Is Asperger's Syndrome a Part of Human Evolution?

Look at the numbers now people! 1 in 91 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And they are using the same old lame B.S. explanations! "We're getting better at diagnosing it." "We're catching it in milder forms now."

"It will be a hard time for people with children; they will be avoided deliberately and in some manner treated with force. Many of the children in these times will act and be un-natural. Some will be from the star nation. Some from past worlds some will be created by people, in an un-natural manner and will have no soul." Creator as Chief, Gray Eagle

At this time, the risk factors and causes of Asperger's syndrome are unknown. Because siblings of children with AS are more likely to have the condition, the disorder is believed to have a genetic (inherited) component. http://www.neurologychannel.com/aspergers-syndrome/index.shtml

Some research shows that there are strikingly similar features in first or second degree relatives on either side of the family, or the family history includes "eccentric" individuals who have a mild expression of the syndrome. There are also some families with a history of children with AS and classic Autism. Should a relative have had similar characteristics when younger, they have a unique advantage in helping the child - they know what they are going through. There is no formal identification of the precise means of transmission if the cause is genetic, but we do have some suggestions as to which chromosomes may be involved. As our knowledge of genetics improves, we may soon be able to predict the recurrence rate for individual families. http://www.aspergerfoundation.org.uk/faq_all.htm

Some studies state that quite a high percentage of cases had a history of natal conditions that might have caused damage. But, in general, pregnancy may well have been unremarkable. However, the incidence of obstetric abnormalities is high. No one factor can be identified, but labour crises and neonatal problems are recorded with a significant number of children with AS. There is also a greater incidence of babies who are small for gestational age, and mothers in the older age range. It is recognised that there are three principal causes of Asperger's Syndrome - genetic factors, unfavourable genetic events, and infections during pregnancy or early infancy that affect the brain.
http://www.aspergerfoundation.org.uk/faq_all.htm

Asperger's Syndrome is not caused by emotional trauma, neglect or failing to love your child. The research studies have clearly shown that AS is a developmental disorder due to a dysfunction of specific structures and systems of the brain. These structures may not have fully developed due to chromosomal abnormalities or may have been damaged during pregnancy, birth or the first few months of life.
http://www.aspergerfoundation.org.uk/faq_all.htm

Something is changing our genetic structure! We need to find out exactly what it is! We need to find a cure! This has got to end now!

When my sons were diagnosed they told me it was 1 in 10,000, then it was 1 in 1000, not very long ago it was 1 in 100. My oldest son with Asperger's is only 13. How are the numbers jumping so quickly? And don't try to give me a B.S. answer!

A condition like Asperger syndrome may be caused by a combination of genetic and environmental conditions. Some theories of cause include:

• toxins
• household cleaners
• vaccines

Many families insist that the signs of pervasive developmental disorder
did not appear until after their children received vaccines.

The particular vaccine of concern is the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. The culprit is thought to be thimerosol, which is a mercury-based preservative. Conditions like autism are similar in symptoms to mercury poisoning.

Do allergic reactions play a role in PDD conditions?

Some believe that Aspergers and related pervasive developmental disorders might be caused by an allergic reaction to certain foods.

While most of us feel the effects of an allergy to food in a purely physical manner, individuals with pervasive developmental disorders feel the effects in their neurological systems and in brain functioning.

Gluten and casein are thought to contribute to conditions like Asperger syndrome. Dietary interventions often seek to completely cut these elements out of a child’s diet. The results of this attempt are a mixed bag, though. Many individuals report significant improvement with this diet, while others see little or no improvement. http://www.livingwithaspergers.com/causes-of-asperger-syndrome.html

Studies indicate that Asperger’s may be associated with other mental disorders as well, like depression and bipolar disorder.
http://babycare.iloveindia.com/baby-health/aspergers-syndrome-in-babies.html

Autism May Be More Common Than Thought

Survey Shows 1 in 91 Children May Have Autism Spectrum Disorder By Kathleen Doheny
WebMD Health News Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD

Oct. 5, 2009 -- About 1% of U.S. children, or about one in 91, may have autism or an autism spectrum disorder, according to two new national surveys.

