Talk:Autism spectrum

FAQ

I have updated Talk:Autism/FAQ (linked at the top of this page) to reflect the discussions over the last three to four years of maternal antibody related autism and commercial products in development to test for maternal antibodies. Please review my text, it may need adjustment ... in the future, IP70+range posts on the topic can be reverted or rolled back unless a secondary MEDRS-compliant review surfaces. (San Francisco Bay Area IP70+range sometimes post outside of the 70s, and it is a frequently changing IP address.) Same at Talk:Causes of autism. New readers can be referred to Question 8 on the FAQ at the top of this page. We should be good to archive the rest of this talk page now. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:02, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Sandy. I've archived to Talk:Autism/Archive_13. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 23:35, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

On this: It is only a matter of time, in my opinion, before the maternal fetal antibody theory is addressed in an authoritative overview of etiology theories. When that happens, it will probably be appropriate to address it in Causes of autism. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 02:02, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Anthonyhcole -- can you please give a link to the rules on citations in medical articles? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.61.130.19 (talk) 21:36, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Considering your IP range and geolocation match those mentioned in the FAQ I think you know, but, on the off chance it is not you WP:MEDRS. We use secondary sources. Dbrodbeck (talk) 22:24, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

ASD diagnosed after age 18

I have read the comments on talk regarding ASD and Aspergers. While I am not a professional, I am the mother of a child who has been diagnosed with ASD/Aspergers after age 18. Is there a study of how many young adults diagnosed with ASD/Aspergers, how it effects them, their ability to function in society (both on a pier based situation and in obtaining employment)/communication skills/and resources available to the child and their parents? Also, how it effects their mental health. I can find information on the "causes/symptoms" but not anything on the above mentioned. These are important considerations to be addressed for the older vs younger persons diagnosed with ASD/Aspergers because it does effect their quality of life and abilities to provide for themselves in the future. This should also be included in the DSM. 184.170.86.100 (talk) 17:15, 23 January 2013 (UTC) A. Hedrick

Edit request on 25 January 2013

Autism is a disorder!!! NOT A DISEASE!!!

Please reclassify this.

101.103.53.236 (talk) 14:00, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. The article already uses the word disorder and not disease. RudolfRed (talk) 17:09, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Scientifically reviewed studies for treatment of Autism

Scientifically reviewed studies for treatment of Autism:

• Summary of Dietary, Nutritional, and Medical Treatments for Autism – based on over 150 published research studies By James B. Adams, Ph.D. Director, ASU Autism/Asperger’s Research Program 2013 Version — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.209.239.85 (talk) 19:41, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

:I put this in the External links section. With friendly regards, Lova Falk talk 19:56, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Why? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:22, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

??? I was confused. As far as I remember, this link was put in the See also section, and I moved it into the External links section, however, I did that in Autism therapies and not in this article. Lova Falk talk 13:56, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Environmental causes

There is a recent study published indicating a very high increased risk of autism in the children of mothers who took valproic acide during pregnancy, for epilepsy.

There is also indication that chlorpyrifos, a pesticide still used in the US, greatly effects brain development and is strongly suspected of causing autism in some children and measurable abnormalities in brain development in others.

I don't know how commonly valproic acid is given now to women of child bearing age but it seems to be one environmental factor that is not much disputed, being in dozens of papers as a teratogen. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.61.130.19 (talk) 14:39, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Do you have reliable sources? In that case, you could propose an edit here on the talk page. Lova Falk talk 15:26, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

We need secondary sources per WP:MEDRS. Dbrodbeck (talk) 22:25, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Autism and Memory

Hey everyone. Maria Izabel are in a Cognitive Psychology course at Davidson College. As part of this class, we will be working on editing articles in wikipedia. We are hoping to add an article about autism and memory. Do you think it would be better to simply add a memory section to the already existing Autism article page? Or would it be better to create a new page linked out (like an orphan article) about Autism and Memory? Let us know. Thanks! Feb. 15, 2013 --Haschorr (talk) 15:13, 15 February 2013 (UTC)haschorr

