Autism detectable in brain long before symptoms appear

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-38955872

by sndean • 9 years ago

181 164 9 years ago

sndean• 9 years ago

Here's a link to the paper: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v542/n7641/full/nature2... http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v542/n7641/pdf/nature21...

And the IBIS Network who drove the study:

http://www.ibis-network.org/

monocasa• 9 years ago

Thank god, maybe this'll slow down the whole "vaccines cause autism" BS.

A huge part of that was that symptoms started to show after a big vaccine dose you get around 2 years old.

Retr0spectrum6• 9 years ago

It's already been thoroughly debunked, no ammount of additional logic will sway the people who still think vaccines cause autism.

"You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into" ~ Jonathan Swift (paraphrased)

bryanrasmussen• 9 years ago

that really doesn't sound like Swift - are you sure that's an accurate quote?

rosser3• 9 years ago

The anti-vax crowd has an identity-level stake in that narrative. Facts that counter that narrative are taken merely as an attack on their selfhood at that point, just like any other identity-level investment in a belief, be it Democrat, Christian, American, or anything else.

Spellman3• 9 years ago

If their entire feed is overwhelmed, eventually people change their mind. At least 30-40% of the feed in one study. source: https://youarenotsosmart.com/2017/02/11/yanss-095-how-to-fig... paper: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2010....

Trouble is in today's world, you get to filter your data sources to things that you already believe in.

prakashrj3• 9 years ago

Check Vaccination schedule. 1st dose of MMR is given between 12 and 15 months.

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/child-adolesc...

Unless you regress into severe Autism, it's very difficult for parents or even doctors to recognize Autism until they are atleast 2 years.

Also according to the schedule, there is no big dose around 2 years. After 18 months, there are not many doses on schedule until children are again 4 years.

Most parents complain about MMR vaccination that is scheduled at 15 months. My son regressed into Autism after MMR. It is true. I hope the world realizes it before more children get effected.

iak8god2• 9 years ago

First things first: sorry about your son's autism.

My son regressed into Autism after MMR. It is true. I hope the world realizes it before more children get effected.

"The world" does not dispute that your son started showing signs of autism right after getting the MMR vaccine. Since there is no scientific causal explanation, and since study after study after study have shown that children who get the MMR vaccine do not develop autism at higher rates than those who did not get the vaccine, the best explanation is that the timing of the onset of your son's condition is a coincidence. I understand why parents dealing with their own personal sample size of one jump to that conclusion, but the link is just not there.

xenadu022• 9 years ago

Let's be clear here: Andrew Wakefield falsified his data and was stripped of his medical license for it.

He was invested in a company developing a new vaccine preservative and the study was purely a scare tactic to get vaccine makers to switch from a cheap patent-free preservative (thimerosal) to an expensive patented one.

Vaccines in the western world have completely dumped thimerosal out of an extreme abundance of caution. Many of the vaccines don't even use a preservative or use a trace amount since we have good refrigeration and fast transportation networks. Despite all that the rate of autism diagnosis has continued to increase completely unchanged. In fact rates of autism diagnosis hasn't been affected by anti-vax parents refusing vaccines either. If you properly control for induced bias there is no difference in autism rates among anti-vax parents and rational parents.

When you hypothesize a causal relationship, remove the causal factor, and the outcomes are unaffected we call that hypothesis <i>disproven</i>. There is no link between vaccines and autism. Period. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

airesQ• 9 years ago

It seems that we have deep learning applied to MRI:

  A deep-learning algorithm that primarily uses surface area
  information from magnetic resonance imaging of the brain of 
  6–12-month-old individuals predicted the diagnosis of autism  
  in individual high-risk children at 24 months (with a 
  positive  predictive value of 81% and a sensitivity of 88%).

hive_mind• 9 years ago

What puts a child at high-risk for Autism?

AlphaWeaver• 9 years ago

I would assume things like Genetics, history in the family, etc.

ClassyJacket4• 9 years ago

I'm not sure if this is what they meant, but older parents have a higher risk of having autistic children

http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/v21/n5/full/mp201570a.html

Spellman3• 9 years ago

Recommended watching on causes of Autism: https://www.ted.com/talks/wendy_chung_autism_what_we_know_an...

3 major factors that are highly correlated: 1) Using a particular drug 2) Age of father 3) Being male

Majority is genetics though, so if the two parents are both highly intelligent and/or on the spectrum, good chances the child will be as well.