The new estimate is a dramatic increase from the previously accepted number of one in 150. But experts who discussed the findings of the two new surveys -- one released today and the other due out before year's end -- urged caution in interpreting the new information about the developmental disorders.

A new survey by the CDC found that about 1% of U.S. children are affected by an autism spectrum disorder, says Ileana Arias, PhD, deputy director of the CDC.

No further details were available on the CDC survey, due to be released in full later this year.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1837306510&v=wall&story_fbid=140392395974883

Most of these kids are being parented in single family homes with their mothers as head of household! This "set of Syndromes" is eating away all of the parents finances and these kids who need the most help are living in the deepest poverty.

When - when, is eveyone going to get angry and demand the truth? Demand an answer? When evey single child being born has some form of Autism? It's getting pretty darn close, be prepared for all of your future children and/or grandchildren to be handicapped!

Be prepared to have nothing but heartache, spending your life taking one child after another to doctor after doctor, therapist after therapist, school after school. See what it's like to hear your child laugh a robotic little laugh for the very first time when they are in their preteens, and know for a fact that they are most likely to live with you for the rest of your life.

"A consortium of hundreds of scientists said Wednesday they had uncovered dozens of previously unknown genetic mutations that contribute to autism in children.

Some of these rare DNA glitches are inherited from parents. But many, the researchers discovered, arise for the first time in the person with autism.

"This suggests that tiny genetic errors may occur during formation of the parents' eggs and sperm, and these variations are copied during creation of their child's DNA," said co-author Daniel Geschwind, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA)."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100609/hl_afp/health

If this is true then they should finally be able to tell whether or not Asperger's Syndrome is a part of the Autism Spectrum. What I want to know is what's causing the mutations! If these babies brains are built on mutated genes what were we as parents exposed to that caused these mutations? As DNA changes evolution of the species changes.

"It is likely that genetics and environmental factors interact to cause autism. As yet, there is no proof of which environmental or genetic factors are to blame. Says Dr. Croen, autism "You need some kind of genetic susceptibility; then you have to be exposed to something which is elusive at the moment. This would be the impetus that sends you into autism.""

http://autism.about.com/od/causesofautism/p/recentresearch.htm

The high lighting is mine I believe that these kids are susceptible to Asperger's Syndrome but something else causes it.

"Children born to fathers of advancing age are at significantly higher risk of developing autism compared with children born to younger fathers, according a comprehensive study published yesterday that offers surprising new insight into one of the most feared disorders of the brain.

The finding comes at a time of great controversy over autism in the United States, as a recent surge in diagnoses has fueled speculations about various possible causes of the disorder. For scientists, both the origins of and potential treatments for the disorder remain a mystery.

With every decade of advancing age starting with men in their teens and twenties, the new study found, older fathers pose a growing risk to their children when it comes to autism -- unhappy evidence that the medical risks associated with late parenthood are not just the province of older mothers, as much previous research has suggested."

http://www.wrongplanet.net/article344.html

Hmmmm, my husband was only 32 when Buck was born and 34 when Turtle was born. I didn't know that he was advanced in age.

I was talking to another Mom and we decided that no matter what "someone's" going to decide it's all the Mom's fault just like everything else, If it's not the way we're raising them, then it's something we fed them, something we gave them, something we exposed them to. it's our fault because we gave them bad genes. We were being sarcastic about it all but we've heard it all too. Truthfully it's just a bunch of B.S. and what's funny is so many of the Dads of these kids believe it and leave the Moms with the handicapped kids and so many of them don't even pay the minimum child support ordered by the court. Hey, it's not thier fault the kid/s are handicapped, why should they raise them, or help pay for raising them.

