Researchers Discover Molecular Difference in Autistic Brains

I think that's all an aside, though, if not the ICD (as suggested by another poster) or the DSM definition initially used, which definition is correct?

OP, I think, is clearly harkening back to a previous post on HN (article at: https://www.psychiatrymargins.com/p/autisms-confusing-cousin...) by a professional discussing that the public often misunderstands and ignores key aspects of the definition. This seems rather a bit like you pointing out laypeople might read and not understand what they got out of the POSIX.1-2024 spec.

So the definition is perfectly correct, assuming you know what "clinical stages" there are.

> Are you a trained psychologist?

seems a bit confrontational, unless you yourself are a trained psychologist, in which case it would seem fitting to volunteer those credentials along with this challenge.

To get an Asperger's diagnosis under the DSM-IV you needed deficits, too. "Disorder" is in the title of the thing, if something isn't conceptualized as a disorder it isn't in there.

https://www.kennedykrieger.org/stories/interactive-autism-ne...

Adults have been socialised to mask the more problematic behaviours, and they can also be unaware that what they're doing is masking: they can believe that everyone struggles like that.

That can certainly be a syndrome, but the official DSM definition of autism is not based on those criteria.

Clinical autism tends to be much harsher in its presentation.

BAP, I think, comes from heritability studies of people who are related to diagnosed people but do not themselves qualify as autistic, ie they are more likely to have traits associated with ASD despite not being diagnosable.

After digging into it, the hypothesis holds. Most autistic people win this lottery you speak of.

Roughly 25–35% of diagnosed autistic people require substantial, ongoing support (e.g., daily assistance, supervised living, or full-time caregiving).

About 30–40% have co-occurring intellectual disability, which strongly correlates with higher support needs.

Roughly 60–75% do not have intellectual disability. Many in this group: Live independently or semi-independently. Work (often underemployed). Mask heavily and are diagnosed late—or never diagnosed.

I have definite feelings about this exchange on autism, which are being hashed out reasonably without my input. But the Ozempic reference is super interesting. I hope some smart person looks into that particular "correction" vs. "coping" dichotomy at some point in the future.

For example, humans clearly have a window for learning their native language. It just happens, and it's nearly magical. But humans can learn non-native languages after that window slams shut. We vary in our ability to do that, but if it matters, most can pick up useful conversational and reading skills.

I agree it's a matter of research. I think we've barely begun to scratch the surface of what's possible.

I believe it is both. You can go against your brain's coding with some extra work; somewhat like an adapter, I suppose. Your brain just still is coded a certain way natively.

> or example, what you're describing is basically typical of how Keirsey describes concrete versus abstract reasoning in Please Understand Me. And it could be kind of alienating to be the one abstract reasoner in a group of concrete reasoners and if you believe his statistics it's kind of likely that you'll find yourself in that situation a lot because you gravitate toward the abstract rather than the concrete/operational aspects of a concept.

This is very interesting. I've never heard of concrete/abstract reasoners before, but that does sound similar to what I've described. Thank you for the book.

> much of the technical writing I encounter is written for people who need a lot of examples but don't follow abstract concepts.

Yes! I love using examples to illustrate applications of an abstract concept, but I always explain the concept first. When the concept isn't explained first, I am sad. :(

> So I've internalized building up the abstract concept from the concrete examples.

I believe you may be better at it than I :)

People do often use the terms interchangeably, but that's not how I use it. I use Asperger's to refer to a specific place on the autism spectrum; I don't think there's a better term I can use right now. That place is as opposed to the three other phenotypes. I don't claim to know for absolute certain that the four phenotypes are correct, but I do believe strongly in the idea, because my lived experience appears to match with it closely. It has helped me understand others better, for sure. (Or at least to believe that I do)

I say I don't have Asperger's because I seem to function differently than others who do have it. When I encounter it, I find it interesting, because it's clearly different than how I function and that makes me curious. That makes me think I don't have it, because if I did, then surely I would be able to study myself to learn more about it, yet so far I can only speculate about how my experience must be different.

> Reading from what you have written - that is part of my experience, though I don't think that it has anything to do with being Aspergers or even being on a spectrum, but being alone a lot and educating myself a lot - that basically is what "smart people" in general are doing - including NT. Yes, there are a lot of people that do not actively learn, but that can apply to Aspergers as well as NT. That is not the reason for differences.

Of course neurotypical and neurodivergent people alike can educate themselves and learn. The difference is in how they learn, and what type of learning is most effective for them. Even among autistics, the most effective or natural style of learning can greatly differ. This is also why many schools have entirely different classes for autistic people, because the style of learning that works best for neurotypicals may not be as effective for an autistic person.

What I think has to do with Asperger's is in the type of knowledge that is most useful to you, and the style of learning that is most useful to you. I don't actually know this for sure, but I believe that for any given concept, you would probably use different aspects than I would to understand it. That means if I told you everything that I believe is most essential to my own understanding of something you don't understand yet, you still might not get it, because you might have different requirements to understand that thing, and you might find different things most essential to that understanding.

Of course, in some ways this is true for everyone, for example if my most essential pieces of knowledge relate to or build upon other of my knowledge that you also do not have. But in other ways this is only true across different neurotypes, such as Asperger's and neurotypical, or Asperger's and another type of autism, because generally each phenotype appears to share a largely similar type of logical structure. For Asperger's it appears to be those nested tokens, for myself it seems to be a linear stream of thought or reasoning, for some of my friends it appears to be based on context and metadata, and for others of my friends it appears to be based on emotions and lore (sort of hard to explain). That makes four, and every single autistic person I know or encounter seems to fit into one of those boxes. Sometimes it takes longer to tell for sure, but I believe that I eventually always can.

> Just to save space and not to create another comment - "four phenotypes" are not new attempt to classify. To me it looks like rewording - before there was already quite clear distinction between Aspergers and Aspergers&ADHD combination - both of them are part of "high functioning autism", and they behave wildly differently(people with Aspergers&ADHD part might not be recognized as "weird" but even as NT - by other people). They were all part of spectrum anyway. And from reading the paper it seems, that they have made 2 other types for what was "low functioning" autism. Apparently putting them all in ASD was not helping for bureaucracy - especially when it comes down to finances - it is quite important in Trumps USA and might be also for other countries.

It's entirely possible that Asperger's without ADHD is, well, Asperger's, while Asperger's with ADHD is actually not Asperger's, and is rather another autism phenotype instead. To be honest, I've never heard of Asperger's + ADHD, while I've heard of ADHD for all three of the other types, so maybe that's the difference you are observing. I can't know for sure though.

I believe low-functioning autistics may happen to have brain defects or severe trauma or something else that disables them. I don't believe they are fundamentally different from other autistics in terms of the phenotype. I believe that a lot of the time, whether someone is called low-functioning is based primarily on how well they are able to function and how much support they need, and not really specific indicators that would indicate phenotype. Similar to how the criteria for ASD can diagnose autism, but not specifically Asperger's or specifically my type. I know that all four of the phenotypes certainly can be high-functioning, so that leads me to believe that low-functioning may be on top of that, and not a separate category altogether.

I don't think Trump has anything to do with this -- in fact he has been trying to shut down government benefits for autism (and for other things he views as a disability), so it's hard for me to believe that he cares about better classifying them when he seems to want them dead.