Term Paper on "Autism and Asperger's Disorders"

Term Paper 4 pages (1424 words) Sources: 3 Style: APA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

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… READ MORE

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