Autism is principally caused by the brain neurons developing too quickly during development, and then not reaching the same levels in fully developed adults. One theory thrown around is it's the rapid neuron development, so having intelligent parents means you have a chance of overshooting the threshold of "safe" development resulting in Autism.

I presume this study has better, more-up-to-date metrics though.

yoodenvranx• 9 years ago

Wasn't there recently a discussion somewhere on HN about the influence of sun / vitamin D3?

One example for this might be the Somali community in Minneapolis [0] but at the moment I can't find any up-to-date article

[0] https://www.autismspeaks.org/science/science-news/study-find...

J5892• 9 years ago

Chemtrails

Someone1234• 9 years ago

This is definitely interesting, scientifically, and may help us better understand Autism (and its causes).

I cannot imagine this will see widespread adoption outside of research. MRI scans remain expensive and many MRIs have waiting lists at hospitals. Even today, they regularly use less safe technology (e.g. CTs) because they're less expensive and there will be more available.

There's no safety reason why you shouldn't do this. MRIs are darn near harmless. It is just an economic issue with gaining time on an MRI to discover information which may not change the overall outcome for the child (pediatricians are getting better and better at detecting early signs of autism).

Heck, if MRIs were readily available they'd quickly replace ultrasound during pregnancy (since MRIs are likely safer and superior given that they better represent depth). But alas, a MRI costs up to $1m for a "basic" one and up to $3m for a fMRI, and that's ignoring the space/training/power utilisation issues.

clarkmoody• 9 years ago

+1 for the quality and safety of MRI

they'd quickly replace ultrasound during pregnancy

Since scan time goes up with detail, and babies are really squirmy, it would be interesting to see how a quick-scan (low resolution) MRI compares with ultrasound quality.

But ultrasound destroys MRI in terms of portability, availability, and cost: just wheel in the cart, apply some goo, and there's the baby.

Perhaps more serious situations should use MRI more often instead of diagnostic ultrasound.

timClicks3• 9 years ago

I expect that portability is actually a reason why often even visual ultrasound isn't used. Doppler scanning is often all that's needed to monitor heart rhythms

timClicks3• 9 years ago

Squirmy babies shouldn't be too much of an issue. They do cardiac MRI all the time and hearts are hopefully beating during those ;)

highd7• 9 years ago

I've been working on a bootstrapped company building a low-cost MRI for about a year now. We're hoping to have a demonstrable prototype in another year or so.

So we think that we can get to that future where people pick MRI based on application and not cost or availability.

ClassyJacket4• 9 years ago

I'm so glad to hear that. I've been thinking for years that MRIs seem like an industry that could and should be disrupted. The benefits could be massive.

I'm not in the medical field, but I really believe the future of cancer medicine will strongly lean towards prevention and early detection, as opposed to just cure.

arijun• 9 years ago

Out of curiosity, what are the cost cutting changes you're making?

I've wondered why there are no MRIs using high temperature super conductors yet, it seems like such an obvious way to cut costs (as you don't need the extreme cryogenics).

cgh• 9 years ago

This will be huge for sports injuries, eg labrum tears. The cost and/or the wait for an MRI is often prohibitive.

lostlogin9• 9 years ago

Please please please get some radiographer input on the interface. The horror that is out there is just so dire. I have some fantastic screenshots tucked away somewhere of the things that users are subjected to.

randerson• 9 years ago

Less safe for an infant though since they have to be sedated in order to stay still.

ohitsdom• 9 years ago

On fetal MRIs:

"It also does not require intravenous contrast material (dye) or sedation."

http://www.utswmedicine.org/stories/articles/year-2016/fetal...

Coincoin• 9 years ago

Young children need sedation so they will stay perfectly still; definitely not without risk.

My 1 yo son needs a scan every 3 months and the hospital had to figure a better way to scan him so as to avoid sedation. They finally settled on ultrasound: faster, risk free and precise enough once you know what you are looking for.

lostlogin9• 9 years ago

There's no safety reason why you shouldn't do this.

When you have seen a few done wrong you disagree with this. They have an inherent potential for death and injury and incidents are frequent, unlike US. Then there is the whole implant safety and contrast safety side of things.

