Permission to be Different please?
l I don’t do Normal…..
l My Display Needs some adjustment I am John.
l Reminiscence Therapy.
l Click the button – you don’t want to look at that for too long!! Permission to be Different please? l My Vertical Hold Has Gone. & my picture keeps
l Sliding.
l Do….. Lets start at the very Beginning
A Very Good Place to start.
l Taking off the mask. Images courtesy of Alamy. EET X5J alamy.com
Just a minute..
l Introduction first.
l This Is Me. Thor’s Stone… on Thurstaston Common. There’s a Gooseberry Bush around here somewhere.. Red Bricks. Whallopp!!
l I’ve lost It!!!!!!! l That’s a B=------Pain….. (Frustration..) Giving a performance.. Excuse me Sir! SHUTDOWN. 15 years later Camouflage and Hi-vis Autist's and my fellow animals
l The 2014 study, published in the Journal of Paediatric Nursing, surveyed a number of families with an autistic child about the child’s interaction with dogs. 67% of the families owned a dog, and of those a comprehensive 94% reported that their children were bonded to the dogs. Even in the families that didn’t own a dog, seven out of ten parents said their child enjoyed interacting with the animals. So clearly, dogs are of great benefit to autism sufferers. This correlates with previous research that indicates that interactions with a pet contribute positively to an autistic child’s social progress. An autistic person's feelings are direct and open, just like animal feelings. We don't hide our feelings, and we aren't ambivalent. If I had Known?
l 80% of us don’t Work….. l Only 9% of Autist's are married. l For every Nine Boys in America diagnosed with H.F. Autism – there is one girl. l Autist’s don’t drive or restrict their driving.. - my dad. l Autistic people are 9 times more likely to die by attempted suicide…. We make a good job of it…. We mean it!!!! Its In the brain... The Sciency Bit.
l Two Things from science that really made a difference to my understanding of Autism.
l White Matter…… & Grey Matter. How the balance of our brain changes and what this means. l The reward centre and how we are ‘wired’ differently.
White Matter – Grey Matter. a decrease in size (Lo et al. 2011) and decreases in the number of connections in corpus callosal pathways (Lo
et al. 2011; Aoki et al. 2013). The Reward Centre.
l Evidence for Differences in the Reward System of Autistic people is accumulating. l Fewer nerve tracts between two parts of the reward circuit: the ventral tegmental area and the nucleus accumbens. l pockets of increased brain activation in autistic people. l These regions include the right insula and putamen in response to social rewards, and the left insula and left caudate nucleus in response to non-social ones. l Clements C.C. et al. JAMA Psychiatry (2018) The Reward Centre.
l A poorly functioning reward system l The problem is not limited to social motivation, l In typical children, reward regions respond similarly. l interests may crowd out more typically rewarding things such as social interaction. l Motivational Impairments. l A promising approach for treating autism, David Sulzer, PhD
Department of Psychiatry Division of Molecular Therapeutics Department of Neurology Division of Movement Disorders
Academic Appointments
Professor of Neurobiology (in Psychiatry, Neurology and Pharmacology) at CUMC Reward’sssss l the reward circuit goes into overdrive in people with autism in response to pictures of their interests. l “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” l ― Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being And what do Nails Make? Strange enough though.
l – “nearly everyone would rather be In The Coffin than giving the eulogy.”. I says, "Pig Pen, this here's the Rubber Duck" "And I'm about to put the hammer down" The Reward Centre.
l A poorly functioning reward system l The problem is not limited to social motivation, “it’s worse than that he’s dead Jim!” l In typical children, reward regions respond similarly. l interests may crowd out more typically rewarding things such as social interaction. l Motivational Impairments. l A promising approach for treating autism, Cardassian Whispers So you cant possibly work in - The persuasion and pressure
l Because it is good for you. l Because everybody else does. l Because that is what everybody wants. l But you cant be alone. l It’s not right!! But there MUST be something you like about school!! Attention Seeking!
l No ! ! ! l Its too late…… l You were too busy trying to tell me – instead of listening l Like a pressure cooker I am Going Off!! l And I am the one who is wrong!! It is so frustrating…… Meltdown l Kaleidoscope Announcement press release l l There is joy and struggle in being autistic coming from the way sensory information is processed. We do not filter sensory input in the way non-autistic people do. We can experience the wonder of sensorial bliss but it also means we can experience the torment of sensory overload. Neuro-inflammation, blood-brain barrier, seizures and autism l About 22-30% of children with ASD also develop seizures with no specific underlying pathology, and no obvious or classic EEG changes [1, 4–7]. These rates of seizures in ASD are about ten times higher than that in the general population [8]. This high rate is not found in other neurologic diseases such as schizophrenia [9]. Alterations in architecture of cortical neurons were recently reported in autism [10] and may contribute to seizures. l Generalized tonic-clonic seizures affect both halves of the brain and include both stiffening of muscles (tonic activity) and twitching or jerking (clonic activity). They may also be called generalized onset motor seizures. l However, people with autism are more likely to experience generalized tonic-clonic seizures (Bolton P.F. et al., 2011). Bibliography.
l Tang, G., Gudsnjk K., Kuo S-H, Cotrina M, Rosokliga G., Songers M, Kanter E., Barnard C, Yamamoto A, Yue Z, Champagne F, Dwork, A. J., Goldman J., Sulzer, D. (2014) Dendritic spine pruning defects in autism mediated by neuronal loss of macroautophagy. Neuron, 83:1-13.
l Daniela Hernandez, Ciara A. Torres, Wanda Setlik, Carolina Cebrián, Eugene V. Mosharov, Guomei Tang, Hsiao-Chun Cheng, Nikolai Kholodilov, Olga Yarygina, Robert E. Burke, Michael Gershon, David Sulzer (2012). Regulation of presynaptic neurotransmission by macroautophagy. Neuron, 74:277-284.
l https://www.neurosciencephd.columbia.edu/profil e/dsulzer l Tang G. et al. Neuron Epub ahead of print(2014) l https://mooshme.com/autism-and-emotional- support-animals/ l Neuro-inflammation, blood-brain barrier, seizures and autism l https://jneuroinflammation.biomedcentral.com/a rticles/10.1186/1742-2094-8-168#citeas l Theoharis C Theoharides & Bodi Zhang l Journal of Neuroinflammation volume 8, Article number: 168 (2011)