Hi Maria and Izabel, and thank you for asking! At the top of the article, to the right, there is a small bronze star, indicating that Autism is a WP:featured article. Only one out of thousand articles in Wikipedia have earned this qualification. Now, in order not to lose this qualification a good habit is to first suggest every change that is more than just a minor one on the talk page, and reach consensus. That might be a bit strenuous for you. So I would recommend you to create a new page called "Autism and memory". With friendly regards, Lova Falk talk 15:23, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

PS You do know that we have an article Autism and working memory? If it is mainly working memory you would like to write about, it is not a good idea to create a new article. Lova Falk talk 07:31, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback. I think we will go ahead and create a new page, "Autism and Memory." We are aware that the page "Autism and Working Memory" exists, however some of our other classmates will be editing that page. Here are our ideas for the new page. We would love to know what you think and also how we should go about creating a new page specifically on "Autism and Memory."

I. Background on Autism & Memory

-Memory in High-functioning & Low-functioning

-Causes of memory functioning

-Consequences of memory functioning

II. Types of Memory

-Prospective Memory

-Episodic/Autobiographical Memory

-Semantic Memory

-Traumatic Memory

-Visual/Facial Memory

-Verbal/Non-Verbal Memory

-Functional "Everyday" Memory

-Short Term Memory

-Long Term Memory

III. Further Research on Autism & Memory

-Here are the articles we are planning on referencing for this page.

1. Altgassen, M., Koban, N., & Kliegel, M. (2012). Do adults with autism spectrum disorders compensate in naturalistic prospective memory tasks?. Journal Of Autism And Developmental Disorders, 42, 2141-2151. doi:10.1007/s10803-012-1466-3

2. Boucher, J., Mayes, A., & Bigham, S. (2012). Memory in autistic spectrum disorder. Psychological Bulletin, 138, 458-496. doi:10.1037/a0026869

3. Crane, L., Pring, L., Jukes, K., & Goddard, L. (2012). Patterns of autobiographical memory in adults with autism spectrum disorder. Journal Of Autism And Developmental Disorders, 42, 2100-2112. doi:10.1007/s10803-012-1459-2

4. Geurts, H. M., & Vissers, M. E. (2012). Elderly with autism: Executive functions and memory. Journal Of Autism And Developmental Disorders, 42, 665-675. doi:10.1007/s10803-011-1291-0

5. Jones, C. G., Happé, F., Pickles, A., Marsden, A. S., Tregay, J., Baird, G., & ... Charman, T. (2011). ‘Everyday memory’ impairments in autism spectrum disorders. Journal Of Autism And Developmental Disorders, 41, 455-464. doi:10.1007/s10803-010-1067-y

6. Maras, K. L., Gaigg, S. B., & Bowler, D. M. (2012). Memory for emotionally arousing events over time in Autism Spectrum Disorder. Emotion, 12, 1118-1128. doi:10.1037/a0026679

7. McMorris, C. A., Brown, S. M., & Bebko, J. M. (2012). An examination of iconic memory in children with autism spectrum disorders. Journal Of Autism And Developmental Disorders, doi:10.1007/s10803-012-1748-9

8. Poirier, M., Martin, J. S., Gaigg, S. B., & Bowler, D. M. (2011). Short-term memory in autism spectrum disorder. Journal Of Abnormal Psychology, 120, 247-252. doi:10.1037/a0022298

9. Southwick, J. S., Bigler, E. D., Froehlich, A., DuBray, M. B., Alexander, A. L., Lange, N., & Lainhart, J. E. (2011). Memory functioning in children and adolescents with autism. Neuropsychology, 25, 702-710. doi:10.1037/a0024935

10. Wojcik, D. Z., Moulin, C. A., & Souchay, C. (2013). Metamemory in children with autism: Exploring “feeling-of-knowing” in episodic and semantic memory. Neuropsychology, 27, 19-27. doi:10.1037/a0030526