People won't be replacing pregnancy scans with MR any time soon, and the cost of the machine is not the primary reason for this. They scan too slowly and pregnant women aren't that keen on lying still for ages. It's sometimes even unsafe to encourage extended periods of lying supine. US is just too cheap and readily available.

Source: I do MR scans.

mememachine2• 9 years ago

Im still fairly convinced it has more to do with environment than genetics

sxg2• 9 years ago

What's your evidence?

Retr0spectrum6• 9 years ago

My completely unscientific opinion is that human genetics in general hasn't changed much in recent years, compared to the changes in our lifestyles. If you had to pick one as the cause of an increase in autism diagnoses, the change in lifestyle seems more obvious.

This opinion isn't based on any concrete facts, so feel free to change it.

scythe• 9 years ago

https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/180/9/890/2739176/Mater...

Low iron intake significantly interacted with advanced maternal age and metabolic conditions; combined exposures were associated with a 5-fold increased ASD risk.

Maternal age and iron intake aren't genes. Neither is folate:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/c...

and if I'm reading this odds ratio (0.26) correctly, maternal folate supplementation may prevent or ameliorate up to 74% of cases of autism:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4167931/

mememachine2• 9 years ago

anecdotal

Spellman3• 9 years ago

Well, stats and studies say it's a combo

https://www.ted.com/talks/wendy_chung_autism_what_we_know_an...

technologyvault• 9 years ago

I met a woman at an amusement park last year who was certain that her child became autistic immediately after receiving immunization shots. She was wearing a shirt advertising this movie: http://vaxxedthemovie.com/

It seems like this research (if it's proven to be accurate consistently) could be instrumental in either putting that idea to rest or validating it.

lloydde• 9 years ago

It's not an idea that needs putting to rest. There is no legitimate research that supports such causation. "Validation" would invalidate the existing body of research, which is improbable.

prakashrj3• 9 years ago

Why research has to validate everything? These are facts that children are regressing into Autism after MMR at 15 months.

Science still doesn't know how food gets digested and becomes poop. Will you stop eating, because science doesn't know what really happens during digestion?

prakashrj3• 9 years ago

For me this research actually validates the link. Because MMR vaccination is given at 15 months. Parents strongly suspect link between MMR and Autism, not all vaccinations as popularly believed.

Following is vaccination schedule.

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/child-adolesc...

kolinko3• 9 years ago

Someone explained to you already, in a different thread - this is just accidental correlation.

We know it because children who didn't get the vaccine show Autism symptoms around the same time.

SquareWheel• 9 years ago

This movie has been absolutely panned by the scientific community.

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/andrew-wakefields-vaxxed-an...

Though I appreciate your optimism, there's no amount of evidence that could convince anti-vaxxers at this point.

dllthomas• 9 years ago

Maybe not existing anti-vaxxers, but we might stop making as many new ones if we are able to tell people their child is autistic before it has been administered the any of the vaccines they are skeptical of.

BurningFrog3• 9 years ago

Autism starts showing at about the same age that kids get vaccinated.

droopyEyelids• 9 years ago

I'd like to know the prevalance of 'false positives' with this test. If we scanned the brains of a completely random set of babies (these were high-likelihood cases), what percent of infants would show abnormal brain topography, but go on to be "normal"

rusk• 9 years ago

(EDIT: Sorry, I just figured out the control-group - it's the extant body of knowledge around what describes normal head size - remarks about careful interpretation of results still stand)

Found you all the way down at the bottom here and I decided to have a quick look at the abstract to see if I could find something to put your mind at ease. I couldn't.

In fact the language "prospective neuroimaging study" suggests it's more like a pilot study than anything conclusive.

The sample population "of 106 infants at high familial risk of ASD and 42 low-risk infants" is used, and while it seems like the 42 is a control-group I think that's misleading. Surely a "control group" would be one where the infants didn't exhibit this brain enlargement?

There's reference to a "A deep-learning algorithm" rather than any well-understood approach for determining correlation e.g. a simple T-test.

Finally the language "Brain volume overgrowth was linked to the emergence and severity of autistic social deficits" suggests an actual causal link is suggested, which doesn't seem to be the case. Just that a correlation has been discovered.

There could be more to it but it costs £22 to look at the actual paper.

