The Autistic Brain
Physical Differences Offer Clues to Recovery
One reason most integrative physicians now believe that autism is a neurological,
often neurotoxic disorder, is because the brains of people with autism have certain
typical variations from the brains of people who do not suffer from the disorder.
These physical variants currently suggest no inarguably clear avenue of treatment,
but they do appear to indicate that helping to nurture the brain to physical health
can help autistic kids to begin their journeys on the road to recovery.
Brain Difference In Autistic Children
The Fear Center
One of the common variations of the autistic brain is found in the brain’s amygdala,
a small, almond-shaped area that is part of the brain’s center of memory and
emotion, the limbic system. A primary function of the amygdala is as a storehouse
of fearful memories. The amygdala helps people to remember all of the fear-
provoking facts that they need to know in order to ensure their own survival. For
example, if you ever stepped on a snake and still remember it, it’s because your
amygdala helped you to remember it.
It’s quite healthy, from a neurological perspective, to have a big, active amygdala,
because it will help keep you safe and motivated. However, it’s bad to have one
that’s too big, and too active. Unfortunately, many autistic people do appear to
have abnormalities of size and activity in their amygdalas. This is probably a
primary reason that autistic people have elevated anxiety. It’s been shown, for
example, that over 50% of all high-functioning autistic adults have severe anxiety
and panic attacks.
The Autistic Brain:
Too Much Fear
The excessive fear that’s experienced by autistic people tends to emerge as:
- Social anxiety
- Phobias
- Generalized anxiety disorder
- Sleep disturbances
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder
- Lack of impulse control
- Anger
- Abusiveness
- Depression
- Suicidal ideation
- Substance abuse
- Paranoia
Author and animal scientist Temple Grandin, Ph.D., who is perhaps America’s
most accomplished autistic person, has noted that fear is generally the single
most prominent emotion that many autistic people experience. It can take great
courage for these people to overcome their unfortunate neural hardwiring, and to
deal effectively with situations that would not provoke anxiety in most people. As
testimony to the strength of the human spirit, however, autistic people commonly
summon this courage. Many of them do things every day that provoke a level of
fear in them that would incapacitate someone who is not accustomed to frequently
conquering fear.
The Autistic Brain:
It’s Not Just the Amygdala
Unfortunately, an overactive amygdala can also wreak havoc upon the rest of the
brain. It’s connected to the other areas of the brain primarily through the nearby
structure called the thalamus, which is also often dysfunctional in autistics.
The most important function of the thalamus is to screen out the barrage of
sensory information that constantly floods in to us from our eyes, ears, noses,
taste buds, and skin. The thalamus blocks out extraneous sensations and
allows people to focus on more important things. But autistics often suffer from
reduced size and impaired function of the thalamus. Because of this, their brains
are often bombarded with a confusing torrent of information. This torrent, along
with their general anxiety, may account for their frequent desire to fixate upon
simple, repetitive activities.
People with ADHD also often have some degree of dysfunction of the thalamus.
That’s why they, too, can have a hard time focusing. It’s too easy for them to be
distracted by what’s going on around them. For ADHD kids, just being in a
crowded classroom or a noisy shopping mall can cause confusion, anxiety, and a
diminished ability to control impulses.
Besides blocking out extraneous sensory input, the thalamus is also a primary
processing center for memory, emotion, and attention, three brain activities that
are often dysfunctional in autistics. In addition, the thalamus helps regulate motor
control, which could partly account for the tendency of kids on the autism spectrum
to be clumsy and uncoordinated. Kids with Asperger’s syndrome seem especially
prone to poor motor control.
The Autistic Brain:
The Role of Neurotransmitters
The thalamus also helps to regulate the proper levels of neurotransmitters,
particularly the calming neurotransmitter serotonin, and the pleasure
neurotransmitter dopamine, which are often skewed in autistic people. For people
to feel well and function well, serotonin and dopamine levels can’t be too high or
too low. Unfortunately, in autistics, these levels are often outside their proper
bandwidths. These disordered levels of serotonin and dopamine typically cause
heightened anxiety, distress, confusion, and aggression.
Another problem that low dopamine causes is lack of physical grace, because
dopamine helps regulate motor control. In fact, the classic disease of low
dopamine, Parkinson’s, is characterized by reduced ability to control one’s
physical movements.