Thanks for your help! --Haschorr (talk) 03:32, 18 February 2013 (UTC)Haschorr and --Maria Izabel (talk) 03:34, 18 February 2013 (UTC)Maria Izabel

That's great. I can't wait to read your article when it's done. Just one thing: Make sure all of your assertions, interpretations and conclusions are supported by secondary sources (reviews, scholarly book chapters, etc.) By all means refer to primary sources, but only say what secondary sources say about them. Good luck. If you need help with anything at all, leave a question at the wiki medical project. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 10:57, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Face recognition

Hello, this is Sarah Hamilton and Katie Stephan. We are a part of the Cognitive Psychology course at Davidson College. We plan to make a new page for Autism and Face Recognition that parts of the original autism page can link to. Here is our outline for the face recognition page so far:

Memory for faces (Huack 1998; Boucher 1992)

Huack 1998

Impaired face memory but not object memory

Correlated with verbal reasoning and social comprehension

May be causal of social delays

Boucher 1992

Evidence for better recognition of familiar faces

Impairments in recognizing unfamiliar faces

Possible explanations for deficits:

Discrimination difficulties, abnormalities of looking, inattention, visual memory impairment

Processing

Part-based vs. Holistic Processing (Joseph 2003; Spezio 2007; Farrah 1993; Langdell 1978)

Bottom-Up processing

Focus on features

Mouth

Strategies in older autistic children (Joseph 2003; Langdell 1978

Implications in Social Context

Joseph 1997

Decreased positive affect

Attended to faces only half as much a Down Syndrome children

Even in familiar situations (Mother directed attention)

Osterling 2003

Even 1 year-old decreased face attention

Mechanisms/Neuropsychology

Activity within Autistic brain

Fusiform face area in general (Kanwisher 1997; Puce 1995)

In autistic children there is activity outside the fusiform face area (Schultz 2000; Pierce 2001)

We welcome any questions or comments!

Sehamilton (talk) 15:16, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi Sarah and Katie, and welcome. It's hard for me to now which sources you intend to use, because the information is too short (are they articles? books?). However, I do hope they are mostly WP:secondary or tertiary sources? (Reviews instead of singular studies). Also, I would recommend at least adding a few newer sources. There ought to be rather recent review articles about autism and face recognition - I guess... With friendly regards, Lova Falk talk 15:32, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Please read Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine) regarding sources for medical articles. The section "Searching for sources" gives advice for searching PubMed for reviews on the topic. There may also be recent academic textbooks that cover the topic (perhaps just a chapter). Also see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles. The section "Citing medical sources" links to an online tool that makes it easy to generate citation templates given just the PubMed ID of the paper. A full citation makes it much easier for folk to identify the paper and access it. You should be looking for reviews or chapters in professional textbooks ideally from the last 5 years and almost certainly not before 2000 unless the work is still regarded as relevant today (i.e. cited in recent publications). Be very wary of using primary research papers as sources because there is a risk you will be relying too much on your own interpretation rather than that of others (which is called original research on Wikipedia and although desirable in academia, is not desirable on Wikipedia). Cheers, Colin°^Talk 21:05, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, welcome. I, too, urge you to avoid including any interpretations that are not already found in secondary sources (such as reviews). All we are allowed to do here is report what independent experts have said. Cite individual studies by all means but only say about them what independent expert reviewers have said (and cite those reviewers too).

Can I also add a plea to be very careful with the distinction between correlation and causation? Unless a reviewer expressly says the underconnectivity and reduced size of the ffa is a result of reduced looking at faces, or expressly says the reduced ffa grey and white matter is the cause of some behaviour, please avoid doing so. Getting this right is important. If one reviewer asserts a probable causal relationship where another is only willing to acknowledge correlation, don't pick one and ignore the other on the issue.