But it does seem to me as though this is another case of incomplete science being presented as fait accompli. It doesn't contradict any scientific consensus so extraordinary evidence not required, but the BBC's interpretation of this as "Autism detectable in brain long before symptoms appear" does seem like a bit of a leap ...

pchristensen• 9 years ago

For anyone curious about the history and rise of autism diagnoses (attributable entirely to redefinition from a narrow, "Rain man"-like condition to a broad spectrum of characteristics), this interview is the best resource I have encountered:

(67 minute podcast) http://www.artofmanliness.com/2017/01/12/podcast-269-forgott...

trhway• 9 years ago

history and rise of autism diagnoses (attributable entirely to redefinition from a narrow, "Rain man"-like condition to a broad spectrum of characteristics)

or may be it is connected to less and less exposure to Sun (office work and sunscreen usage), i.e. vitamin D deficiency. High correlation between vitamin D deficiency and increased autism rate is very visible in the case of Somali immigrant communities in Sweden and Minnesota (less sunshine, dark skin plus significantly bigger cloth coverage of the body results in the observed severe vitamin D deficiency in the Somali immigrants there). Such correlation is also present, while less pronounced, for Sweden children for whom 3rd trimester happened in winter.

scardine• 9 years ago

My 4 years old son is mildly autistic. He is doing well, attending a regular school and learning to interact with people.

I first suspected he was different because he didn't locked eyes with my wife when she was breastfeeding (I have 3 older kids to compare). He learned to walk in time, but he was not pointing to the things he wanted (instead used to grab me by the arm and use it like a tool), and he was unwilling to look at something we were pointing like a neurotipical kid does. I saw many other signs, but my wife was always in denial until he was 2.5 and I showed her some videos of autistic behavior on Youtube.

Long story short, it almost ruined my marriage (my wife felt like I was torturing her by sending her material about autism). I don't know why I knew more about autism than the pediatrician, but the subject always interested me.

My advice is: if you are suspicious, get your son diagnosed by a specialized neuropediatrician (do not waste time with someone who is not well prepared to diagnose autism).

b1gtuna• 9 years ago

Thank you for sharing your story. As a guy who's about to get married, I began paying more attention to articles like this one. I am now ware that early diagnosis is important. I will make sure to see the right specialist if I suspect something.

anotherevan• 9 years ago

Another anecdote here: Both my daughter and son are on the spectrum (high-level autistic, or aspberger).

Son was diagnosed at age seven, daughter at age fifteen. Generally it can be harder to pick up with girls. They tend to be better mimics and it can present much more subtly. I really wish we had figured it out sooner with our daughter – she has had a lot of issues with anxiety and school refusal for the last few years, and I wonder if had had the necessary information earlier like we did with our son, how much of a difference it would have made. (Although both are autistic, they present so differently it was not obvious.)

So I reiterate scardine’s exhortation to seek a diagnosis and early treatment if you suspect there may be autism at play. There’s a steep learning curve to getting your head around it and figuring out how to best help yourself and/or your loved ones, but you read hacker news, so you’re up for the challenge. Find (or start) a local community support group – it’s a hell of a lot easier than trying to hack it alone.

loceng9• 9 years ago

I replied to the previous commenter recommending they look into Auditory Integration Training - http://www.aitinstitute.org - the website marketing is mostly geared towards children with symptoms relating to the full autism spectrum, however there are also benefits for adults.

Someone asked me then to share if I had experiences with AIT - and I replied here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13657973

loceng9• 9 years ago

If you haven't heard of Auditory Integration Training, I recommend looking into it. http://www.aitinstitute.org - the website marketing is mostly geared towards children with symptoms relating to the full autism spectrum, however there are also benefits for adults.

charlieflowers2• 9 years ago

I'd love to hear more about your experiences with this! My daughter does not appear to be autistic, but I have long suspected she has hyperacute hearing.

Did this work for you or someone you know? Their intro video only states that it "strengthens and balances your hearing system", which is too fuzzy for me to reason about. Thanks!

baldfat2• 9 years ago

My two older boys who are adopted were diagnosed with aspbergers.

No one, when they got older, would think they have been diagnosed with it. My oldest still walks on his tip toes at 24, but he is a senior in college and is in the National Guard. They both had nightmare of a childhood prior to coming to my house.

I have worked for several years as a TSS as a second job and the earlier you can get therapy started the better the 18+ outcomes will be. Don't wait till they are older to see if they will grow out of it.

