what kind of autism research would you do?

Brain scans revealing the wires in a NT and AT brain. Then again brain scans of both people under many different doses of LSD or similar. To see how the wires move and if we can find a place where we can almost have the same wiring. Just for a little while. And I mean both NT ans AT take LSD. 

I find brain scans interesting but wonder whether what they'd be seeing would be cause or effect (e.g. the effects on the brain of long term meditation or lifestyle choices rather than original wiring).  Also how the process of being scanned might affect the results.  Plus how fleeting but possibly intense emotions might impinge.  e.g. if my brain were scanned at a stressful time in my life or, say, after an argument, it might look very different.  But I'd presumably still be autistic.

Is there anything that shows the structure of an autistic brain to be different?  I remember seeing Temple Grandin's scans in one of her books and she highlighted the differences.  But i think she went on to say that for most there is no visible difference.  Perhaps the scanning techniques aren't yet sophisticated enough or perhaps there generally isn't a difference.  

i also wonder whether any differences would be highlighted depending upon differences within the autism spectrum.  Sort of my autism differs from your autism so how does that show?  And what might it mean?  Might it mean that there are actually a host of different unnamed diagnoses all currently hiding under the umbrella term "ASD"?  Or that the ASD label itself is under question?

I did actually have a brain scan a number of years ago to check for aneurysms.  I wonder whether I could go back and ask for a copy to check for differences.  The wires that were firing then might just have depended upon the factors on the day, but maybe I have extra large amygdalae.  I've often thought about that.         

I find brain scans interesting but wonder whether what they'd be seeing would be cause or effect (e.g. the effects on the brain of long term meditation or lifestyle choices rather than original wiring).  Also how the process of being scanned might affect the results.  Plus how fleeting but possibly intense emotions might impinge.  e.g. if my brain were scanned at a stressful time in my life or, say, after an argument, it might look very different.  But I'd presumably still be autistic.

Is there anything that shows the structure of an autistic brain to be different?  I remember seeing Temple Grandin's scans in one of her books and she highlighted the differences.  But i think she went on to say that for most there is no visible difference.  Perhaps the scanning techniques aren't yet sophisticated enough or perhaps there generally isn't a difference.  

i also wonder whether any differences would be highlighted depending upon differences within the autism spectrum.  Sort of my autism differs from your autism so how does that show?  And what might it mean?  Might it mean that there are actually a host of different unnamed diagnoses all currently hiding under the umbrella term "ASD"?  Or that the ASD label itself is under question?

I did actually have a brain scan a number of years ago to check for aneurysms.  I wonder whether I could go back and ask for a copy to check for differences.  The wires that were firing then might just have depended upon the factors on the day, but maybe I have extra large amygdalae.  I've often thought about that.         

Very probably.  I think the groupings within the DSM are arbitrary as they stand so it'll be interesting to see how it looks in its next iterations. 

I think it might be useful to have well-defined different subtypes, like previously when there was Aspergers, autistic disorder, PDD-NOS etc. It could be easier to target support for each subtype. But I think it'll also depend on how autism is. If it's a polygene of multiple gene inheritance trait, then it might not be easily classified into subtypes, since if 200 genes determine the severity of autistic traits, then one would need 2^200 subtypes. It might be possible to reduce it by some clustering method, but it'll then be arbitrary how many groups to chose. 

If you want an MRI picture of your brain, it's possible to get one from participating in research experiments! Usually it's a structural T1 image, and you might be able to look at your amygdalae if they give you an array of coronal slices. It's also possible in some places to ask for the 3D image in a computer file.

Why do you think your amygdalae would be larger than average? Are you easily anxious/depressed? 

Yes, i suspect it will turn out that there are lots of subtypes (or would those nice people at the DSM decide to rearrange the diagnoses altogether?) and that any genes involved will operate in clusters and/or with modifier genes such that it's really difficult to track.  i do find it really interesting though.   

Ah yes, I remember now, it was an MRA scan.  So i'd need a different scan entirely to look at brain differences.  I'd still be betting my amygdalae would be larger than average.  Whether they were like that at birth would be another matter but my feeling is that I was differently calibrated from the start and then things became compounded over the years.  . 

I think there is evidence of different wiring, but not as simple and obvious. I understand they presented a new research few days ago on INSAR (international society for autism research)  where they scanned huge number of brains of genetically modified autistic mice (I know, nonsense)  in order to trace the wiring to specific genes. It is unpublished and I didn't see it but feedback on twitter was in the sense that they catalogged more genes and more autism types than they can make sense of.

Jenny Butterfly said:

I find brain scans interesting but wonder whether what they'd be seeing would be cause or effect (e.g. the effects on the brain of long term meditation or lifestyle choices rather than original wiring).  Also how the process of being scanned might affect the results.  Plus how fleeting but possibly intense emotions might impinge.  e.g. if my brain were scanned at a stressful time in my life or, say, after an argument, it might look very different.  But I'd presumably still be autistic.

The effects on brain wiring (functional connectivity or DTI) can be affected by both nature causes (e.g., like having ASD) as well as secondary causes, such as practicing on certain tasks, meditation, lifestyle, emotions, etc... There have been many papers published on these various topics.

Jenny Butterfly said:

Is there anything that shows the structure of an autistic brain to be different?  I remember seeing Temple Grandin's scans in one of her books and she highlighted the differences.  But i think she went on to say that for most there is no visible difference.  Perhaps the scanning techniques aren't yet sophisticated enough or perhaps there generally isn't a difference.  

I think for her comment about no visible difference is because (1) we are more similar than different overall, all brains have the general shape of a brain including the frontal, temporal, parietal, occipital lobes, (2) there is a lot of structural variability in each person's brain (there's lots of visible variability across NTs), so you'll need a massive difference for it to be considered an outlier, and (3) visible difference does not equal statistical difference, if you compare an AS group vs. a control group, you will get statistical difference, but not necessary viable difference to the human eye.

Jenny Butterfly said:

i also wonder whether any differences would be highlighted depending upon differences within the autism spectrum.  Sort of my autism differs from your autism so how does that show?  And what might it mean?  Might it mean that there are actually a host of different unnamed diagnoses all currently hiding under the umbrella term "ASD"?  Or that the ASD label itself is under question?

You could definitely look for brain regions that correlate with a targeted autistic trait - that's one way to approach it. And you can do the analysis for as many traits you want to look at.

You can also divide ASD into subgroups, and maybe train a classifier using brain data to classify the subgroups, and see which regions/connections give highest classier weights.

Jenny Butterfly said:

I did actually have a brain scan a number of years ago to check for aneurysms.  I wonder whether I could go back and ask for a copy to check for differences.  The wires that were firing then might just have depended upon the factors on the day, but maybe I have extra large amygdalae.  I've often thought about that.   

I think the brain scan Temple Grandin showed in her TED talk was a DTI scan. And I didn't think it was very scientific to compare one brain with another brain visually. One would need a large sample of brains to know how much brains vary in general, and whether the variance of her brain from the mean population variance is at the top 5%.

You would have done an angiography scan for aneurysms, which images blood vessels and you wouldn't get much of the brain from the scan. You probably had it accompanied with a CT or MRI scan, which does image the brain, but will not show you any "wires" like DTI. If you had an MRI, it would either be a T1 or T2 scan. And from these, you should be able to see the amygdalae quite clearly.