ever be diagnosed using brain imaging and don't care if it never can be. This research may not help my kid directly but it's likely to contribute to better understanding his disorder as well as other disorders.

I’m glad it gives you hope. But how much better would it be if they actually delivered evidence-based therapies to your kid and studied how well they worked.

It's not hope. It's science. It's statistically likely that research into the organic causes and structure of a disorder will lead to improved understanding and treatment of the disorder.

the naivety here is breathtaking.

It’s ‘breathtakingly naive’ to think that neuroscience will advance?
That seems like a reach.

To believe that there is some kind of manifest destiny that garbage, non-replicable fMRI studies (aka neuroscience) will lead to a cure for autism … yes that is naive and uninformed.

Listen - I’m sorry that you have a hard time with your child and that the system is somehow failing you. And that you have this very bizarre soapbox that no one will ever at any point better understand why some brains are prone to certain things (which is already happening every day as evidenced by advances in medicines that target certain brain mechanisms) but I would encourage you to seek therapy of your own to better understand and deal with what is making you so angry about this. Is it that if there are advances that it will be too late for your child? Is it that you have had trouble affording therapies and wish that had been easier?
Us giving up on advances in neuroscience I think is not an option so better for you to figure out why it is so threatening to you

[Anonymous]

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.

Cool refrigerator mom theory, bro. But lower socialization/language skills do not an autistic child make. Unless you’re a psychologist who doesn’t know what they are talking about. Again, the problems with over expansion of a diagnosis.

And incidentally… My autistic son watched zero screens until he was 3.5 when I changed his routine a bit to help him diversify his interests. And they found a genetic CAUSE to his autism.

Brains in young children are very malleable, right? So why couldn't watching terrible videos over and over not change the brain to make it appear autistic, the way high quality interaction changes it beneficial ways?

You would have to prove that screens fundamentally result in changes to the pre frontal cortex. It’s unlikely.
More like is we have a crap definition of autism and should not be lumping any and all social deficiencies under this one diagnosis

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6055909/

[Anonymous]

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.

Cool refrigerator mom theory, bro. But lower socialization/language skills do not an autistic child make. Unless you’re a psychologist who doesn’t know what they are talking about. Again, the problems with over expansion of a diagnosis.

And incidentally… My autistic son watched zero screens until he was 3.5 when I changed his routine a bit to help him diversify his interests. And they found a genetic CAUSE to his autism.

Brains in young children are very malleable, right? So why couldn't watching terrible videos over and over not change the brain to make it appear autistic, the way high quality interaction changes it beneficial ways?

You would have to prove that screens fundamentally result in changes to the pre frontal cortex. It’s unlikely.
More like is we have a crap definition of autism and should not be lumping any and all social deficiencies under this one diagnosis

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6055909/

DP. Our definition of autism is related to externally observable behavior, responses, etc. Not due to the cause, whether genetic (including both heritable and genetic diseases associated with autism such as Fragile X), or birth trauma, post birth trauma, living for the first years in a Romanian orphanage, etc.

Spending multiple hours on screens for the first years has been shown to be harmful in studies. You can say that the social and regulation problems caused by that are something -other-than-autism, but is that helpful?

[Anonymous]

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.

Cool refrigerator mom theory, bro. But lower socialization/language skills do not an autistic child make. Unless you’re a psychologist who doesn’t know what they are talking about. Again, the problems with over expansion of a diagnosis.

And incidentally… My autistic son watched zero screens until he was 3.5 when I changed his routine a bit to help him diversify his interests. And they found a genetic CAUSE to his autism.

Brains in young children are very malleable, right? So why couldn't watching terrible videos over and over not change the brain to make it appear autistic, the way high quality interaction changes it beneficial ways?

You would have to prove that screens fundamentally result in changes to the pre frontal cortex. It’s unlikely.
More like is we have a crap definition of autism and should not be lumping any and all social deficiencies under this one diagnosis

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6055909/

DP. Our definition of autism is related to externally observable behavior, responses, etc. Not due to the cause, whether genetic (including both heritable and genetic diseases associated with autism such as Fragile X), or birth trauma, post birth trauma, living for the first years in a Romanian orphanage, etc.