Furthermore, many kids with elevated anxiety also appear to suffer from a deficit of
the contentment neurotransmitter GABA. When this occurs, it can be hard for
these children to feel normal levels of happiness and satisfaction.
Another neurotransmitter that is frequently imbalanced in autistic kids is
acetylcholine, which is the brain’s primary carrier of thought and memory. Having
low levels of acetylcholine can make thinking into a disturbingly difficult task.
When neurotransmitter abnormalities cause increased anxiety, this increased
anxiety, in turn, makes the endocrine system bathe the body in stress hormones,
such as cortisol. Excess cortisol, unfortunately, tends to harm the proper function
of the amygdala, as well as other areas of the brain. It’s been said that secreting
too much cortisol is like bathing the brain in battery acid. This excess cortisol
pushes the amygdala into an even further frenzy, creating a spiral of worry, dread,
and doubt. It also significantly harms memory.
The abnormalities in the structures and secretions that often exist in the brain of
an autistic person can derange that person’s brain all the way down to the single-
cell level. In fact, the chaotic physical forces that batter the autistic brain appear to
even cause abnormality in a special type of brain cell that may hold within it the
very heart of love. This type of brain cell is called the mirror neuron.
The Autistic Brain:
Dysfunction Of The Physical Site of Love
Mirror neurons were discovered in the late 1990s. They are a special class
of brain cells that fire when a person registers awareness of what someone else
is experiencing. These brain cells are essentially the physical sites of empathy,
sharing, and caring.
It appears, though, as if autistic people often suffer from malfunctioning systems of
mirror neurons. This makes it very difficult for them to know how others feel, and
therefore hard for them to be concerned with how others feel. This malfunction
was graphically revealed during a recent study of autistic children at U.C.L.A.,
using MRI scans. Autistic kids registered very little activity in their mirror neurons
when they observed photos of people who were making facial expressions of
anger, fear, or happiness. With diminished feedback from facial expression and
body language, autistics can be blind to love, and unaware that those around them
care.
Another difference in the brains of autistic people is the size of their brains. Kids
with autism have been noted to have larger brains than those of kids who don’t
have it. It has been theorized that perhaps autistic children actually have too many
brain cells, with too many neurological pathways connecting their neurons. Some
researchers believe that these excessive connections cause autistic children to be
overwhelmed by the amount of activity in their own minds.
So: What To Do?
The extensive degree of dysfunction in the autistic brain is daunting to the
neurological researchers who are trying to find valid treatments for autism.
Currently, there is considerable debate over which problem deserves the most
attention. Should researchers and clinicians focus on the amygdala? The
thalamus? Serotonin? Dopamine? Mirror neurons? Brain size?
It appears as if the most promising clinical approach is to resist the temptation to
focus too closely on any one area. The right amount of focus can be revealing, but
too often, in the practice of specialty medicine, it ends in myopia.
The biomedical approach is based upon the medical principle of holism, which
calls for addressing each element of the brain as an integrated, interdependent,
interrelated entity. Because every element of the brain interacts with every other
element, I believe that the key to healing the autistic brain is to offer the brain every
aspect of optimal neural metabolism that it requires, and then to step back, bow to
the wisdom of the body, and allow self-healing to take its own natural, often
miraculous course.
To some researchers and clinicians, this approach might seem almost simplistic,
because it violates the Cartesian, scientific method of breaking problems down to
their various components, and analyzing each component separately. There is, of
course, undeniable value in this compartmentalization. However....
Bottom line:
This compartmentalizing approach may satisfy the rigors of pure research
science, but it does not satisfy the current, urgent needs of autistic children and
their parents, which can be met only through the ministrations of applied science.
Valid, evidence-based, applied-science treatment options now exist, and are
being applied to a broad, growing spectrum of the pediatric patient population. As
the best, current treatment protocols on autism recovery are applied, further
research on the biophysical aspects of autism must continue. This research
leads the way to a future of full understanding. In the meantime, we must all
acknowledge – as physicians, parents, educators, therapists, and researchers --
that full understanding of theoretical issues is a great achievment, but that helping
children in the here and now is even greater.
Structural and Functional Anomalies