"Using functional magnetic resonance imaging technology (fMRI) the Florey scientists have shown that children with autism have less activation in the deep parts of the brain responsible for executive function (attention, reasoning and problem solving).

Research leader Dr Ross Cunnington said autism was known to have a biological cause, but this neuroimaging research clearly showed the dysfunction in the brain that accounted for why children with autism have problems with their executive function.

“Discovering why children with autism have impaired executive function may help develop better therapies to improve their ability to pay attention and solve problems,” Dr Cunnington said."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/10/05102

Ten able adults with autism or Asperger syndrome and 10 normal volunteers were PET scanned while watching animated sequences. The animations depicted two triangles moving about on a screen in three different conditions: moving randomly, moving in a goal‐directed fashion (chasing, fighting), and moving interactively with implied intentions (coaxing, tricking). The last condition frequently elicited descriptions in terms of mental states that viewers attributed to the triangles (mentalizing). The autism group gave fewer and less accurate descriptions of these latter animations, but equally accurate descriptions of the other animations compared with controls. While viewing animations that elicited mentalizing, in contrast to randomly moving shapes, the normal group showed increased activation in a previously identified mentalizing network (medial prefrontal cortex, superior temporal sulcus at the temporo‐parietal junction and temporal poles). The autism group showed less activation than the normal group in all these regions. However, one additional region, extrastriate cortex, which was highly active when watching animations that elicited mentalizing, showed the same amount of increased activation in both groups. In the autism group this extrastriate region showed reduced functional connectivity with the superior temporal sulcus at the temporo‐parietal junction, an area associated with the processing of biological motion as well as with mentalizing. This finding suggests a physiological cause for the mentalizing dysfunction in autism: a bottleneck in the interaction between higher order and lower order perceptual processes. http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/125/8/1839.full

"A study published in the August issue of the journal Brain demonstrates, for the first time, an association between increased white matter volume and functional impairment in children with autism. Findings from researchers at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, Md. reveal that in children with autism, increased white matter volume in the motor region of the brain predicts poorer motor skills. Conversely, in typically developing children, increased white matter volume predicts improved motor skills, with a similar association observed in children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The relationship between increased white matter volume and functional impairment, which appears to be specific to autism, may be representative of global patterns of brain abnormality in autism that not only contribute to motor dysfunction, but also to deficits in socialization and communication that define the disorder."

http://www.kennedykrieger.org/kki_news.jsp?pid=656

As of 2002, only a few structural abnormalities of the brain have been linked to AS. Findings include abnormally large folds in the brain tissue in the left frontal region, abnormally small folds in the operculum (a lid-like structure composed of portions of three adjoining brain lobes), and damage to the left temporal lobe (a part of the brain containing a sensory area associated with hearing). The first single photon emission tomography (SPECT) study of an AS patient found a lower-than-normal supply of blood to the left parietal area of the brain, an area associated with bodily sensations. Brain imaging studies on a larger sample of AS patients is the next stage of research.

Read more: Asperger's disorder - children, causes, DSM, functioning, therapy, adults, person, people, used, medication, brain, personality, skills, health, traits, Definition, Description http://www.minddisorders.com/A-Br/Asperger-s-disorder.html#ixzz0v8kLCFIq

"Once again, autism researchers are focusing their studies on a portion of the brain called the amygdala. The amydala is the portion of the brain that helps people focus on faces and emotions, and supports "joint attention" (that is, the ability to attend to something with another person). According to an article in CNN:

Using MRI brain scans, researchers found that the area of the brain called the amygdala was, on average, 13 percent larger in young children with autism, compared with control group of children without autism. In the study, published in the latest Archives of General Psychiatry, researchers scanned 50 toddlers with autism and 33 children without autism at age 2 and again at age 4. The study adjusted for age, sex and IQ.