PS - If you have had a bad TSS experience or any other worker with your child just request a new one and learn what approach you are using. Parents are the number on expert on their own child and make yourself into the best expert you can be.

mercer• 9 years ago

Just out of curiosity: why do so many people misspell 'Asperger' as 'aspberger'? It strikes me as not obvious enough to be so common, and yet here we have two sibling posts that make the same mistake.

It's not a problem, of course, I'm just curious (and secretly annoyed, but that's my problem)

tboyd47• 9 years ago

Great advice. Your story is very similar to mine. The family doctor at the time was no help. He was showing clear signs at age 2, and she told us just to wait and see if it gets worse! You really have to go to someone who is trained to recognize autism.

It was the pediatric dentist saying something at age 4 that made us realize we need to get him checked out (even thought my mother-in-law had been mentioning the lack of eye contact for some time), and he gave the exact same advice you did. Go to someone who knows autism.

We went to a development psychologist and that was when we both realized. My son is now in a PAC (preschool autism class) and getting the help he needs, and we are learning a lot too.

pfarnsworth• 9 years ago

In Canada, you need to wait over 2 years to get any sort of treatment, because of the long lines. My friend has 2 autistic children, who both suffered and continue to suffer because of inadequate funding. And because of the 2 year wait, these types of diagnoses are useless, because they won't get funding until much later. It's a travesty.

But here in CA, if you have Kaiser, apparently they have a gold medal autism treatment program, according to a doctor that deals with child developmental disorders. It's because they got sued several years ago, and the result was they now put every child in a top autism treatment program.

theWatcher37• 9 years ago

Why am I constantly lambasted by commenters on Reddit about the superiority of the Canadian healthcare system... while in threads like these I you see Canadians upset about massive wait times?

How does that work?

xenadu022• 9 years ago

Because the healthcare system is vast and has many aspects. It also varies across locations.

My son doesn't have classic autism but he has developmental delays, sensory issues, etc. Trying to find providers here in the bay area can be extremely frustrating with extremely long wait times and we have great insurance. Our prior plan was Kaiser and it was just as much of a hassle but in a different way (having to go through a special office to get approval for therapists, etc).

VeejayRampay• 9 years ago

Because it's better to wait for 2 years than to be excluded for the health care system because you don't have money?

loceng9• 9 years ago

Please recommend to your friend about Auditory Integration Training - http://www.aitinstitute.org - the website marketing is mostly geared towards children with symptoms relating to the full autism spectrum, however there are also benefits for adults.

Someone asked me then to share if I had experiences with AIT - and I replied here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13657973

zargath• 9 years ago

My oldest son has adhd+autism. It is difficult to explain how hard it has been for him and for us as parents. The social and school situations is always a problem, it is one day at a time and we all try not to break. He looks like any other boy, but emotional(anger, nightmares, .. ) it is a roller coster and even his special teachers has a hard time.

So with that, I wish future parents will have it better and maybe some autism detection will help with early diagnostics. I can list so many things that my son cant do, that other children can. But at the same time, he sees things very uniquely and any groundbreaking invention will come from a boy like my son and not from my other "normal" children. Autism can be terrible , I wish that I could spare him all his troubles, but in some way the Autism is also a gift.

I cant help but wonder if some of our brightest minds all had some diagnose and was just strong enough to survive the "normal" life.

Best wishes to any person with autism and even parents struggling out on the interwebs.

hannob2• 9 years ago

The usual "be skeptical about science" warning:

* Single study, not replicated. Wait for replications and systematic reviews before believing anything in it.

* MRI studies aren't exactly known for high quality science.

* Autism studies aren't exactly known for high quality standards.

* I don't have access to the full text, but the summary shows no sign this study has been preregistered. Means risk of publication bias.

memossy4• 9 years ago

I quit a high flying job to research ASD when my son was diagnosed years ago and have read every single paper and website I could find.

My broad conclusion from this is that ASD is a condition caused by lots of different factors with common symptoms.

This makes treatments tough as ASD caused by oxidative stress would respond badly to treatments that work great on ASD caused by reductive stress for example (eg ASD symptoms that seem to get 'better' when taking paracetamol vs ASD made worse by it).

Thus when treatments are tried across the population you get odd results if you're not sub-dividing the groups into likely etiology, I've tried to look for statistically significant sets taking this into account.

The key dysfunctional system in most ASD seems to be the balance between the excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters GABA and Glutamate.