Finally, notice how often the reviewers use "may", "probable", "possible" etc and try to convey that same degree of uncertainty. Good luck. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 14:50, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Suggested source:Weigelt, Sarah (March 2012). "Face identity recognition in autism spectrum disorders: A review of behavioral studies" (PDF). Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews. 36 (3): 1060–1084. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2011.12.008. PMID 22212588. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)Smallman12q (talk) 23:52, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Autism and vaccinations

Hello, I'm trying to modify a paragraph in the "Causes" chapter. The idea is to change the tone from "The research community absolutely has consensus that there's no correlation between vaccinations and autism" to "The research community mainstream thought is there is no correlation but there are studies suggesting there might be some correlation, therefore the subject is currently opened to controversy".

I'm suggesting changing the paragraph:

"Parents may first become aware of autistic symptoms in their child around the time of a routine vaccination. This has led to unsupported theories blaming vaccine "overload", a vaccine preservative, or the MMR vaccine for causing autism. The latter theory was supported by a litigation-funded study that has since been shown to have been "an elaborate fraud". Although these theories lack convincing scientific evidence and are biologically implausible, parental concern about a potential vaccine link with autism has led to lower rates of childhood immunizations, outbreaks of previously controlled childhood diseases in some countries, and the preventable deaths of several children."

to:

"The mainstream research community thought is that there is no connection between vaccinations and autism, however, there is still controversy on this subject (see , , vaccine "overload", Thiomersal controversy, MMR vaccine). The initial theory that the MMR vaccine could cause autism was supported by a litigation-funded study that has since been shown to have been "an elaborate fraud" . However, a 2010 research study finds there might be a connection between hepatitis B vaccination and autism. In 2012 the US government compensated 10 year-old Ryan Mojabi and Jillian Moller's 15 month-old daughter Emily for vaccination-caused autism. In the US, the recommended vaccine schedule started including sensibly more vaccines after 1985-1995, and many more vaccines after 2000-2005 [1]. The autism incidence rate also shows a dramatic increase after ~1990 [2], but it is currently unknown if there is a connection between the two. Adding to the complexity of the problem, parental concern about a potential vaccine link with autism has led to lower rates of childhood immunizations, outbreaks of previously controlled childhood diseases in some countries, and the preventable deaths of several children ."

The original paragraph has multiple problems: first sentence is plain illogical (parents become aware their child is autistic exactly after a vaccination but that's by pure coincidence, how comes?) and dis-considers the position of thousands of parents firmly convinced that their children became autistic because of particular vaccinations, it wrongly generalizes to conclude that if one article suggesting vaccination-autism correlation was a fraud then all articles with similar suggestions must be fraudulent too (MMR vaccine controversy was caused by a fraudulent article, but is not fraudulent).

I'm curious on your feedback, but pls consider that my wiki time is very limited, especially if the editing process becomes excessively bureaucratic.

Thanks and regards, Doruuu (talk) 11:12, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

• See Q1 and Q2 of Talk:Autism/FAQ. For a little more detail;
• (a) Parents often become aware of autistic traits in their children around the time of vaccinations simply because the time when such traits become obvious is around the time that children have such standard vaccinations; it's simply co-incidental. (b) That Hep B study was found to be widely flawed [3]; I am no medical expert, but that falls down on its (mis)use of statistics even before you get to that point. See also the sections in Causes of autism. (c) Yes, we do not consider the position of those "thousands" of parents, because there are many areas in which "thousands" of people believe something which is scientifically unlikely or impossible; this does not mean their beliefs should be presented as a valid alternative (WP:UNDUE) and certainly in this case Wikipedia would be seriously culpable if it gave any impression to parents that it would be advantageous for their children to not be vaccinated. Black Kite (talk) 11:44, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

(a) You're saying that cases where children suddenly turn autistic happen anyway (with vaccinations or not) - and such events that happen to be just after some vaccination can wrongly be related to autism. Makes sense if and only if cases of children suddenly turning autistic are widely known to happen. Can you prove that is the case? If not, I'd suggest remove that sentence from main article. If yes, congratulations for being an effective wiki editor, but that sentence still needs modification - the message should be "Cases of sudden autism change are known (citation), and those that happen right after vaccinations can often be wrongly interpreted as vaccination-triggered autism".

