Reading the Research: Autistic Wiring

Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.

Today's article builds on the understanding that autism is a brain condition, not a medical disease.  

I do find the hope of having a singular treatment to "repair" the autistic wiring more than a little shortsighted.  There's a difference between improved functioning and "cured" which is kind of the vein "repaired" goes into.  One more for the folks in back: I am not broken.  I am different.  The fact that y'all built a society that excludes people like me is not my fault.  

While reducing my suffering and the suffering of other autistic people is a noble goal, take care not to decide my differences should be eradicated.  The mental illnesses I developed from trying to fit into society are suffering.  The spikes of painful sounds in everyday living, like alarms and sirens, are suffering.  The gastrointestinal issues I have are suffering.  

The fact that my brain is more specialized and less social?  That's not suffering.  It's human diversity.  

Setting that aside, I learned from LENS that there is no one true brain layout.  When you muck around in brain connections, you quickly find out there is no "normal."  The size and strength of parts of the brain vary.  The strength of connections varies.  Trying to shoehorn one person's brain to be like another's is stupid at best.  

Rather than try to make some kind of wiring diagram to make autistic brains adhere to, it's more reasonable to figure out how to prod our brains into functioning best as compared to ourselves.  That's the process that was done to me in LENS, and even  on a crap day like today, I'm still doing better now than I was basically every day in college.  

Should these researchers stop what they're doing?  No.  But an attitude adjustment is definitely in order.  Also: mouse models.  It's always mouse models.  

(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)