"We believe that children with autism have normal-sized brains at birth but at some point, in the latter part of the first year of life, it [the amygdala] begins to grow in kids with autism. And this study gives us insight inside the underlying brain mechanism so we can design more rational interventions," said lead study author Dr. Joseph Piven."

http://autism.about.com/b/2009/05/06/enlarged-amygdala-associated-with-autism.htm

'The new research shows that brain activation in adults with autism remains elevated long after similar brain regions of typically developed adults have stopped being activated when exposed to a series of pictures of human faces. A decrease in activation over time to the same type of information is called neural habituation and is connected with learning, according to Natalia Kleinhans, lead author of the new study and a UW research assistant professor of radiology.

“What we are seeing is hyperexcitability or overarousal of the amygdala, which suggests that neurons in the amygdala are firing more than expected,” said Kleinhans, who is associated with the UW Autism Center.''

http://autism.about.com/b/2009/03/20/new-research-autism-and-the-brain.htm

Occasionally, there can be debilitating problems associated with hyperactivity of the amygdala. Being the storehouse for the memory of fear, it can misinterpret signals from the body and cause inappropriate actions. This can lead to panic. Panic is a heightened stage of anxiety and fear feeding itself in a positive feedback loop and jumping to faulty conclusions, which focus on impending danger, madness, harm, or death. Physically, the body undergoes many changes that ready it for extreme action. There is a marked secretion of glucocorticoids and catecholamines which increases the blood glucose levels. Also, increase production of epinephrine and norepinephrine, which has the effect of vasodilation of blood vessels in skeletal muscles. Other symptoms of the sympatho-adrenergic stimulation involve modifications of breathing, increased temperature, localized sweating, decreased motility of the stomach, bowels, and intestines, constrictions of sphincters in the stomach and intestines, as well as piloerection (20). But the question of what generates panic attacks still remains essentially unanswered at the moment. There are many theories accorded to panic, the most prominent are:

Clark's theory on catastrophic interpretations (1988) sees panic attacks as a result of maladaptive and faulty interpretation of body signals. Beck's theory proposes a similar model, but based on predisposing and precipitating factors. Elhers' theory explains panic attacks as a result of panicogenic interoception. Barlow's theory proposes that panic attacks are modified "fight or flight" mechanisms in the absence of danger (20).

The limbic system, especially the amygdala, has long been considered to be directly implicated in anxiety and fear stages. The amygdala and its central nucleus thus communicate with many brain regions, including those that control breathing, motor function, autonomic response, release of hormones, as well as processing of interoceptive and external information (20). Therefore, the claim that the limbic system, with the amygdala and its central nucleus are implicated in panic attacks makes a biologically plausible hypothesis. http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1749

"Researchers Discover Differences in Autistic Brain Activity

Friday May 12, 2006 According to an article in Nature Magazine, autistic people may not daydream as much as the rest of us. A study conducted by Daniel Kennedy of the University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, and his colleagues studied 15 adults with some form of autism and 14 healthy controls. They used scanning technology to image the part of the brain which controls daydreaming and certain emotional responses. Ordinarily, this part of the brain becomes most active when the person is relaxed. But among autistic subjects, "Their daydreaming network seemed permanently dampened; it did not show increased activity during rest and was not roused by emotional words." This difference, researchers suggest, may explain why it is so difficult for autistic people to have a mental picture of themselves in relationship to the world -- and may also explain differences in emotional response."

http://autism.about.com/b/2006/05/12/researchers-discover-differences-in-autistic-brain-activity.htm

This must be why our kids with Asperger's Syndrome are so literal in thier thinking.

"Over the past few years, a number of studies have been published linking differences in brain structure and function to autism spectrum disorders. For example… scientists have noted that:

• At a certain point in post-natal development, autistic brains are larger.
• Testosterone may be linked to autism.
• Certain portions of the brain, such as the amygdala, may be enlarged in autistic brains.
• Certain parts of the brain may function differently in autistic people.
• "Minicolumns" in the brain may be formed differently and be more numerous in autistic brains.
• The entire brain may function differently in autistic people."

...