(b) Does [4] qualify as a reliable source? Author is unknown. Publisher is a web publication started and maintained by 2 people, none of them professionally trained with autism. And I read the article over and over, and still wonder where are the proofs that the original study "was flawed". The original author had access to some ~7000 cases - at an autism incidence of ~1/200 the autism group size (33) makes perfect sense.

(c) That's interesting - you assume your role is to become an active media opinion driver, rather than a neutral media informer. Don't assume readers are much less intelligent than you and they need your filtering. I thought wikipedia is about presenting naked facts. Are wikipedia in general or some/many main editors vested with interest in interpreting information?? Because then I know I'm in the wrong place. My only interest here is to present naked facts without passion or personal interpretation - regardless of who or what gets disturbed. Doruuu (talk) 08:29, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree with what Black Kite has said. Wikipedia articles are based on what authoritative scholarly systematic reviews say on a topic. We can't decide how much weight to give individual studies - we have to wait for experts to evaluate them. In the case of the hep B study, it doesn't warrant a mention for the reason stated by Black Kite. As for court findings, we don't base efficacy or safety claims on those, just position statements from scholarly societies, scholarly reviews and similar. The relevant Wikipedia guideline is Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine). --Anthonyhcole (talk) 13:26, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

(a) So [5] is an "authoritative scholarly systematic review" in your judgement. It's not in mine. The reason stated by Black Kite is a poor quality article by any standard. It does not show any explicit problem with original article. Even if it did, it means there are contradictory opinions that should be both presented, without our interpretation. Doruuu (talk) 08:29, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

(b) Are you saying that court findings are not relevant for the issue? I'd say they are, regardless of any wikipedia editing rule potentially forbidding mentioning them. And we don't need to prove anything in that paragraph - if facts are under controversy we'd better just present all relevant points of view and abstain from any interpretation/filtering.

No, that blog commentary is not a reliable source. I'm saying the criticisms it contains, such as sample size, are the reasons why we avoid interpreting or even reporting primary sources. We wait for expert evaluation, and report that. Once that hep B study has been evaluated by an independent expert in a scholarly journal or university-level textbook or monograph, then, if it is noteworthy, we may report what the independent expert has to say about it. Until then we won't be reporting what the study authors have to say about it, or what you or I have to say about it.

Court findings mean nothing in terms of efficacy and safety of therapeutic interventions. There are many more forces at play in a compensation case than simply the scientific evidence. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 12:26, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Doruuu, we don't edit WP articles in order to push a point of view. Rather, we should research the best possible literature on a topic and write the article based on that literature -- not on what we personally think. BTW, I suggest you buy one of Paul Offit's very accessible books on vaccines (he's written about the autism vaccine scare but also he's written about a real vaccine tragedy concerning polio). Colin°^Talk 14:12, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Do you consider my suggestions are personal beliefs rather than documented facts presented in a neutral manner? I'm seeing that logical and non-personal arguments fail over and over, and I start to conclude there is something wrong with the system here. Thanks for suggestion. Doruuu (talk) 08:29, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

You say "I thought wikipedia is about presenting naked facts." Actually it isn't. One can string any old collection of "facts" together to make the argument one wants to present. It's called journalism. Yes your suggestions strongly appear to reflect your personal beliefs and aren't supported by the best quality literature and research on these issues. Your comments about "children suddenly turn autistic" show a deep ignorance of the subject and child development. Please see WP:WEIGHT. We don't write controversial articles by filling it with 50% of the crap spouted by anti-vacciationists and ambulance-chasing-lawyers, "balanced" with 50% of the measured careful writing of professionals. We read the best sources and may conclude that the crap doesn't get a look-in. If folk want to read what celebrity models and actors think about autism then they can buy the Daily Mail or use Google for their health research. Wikipedia tries to do better. Colin°^Talk 09:56, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

