Autism and Asperger's disorders

Autism & Asperger's disorders

Autism and Asperger's Syndrome: An Overview

Despite the fact that autism is being diagnosed with increased frequency across America and the world, the condition remains in many ways a mysterious disorder, little-understood both by scientists and the general populace. The most common image of an autistic individual in the cultural imagination remains the famous portrayal of Dustin Hoffman in "Rain Man." However, autistic individuals run the gamut between mildly affected individuals, such as people who may suffer from Asperger's Syndrome, to autistic individuals without any special "Rain Man" like gifts who also have delayed intellectual development. Autism manifests itself on a spectrum, from high to low functioning autism and many variations in between.

Regardless of the level of severity, autistic symptoms usually manifest themselves very early in the child's life. The first symptoms noticed by parents are usually the impaired social interaction that characterizes the disorder, such as a refusal to make eye contact or communication problems. "As early as infancy, a baby with autism may be unresponsive to people or focus intently on one item to the exclusion of others for long periods of time. A child with autism may appear to develop normally and then withdraw and become indifferent to social engagement" ("Autism," 2008, NINDS). This lack of responsiveness, as the child ages, includes a marked disinterestedness in others, the inability to obey social cues, and to respond to his or her name. Some children may he highly sensitive to sound, touch, or other sensory stimulation and engage in repetitive movements, such as rocking and twirling, or even biting or head-banging. If autistic children do speak, they often do so later than other children, or resume speaking only quite later, after therapeutic intervention. This is also true of children who appear to lose their language skills after the onset of symptoms around age two. Autistic children may refer to themselves by name, rather than say 'I' or 'me.' However, children with Asperger's Syndrome may have quite well-developed language skills ("Autism," 2008, NINDS).

The cause of autism is still debated. Researchers have identified a number of genes associated with the disorder. One disorder on the autism spectrum, Rett Syndrome, is a rare autism-like disorder that affects mostly girls around 6 and 18 months, and is clearly due to a mutation in the sequence of a single gene. There is also Fragile X syndrome, which affects mostly males, where one part of the X chromosome is defective, appearing pinched and fragile under a microscope. Finally, tuberous sclerosis is a rare genetic disorder that causes benign tumors to grow in the brain as well as in other vital organs that creates autistic-like symptoms. But these clearly genetically inspired causes only account for a small percentage of the autistic population ("Autism spectrum disorders," 2008, NIMH)

Studies of people with autism have found irregularities in several regions of the brain. People with autism may have abnormal levels of serotonin or other neurotransmitters in the brain. Studies of children with Asperger Syndrome show less brain activity in the frontal lobe when asked to respond to tasks that required them to use their judgment and differences in brain activity when children were asked to respond to facial expressions. "A different study investigating brain function in adults with as revealed abnormal levels of specific proteins that correlate with obsessive and repetitive behaviors"

Autism spectrum disorders," 2008, NIMH) That there is a likely genetic component of the disorder is reinforced by the fact that family members often have behavioral symptoms similar to Asperger's Syndrome and autism, such as antisocial behavior, obsessions, or clumsiness, but in less severe form than individuals with the full-fledged symptoms of Asperger's or autism ("Asperger's Syndrome fact sheet," 2008, NINDS).

One of the most recently classified versions of autism, Asperger's Syndrome, provides interesting insight on the condition of autism-spectrum disorders. This form of autistic disorder gets its unusual name from the Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger who observed in 1944 that four of his young patients had "difficulty integrating socially. Although their intelligence appeared normal, the children lacked nonverbal communication skills, failed to demonstrate empathy with their peers, and were physically clumsy. Their way of speaking was either disjointed or overly formal, and their all-absorbing interest in a single topic dominated their conversations" ("Asperger's Syndrome fact sheet," 2008, NINDS). While Dr. Asperger called the condition "autistic psychopathy" and described it as a personality disorder primarily marked by social isolation, today Asperger's Syndrome is identified as a brain, communication, or neurological disorder like autism, not a personality disorder like, for example, antisocial personality disorder ("Asperger's Syndrome fact sheet," 2008, NINDS).

Like autism, Asperger's Syndrome is characterized by repetitive routines, rituals, and movements, poor social skills, and odd ways of communicating that do not take into consideration the other person's feelings and needs. The distinguishing feature of Asperger's, in contrast to classical autism, is that the individuals all have normal IQ but show "limited interests or an unusual preoccupation with a particular subject to the exclusion of other activities" ("Asperger's Syndrome fact sheet," 2008, NINDS). Unlike autistic individuals who show little interest in others, Asperger children may seek out companionship, but may drive other people away because of their refusal to talk about anything other than their one interest, and their refusal to alter the topic in the face of the boredom of others. "Some children with as have become experts on vacuum cleaners, makes and models of cars, even objects as odd as deep fat fryers" ("Asperger's Syndrome fact sheet," 2008, NINDS). Sometimes, "their expertise, high level of vocabulary, and formal speech patterns make them seem like little professors...but the conversation may seem like a random collection of facts or statistics, with no point or conclusion" ("Asperger's Syndrome fact sheet," 2008, NINDS). They are also often clumsy and have difficulty with physical movements that come naturally to other children, which further complicates their social interactions.

Asperger Syndrome has been difficult to gather data about because some doctors believe that as is not a separate and distinct disorder. "Instead, they call it high-functioning autism (HFA), and view it as being on the mild end of the ASD spectrum with symptoms that differ -- only in degree -- from classic autism while others see it as a unique disorder" ("Asperger's Syndrome fact sheet," 2008, NINDS). For individuals with the disorder who have learned to compensate quite well for their social deficits, diagnosis may not come well into adulthood, making data even more difficult to gather on the disorder.