"What all of these brain findings have in common, Dr. Minshew explains, is that they point to autism as a disorder of the cortex. The cortex is the proverbial "gray matter": the part of the brain which is largely responsible for higher brain functions, including sensation, voluntary muscle movement, thought, reasoning, and memory.

In many autistic people, the brain develops too quickly beginning at about 12 months. By age ten, their brains are at a normal size, but "wired" atypically. "The brain is most complex thing on the planet," says Dr. Minshew. "So its wiring has to be very complex and intricate. With autism there's accelerated growth at the wrong time, and that creates havoc. The consequences, in terms of disturbing early development, include problems within the cortex and from the cortex to other regions of the cortex in ways that compromise language and reasoning abilities.""

http://autism.about.com/od/causesofautism/a/AutismBrain.htm

Sleep latency and wake after sleep onset were increased in AS. Absolute power spectrum density (PSD) was significantly reduced in AS in the alpha, sigma, beta and gamma bands and in all 10 EEG derivations. Relative PSD showed a significant increase in delta and a decrease in the sigma band for frontal, and in beta for centro-temporal derivations. Intrahemispheric coherence measures were markedly lower in AS in the frontal areas, and the right hemisphere over all EEG channels. The most prominent reduction in intrahemispheric coherence was observed over the fronto-central areas in delta, theta, alpha and sigma EEG frequency bands.

CONCLUSION: EEG power spectra and coherence during NREM sleep, in particular in fronto-cortical derivations are different in AS compared to typically developing children and adolescents.

SIGNIFICANCE: Quantitative analysis of the EEG during NREM sleep supports the hypothesis of frontal dysfunction in AS. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20434395

"About 25% of autistic people have digestive issues; 25% have seizure disorders; many have sleep problems. Recent findings suggest that the many different symptoms may actually indicate many different causes -- and thus many different "autisms." A massive study now underway at UC Davis's M.I.N.D. Institute is in the process of separating out different autistic phenotypes with the hope that this information will speed better understanding of causes and treatments."

http://autism.about.com/od/causesofautism/p/recentresearch.htm

Kevin Lafferty is a smart, cautious, thoughtful scientist who doesn't hate cats, but he has put forth a provocative theory that suggests that a clever cat parasite may alter human cultures on a massive scale.

...

The parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, has been transmitted indirectly from cats to roughly half the people on the planet, and it has been shown to affect human personalities in different ways.

Research has shown that women who are infected with the parasite tend to be warm, outgoing and attentive to others, while infected men tend to be less intelligent and probably a bit boring. But both men and women who are infected are more prone to feeling guilty and insecure.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/DyeHard/story?id=2288095

With everything I've read it seems that all living beings on earth live, breathe, eat, and drink from a massive chemical soup. A soup caused not only by design (in our food stuffs) but also in the poluted air we breathe, and water we drink.

AS is a lifelong but stable condition. The prognosis for children with AS is generally good as far as intellectual development is concerned, although few school districts as of 2002 are equipped to meet the special social needs of this group of children. Adults with AS appear to be at greater risk of depression than the general population. In addition, some researchers believe that people with AS have an increased risk of a psychotic episode (a period of time during which the affected person loses touch with reality) in adolescence or adult life.

Read more: Asperger's disorder - children, causes, DSM, functioning, therapy, adults, person, people, used, medication, brain, personality, skills, health, traits, Definition, Description http://www.minddisorders.com/A-Br/Asperger-s-disorder.html#ixzz0v8koFpza

There is hope though;

First Drug to Demonstrate Therapeutic Effect in a Type of Autism

ScienceDaily (May 21, 2010) — Researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine have identified a drug that improves communication between nerve cells in a mouse model of Phelan-McDermid Syndrome (PMS). Behavioral symptoms of PMS fall under the autism spectrum disorder category. The research will be presented May 21 at the International Meeting for Autism Research (IMFAR) in Philadelphia. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100520131547.htm