About the "naked facts" statement: my message was that we should not personally interpret whatever we're presenting on wikipedia - just present the latest unambiguous facts in a honest try to completely describe the subject and let the readers draw conclusions. You take my statement out of context and twist it to fit your whatever purpose. You seem to suggest a dangerous "let me interpret things for the readers" attitude. Great, congratulations. "Children suddenly turning autistic ..." - what do you understand from my statement? Something like from one minute to the next???? "Sudden" in this context obviously means consistent behavior changes over weeks/months that persist afterwards. Did you even try to understand what I was questioning? I tried to present facts qualifying as "reliable", without any interpretation. What exactly do you call "crap"? It would be so easy for me to call your comments a mixture of negligent attitude, politically-motivated manipulation and a huge dose of stupidity. However, I don't do that, out of respect for what wikipedia was in the past. If you really want to be helpful how about taking every controversial statement, doing a cold analysis, and tell exactly is wrong, to-the-point. Spare blanket statements like "we read best sources", "wikipedia tries to do better", etc, I guess your next step is to give me advises on how to life a healthy life - thx but no thx. Do you expect references to "celebrity models", Daily Mail and "ambulance-chasing-lawyers" to help here, or you just like to insult people? If it's people like you that gate wiki edits then wikipedia has already became a political platform, or even worse - a self-guarded bastion of stupidity. It's ironical that it's shaping to be the very things it was created to fight against - misinformation&disinformation. Doruuu (talk) 18:22, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Science has rejected any connection between vaccinations and autism, please see the FAQ. The only people left spouting this nonsense are ambulance chasing lawyers and half informed half witted actors and celebrities, oh and conspiracy theorists. (These are not mutually exclusive categories). This issue is resolved and has been for a long time. It is time to move on. Dbrodbeck (talk) 19:14, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't have enough energy to copy-paste my answers just because you answer before reading. Logical arguments obviously don't work here any more. Time to move out. Doruuu (talk) 20:26, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

For the record, Dbrodbeck, I don't believe anything is "resolved" in science or scholarship, and for sure not on Wikipedia articles. Doruuu is entitled to politely raise any questions here. We are at liberty to ignore Doruuu if WP:IDHT becomes an issue. (I don't think nearly enough ignoring goes on on Wikipedia.) --Anthonyhcole (talk) 04:14, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

About us reporting naked facts and not interpreting what we present: it's just not possible to do that. The simple act of choosing to report a fact is interpreting it as worthy of reporting, the facts we surround it with impart context. That is why we wait for scholars to review facts before we report them: so that they provide the evaluation (worthiness) and relevance (context). We are a tertiary source, a source that relies on secondary sources to supply value and meaning to "raw facts" before we report them.

Logical argument does work here. But we have norms that govern what goes into the top Google result for most topics, and the arguments above reflect those norms well. You can change those norms, though, by force of argument on the relevant policy talk pages. Policies and guidelines are undergoing constant renewal. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 03:05, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Doruuu, "just present the facts - let the readers draw conclusions" is a fallacy. As others have said, any collection of facts can be loaded towards one conclusion or another. You are simply misinformed about autism and vaccination and should read better material on the subject. There isn't much point in discussing all the other details you raised because until you get yourself better informed about the subject, we won't make any progress. Colin°^Talk 08:56, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Congratulations guys, you just managed to get one wiki user disgusted enough to avoid wikipedia. Keep on the aggressive and insulting language, and maybe more will consider wiki alternatives. I didn't know what can of worms I'm opening. Finding hysterical people guarding this page and being insulted for making a polite suggestion were the last things I expected. Anthonyhcole, better ignore/ban users than insult them.Doruuu (talk) 01:51, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Frank encephalopathy may follow vaccination in a very, very minute number of cases, and frank encephalopathy may in some cases be followed by permanent neurodevelopmental problems -including autism-like symptoms. Whether the frank encephalopathy that very, very rarely follows some vaccinations is the kind of encephalopathy that is sometimes followed by autism-like symptoms is yet to be determined, I think, by science. If this has been addressed in a WP:MEDRS-compliant source, then I think it needs to be very carefully addressed somewhere on the encyclopedia, though not necessarily in this article. Is it? I don't see it in Causes of autism. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 03:05, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't think this is worth mentioning here. The cause there is the encephalopathy. Lots of other things cause that too and probably vaccination is not the most important cause of encephalopathy. Colin°^Talk 08:44, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