Spending multiple hours on screens for the first years has been shown to be harmful in studies. You can say that the social and regulation problems caused by that are something -other-than-autism, but is that helpful?

i dont think most people think of autism as a 'type of behavior' so much as a fundamental difference in your brain.
if it IS a type of behavior, one would assume it was 'curable' or reversable - which it is widely believed not to be.

[Anonymous]

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.

Cool refrigerator mom theory, bro. But lower socialization/language skills do not an autistic child make. Unless you’re a psychologist who doesn’t know what they are talking about. Again, the problems with over expansion of a diagnosis.

And incidentally… My autistic son watched zero screens until he was 3.5 when I changed his routine a bit to help him diversify his interests. And they found a genetic CAUSE to his autism.

Brains in young children are very malleable, right? So why couldn't watching terrible videos over and over not change the brain to make it appear autistic, the way high quality interaction changes it beneficial ways?

You would have to prove that screens fundamentally result in changes to the pre frontal cortex. It’s unlikely.
More like is we have a crap definition of autism and should not be lumping any and all social deficiencies under this one diagnosis

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6055909/

DP. Our definition of autism is related to externally observable behavior, responses, etc. Not due to the cause, whether genetic (including both heritable and genetic diseases associated with autism such as Fragile X), or birth trauma, post birth trauma, living for the first years in a Romanian orphanage, etc.

Spending multiple hours on screens for the first years has been shown to be harmful in studies. You can say that the social and regulation problems caused by that are something -other-than-autism, but is that helpful?

i dont think most people think of autism as a 'type of behavior' so much as a fundamental difference in your brain.
if it IS a type of behavior, one would assume it was 'curable' or reversable - which it is widely believed not to be.

If it is not at all reversible then why does insurance pay for ABA therapy?

[Anonymous]

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.

Cool refrigerator mom theory, bro. But lower socialization/language skills do not an autistic child make. Unless you’re a psychologist who doesn’t know what they are talking about. Again, the problems with over expansion of a diagnosis.

And incidentally… My autistic son watched zero screens until he was 3.5 when I changed his routine a bit to help him diversify his interests. And they found a genetic CAUSE to his autism.

Brains in young children are very malleable, right? So why couldn't watching terrible videos over and over not change the brain to make it appear autistic, the way high quality interaction changes it beneficial ways?

You would have to prove that screens fundamentally result in changes to the pre frontal cortex. It’s unlikely.
More like is we have a crap definition of autism and should not be lumping any and all social deficiencies under this one diagnosis

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6055909/

DP. Our definition of autism is related to externally observable behavior, responses, etc. Not due to the cause, whether genetic (including both heritable and genetic diseases associated with autism such as Fragile X), or birth trauma, post birth trauma, living for the first years in a Romanian orphanage, etc.

Spending multiple hours on screens for the first years has been shown to be harmful in studies. You can say that the social and regulation problems caused by that are something -other-than-autism, but is that helpful?

i dont think most people think of autism as a 'type of behavior' so much as a fundamental difference in your brain.
if it IS a type of behavior, one would assume it was 'curable' or reversable - which it is widely believed not to be.

If it is not at all reversible then why does insurance pay for ABA therapy?

I have complex PTSD which will never be cured, only mitigated. My insurance pays part of the cost of talk therapy for me. Not all medical treatment is going to provide a cure, some treatments will help though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you’re “high functioning”, do you really have autism? When I was growing up, autism meant non-communicative, in-your-own-world kind of behavior. Is the “spectrum “ too broad now because people want a label for their kids just because they’re a little weird?

You should look up why all these things are now considered autism. When everyone in the medical field were debating the outlines for DSM 5 they had to push things like Aspergers into "the spectrum" because all of these little things were not going to be covered by insurance, they do have to cover autism though. They had good intentions but it really spun out of control.

[Anonymous]

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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.