The two broad groups for this appear to reflect 'classical' autism, ie same from birth vs 'regressive' ASD, for example secondary to mitochondrial dysfunction where there is a sudden loss of ability.

For the former, a common cause appears to be GABA dysfunction, which the blog epiphanyasd.blogspot.com does a great job pulling together the research on.

In this case GABA doesn't flip to inhibitory from excitatory at birth and this could show up in brain scans for this subset of children with ASD..

The treatment options are interesting in this regard, but the 'safest' trial to check this dysfunction I've found is micro-dosage clonazepam (40mcg), which is already prescribed to children with anxiety (at 500-1000mcg doses). At this subclinical dosage, it should have no impact unless there is a dysfunction, but if it does (which it has in several families I know), then the research into other drugs that could treat this dysfunction becomes far more interesting (eg current trials in France by Ben Ari and Lemmonier on bumetanide).

spangry3• 9 years ago

That's really interesting, thanks for taking the time to share. I had no idea GABA's function in the brain 'inverts' at birth. When you say this could show up in brain scans, do you mean to say it has, or it's a theoretical (in the scientific sense of the word) explanation ?

I remember reading in 'The Brain the Changes Itself' that brain scan studies have observed that the brains of people with ASD do not differentiate between different auditory frequencies well. The way it is described in the book is that as infants develop, the part of the brain that processes sound starts to more selectively 'light up' as we 'learn' different frequencies, like someone becoming more precise when playing a single note on a piano-keyboard. However, it was apparently observed that the entire 'keyboard' lights up for people with ASD, regardless of the (audible) frequency.

I've always wondered about this. The author put forward an interesting theory about sensory over-stimulation in ASD sufferers, but it sounded kinda speculative to me. Did you come across this in your research? And if you did, do you think there's anything to?

CalRobert3• 9 years ago

That's interesting regarding auditory frequencies, especially in light of some comments by my autistic sister, who over the course of many arduous years of work by our mom became very high functioning. She leads a pretty normal life now (married, has a kid, works as an economist), but wrote the following:

"I don't remember much from before I could talk. The memories I do have are brief and disconnected from one another. I remember focusing intently on an object, such as a crayon or a piece of wire (you know mom, those twisties you use for the garbage) and being able to focus intently on that item, to the exclusion of everything else. I remember thinking that people could read my mind, thinking that they knew exactly what I wanted. I can even remember hearing and understanding some words but not understanding that they were an attempt to communicate. Hearing a sound from an air conditioning vent means the air conditioner is on, but it does not mean the air conditioner wants to engage me socially. It was not that I did not care about what they said, but rather that I did not know that they were trying to say anything to me. I vaguely recall interpreting human words, from family and teachers alike, in a similar manner. "

(from Triumphs in Early Autism Treatment )

Full disclosure - the mom mentioned above is also the founder of an Autism-related business; http://www.oaiautism.com/.

memossy4• 9 years ago

You can see Dr Ben Ari's work on the flip here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306452214...

I was intrigued when my son had paradoxical reactions to GABA analogues so dug more into this (also has paradoxical reactions to benadryl, which is a different can of worms).

I think ASD, ADHD etc are all linked in terms of neurotransmitters and ion channel imbalance that causes overload on various pathways.

On interesting element on auditory processing is the similarities between ASD auditory sensitivity and hypokalemic sensory overload. Anecdotally I have seen dosing potassium reducing auditory sensitivity short term for possibly this reason.

TrinaryWorksToo• 9 years ago

Wow, that's really interesting! I've been diagnosed with Asperger's, and went on clonazepam (and before, Ativan) and that really helped what I thought was anxiety. I mean, I did notice a direct benefit, and there's no reason to believe you over my doctor, but I'm always interested to alternative explanation as to why meds work.

memossy4• 9 years ago

Clonazepam in 'standard' doses has a very different effect to clonazepam in microdose, ie 1/50th of the clinical dose.

You can see this discussed by Dr Catterral here https://epiphanyasd.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/low-dose-clonazep... based on the research he did supported by the excellent Simon's foundation (hedge fund manager behind Renaissance)

Above a 50mcg dose, the inhibitory effects disappear.

A nice explanation of why this happens can be found here: http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2009/01/treating_insomnia_wit..., really interesting readable read

Autism detectable in brain long before symptoms appear

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