By "here", do you mean Wikipedia, or this article? I raise this because it seems to be one of the few perennial points raised by vaccine→autism advocates, so covering the science on it (if there are WP:MEDRS-compliant sources addressing it) would be filling an important gap (and incidently save a lot of talk-page discussion. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 11:43, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

See Genetics and the myth of vaccine encephalopathy, Explanation for Vaccine Encephalopathy and Diphtheria-Tetanus-Pertussis Vaccination and Dravet Syndrome. There's a pretty strong case that so-called vaccine-induced-encephalopathy is a lawer-invented syndrome and an artefact of the the US vaccine compensation laws. Anyone looking for a classic example of a "my baby suddenly became ill and was never the same again" disease could pick Dravet Syndrome as a textbook example. And one for which we now know has a clear genetic cause. Autism's cause isn't as simple but the same pattern applies. Colin°^Talk 12:23, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

That's exactly what I was looking for. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 03:59, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

neurons

There are two descriptors with which ALL and every neuronal system are born, Autism & Schizofrenia, and it doesn´t matter if you are human, cat, dog, cow or dolphin (or for that matter a whales). At birth, there is solely a basic neuronal set and that neuronal set does NOT include social interaction, facial recognition, identity recongnition by and through sound nor any specific other recognition through any of the other sensor complexes.

A neuron, has: input, output, pathway delay, feedback, thresholds, ion concentrations, lamination (for long neurons) and EM (plate capacitor & mutual induction caused by traveling waves within those fibers which are close enough to each other) and neurotransmittor hormone jump points.

Autism, has NOTHING to do with social interaction, nor is it characterized by a lack of social interaction & communication. However, it is true that ONE of the EASIESTS to use diagnostics tools, IS, comparative social exchanges within the context of interaction (play) and verbal & physical utterances. (Dumb, but if a child is frustrated and it does NOT throw a rubber ducky, then it´s social context IS lacking. Assuming a level of social internal control solely expected of adults is not a very good diagnostic level of understanding, and could definitely indicate that the level of understanding of the adult, in context, is severely lacking [the adult has autism or aspergers (or merely frustrated) and is mirroring that onto the child].

Take the picture of the child with autism (altered state of one or more neuronal complex from a norm which by and through definition of a neuron growth IS defacto, allready autistic & schizofrenic). Placing the toys inline, is that a sign of slowness in complex visualization (the norm pretty much being a jumble), or is it a sign of expression OF complex visualiztion?

This article needs severe cleanup, it´s an adult mirroring principle of the complications of adults, including social rejection & frustration, societal incapacities in dealing with complications, more so than a definite pointer to what autism really is. Definitely a jumble of housetales, pure observational perspectives with respect to oneself, without capacitation to place the observational viewpoint (scientific principle) elsewhere. That later, a discapacitation to place the observational viewpoint elsehwere, thereby displacing the three point vector (observer, afector, feedback afector), is definitely considered a severe autistic lack in humans, one which most likely more than 80% of all neurological systems defacto have, due the egocentricity of any neuronal system (survival driven). (any comment not purely attack based [debate based is fine], kindly direct that too rbok.spare@yahoo.com) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 186.94.187.76 (talk) 14:20, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Neuron II.

You are born with a base set, that might or might not be nueronall complete AS a base set, which might or might NOT develop in a complete set, or SOLELY into a parcial SPECIFIC set, it being that all the neurons would defacto attempt to interact with all sensor complexes & feedback systems afectors & interactors, thereby and through causing other neuronal complexes to form which are not considered the primary neuronal complexes for those functions (IE: the visual centers attempting to interact with the motor control center, for example). (rbok.spare@yahoo.com)