What happens in the brain to cause some autistic people to become savants, while others need to be cared for for the rest of their life? Does it have something to do with neurons?
In: Biology
there is some strange wiring. I know one thing is that the area for processing sound is accidentally wired to the pain center.
They just grow and connect differently. There’s no obvious “this is an autism structure” and more of a “these structures / connections / whatever are abnormal, and it appears this relates to their behavior which falls into the autism spectrum”
Autistic brains function differently, are connected differently, grow differently. They may also respond differently to certain chemicals. There was a study done where neurotypical and autistic individuals received a specific cannabinoid via injection, and the autistic people had a unique change in brain activity that was not present in neurotypicals. Who knows, considering the body synthesizes endocannabinoids, maybe autism is somehow related to a lack of specific chemicals that would otherwise promote normal brain growth?
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