DP. We participate in longtudinal research at NIH. Pre-COVID, my DS went every year for a re-evaluation and an MRI. I'm glad they're not soley focusing on therapies. While insights may be slow in coming, it's all part of understanding the brain and functioning. I have no idea if autism could ever be diagnosed using brain imaging and don't care if it never can be. This research may not help my kid directly but it's likely to contribute to better understanding his disorder as well as other disorders.

I’m glad it gives you hope. But how much better would it be if they actually delivered evidence-based therapies to your kid and studied how well they worked.

It's not hope. It's science. It's statistically likely that research into the organic causes and structure of a disorder will lead to improved understanding and treatment of the disorder.

the naivety here is breathtaking.

It’s ‘breathtakingly naive’ to think that neuroscience will advance?
That seems like a reach.

To believe that there is some kind of manifest destiny that garbage, non-replicable fMRI studies (aka neuroscience) will lead to a cure for autism … yes that is naive and uninformed.

Listen - I’m sorry that you have a hard time with your child and that the system is somehow failing you. And that you have this very bizarre soapbox that no one will ever at any point better understand why some brains are prone to certain things (which is already happening every day as evidenced by advances in medicines that target certain brain mechanisms) but I would encourage you to seek therapy of your own to better understand and deal with what is making you so angry about this. Is it that if there are advances that it will be too late for your child? Is it that you have had trouble affording therapies and wish that had been easier?
Us giving up on advances in neuroscience I think is not an option so better for you to figure out why it is so threatening to you

I’m mad at seeing money wasted on useless research, yes. What I’m saying is not at all unfamiliar to anyone with an understanding of social science and mental health research.

[Anonymous]

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 agree that these young kids shouldn't be on screens but as a parent of an aspergers/autistic adult child, I find this psych grab offensive. To this date, scientists have not figures out what causes autism or milder versions such as aspergers.

Many agree it’s highly genetic and runs in families. Up and down the family tree.

Which also makes it such that an “outsider” usually has to wonder what’s up and seek their diagnosis (of the child, of the adult, of the spouse), since AS/AS won’t notice or know/

[Anonymous]

NP.

They found out the genetic causes of Down Syndrome, and now most of those babies get aborted. Did that research do existing babies any good? I remember Reading an article from years ago where they found a drug that helps DS kids learn, but it wasn’t pursued because they found a way to screen for it prenatally. Of course, I can’t find it ten years later.

I can see why PP is mad at all the research looking for genetic causes for autism. Once new parents can just abort autistic fetuses, the financial incentive to treat existing cases fries. up.

If I’d never read that article, I’d think the pp was crazy, but I get it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:NP.

They found out the genetic causes of Down Syndrome, and now most of those babies get aborted. Did that research do existing babies any good? I remember Reading an article from years ago where they found a drug that helps DS kids learn, but it wasn’t pursued because they found a way to screen for it prenatally. Of course, I can’t find it ten years later.

I can see why PP is mad at all the research looking for genetic causes for autism. Once new parents can just abort autistic fetuses, the financial incentive to treat existing cases fries. up.

If I’d never read that article, I’d think the pp was crazy, but I get it.

Yup. The bright side is that they likely won’t ever find a real genetic test or biomarker for autism, apart from those few genetically related syndromes that exist.

[Anonymous]

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 agree that these young kids shouldn't be on screens but as a parent of an aspergers/autistic adult child, I find this psych grab offensive. To this date, scientists have not figures out what causes autism or milder versions such as aspergers.

Many agree it’s highly genetic and runs in families. Up and down the family tree.

Which also makes it such that an “outsider” usually has to wonder what’s up and seek their diagnosis (of the child, of the adult, of the spouse), since AS/AS won’t notice or know/

Outsider who want to put any differences into diagnostic boxes.

[Anonymous]

The CDC puts the 2020 rate of ASD in the United States at 1/36. Considering how delayed so many school related things are thanks to the pandemic, doubtless that rate doesn’t reflect the full picture as you’ll see in the linked article that ASD rates vary widely by state which likely has more to do with efficacy of screening measures than anything else.

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/autism-rates-in-children-reach-new-highs-experts-explain-why#The-bottom-line