Autism Overflows with Syntheses

Abstract

Editor:We were surprised to find our case study "Cross-modal extinction in a boy with severely autistic behaviour and high verbal intelligence" (Bonneh et al. 2008) impugned by Lynn Waterhouse (2008) as an example of "unsynthesized and hoc theories" cluttering autism research. Our article never purports to constitute a theory in itself, and from its very beginning relates our observations of single-channel perception to an established theoretical context described in terms of stimulus overselectivity (Lovaas et al. 1979), monotropism (Murray et al. 2005), and impaired attention shifting (Allen & Courchesne 2001). Professor Waterhouse misattributes to us a causal claim that "autism results from monochannel of [sic] winner-takes-all perceptual processing" when in fact all that we claim is that our case results support the existence of such winner-takes-all processing in autism. Our point is not to clutter and to contend with existing theory, but rather to extend such theory to 'low-functioning' cases in a way that might further the very synthesis to which Professor Waterhouse and we all aspire--hence our unifying theme of perturbed neural interactions (Rubenstein & Merzenich 2003).

QEEG Spectral and Coherence Assessment of Autistic Children in Three Different Experimental Conditions

“…Nonetheless, regarding QEEG spectral analysis, our results allowed to clearly differentiate children with autism from control subjects, and are in general in concordance with the reports of other authors (Cantor et al 1986 ; Cantor and Chabot 2009 ; Chan and Leung 2006 ; Chan et al 2007 ; Coben et al 2008 ; Ogawa et al 1982 ). The augmented coherence values in children with autism compared to control subjects probably reflect the existence of rigid neuronal networks which might explain the classical manifestation of repetitive behavior expressions, and impairments in social interaction, communication and imagination, which characterized autism (Belmonte et al 2009 ; Gadow and Drabick 2012 ; Rapin and Tuchman 2008 ; Silver and Rapin 2012 ; Zappella 2012 ).…”

“…Children with autism were selected from the outpatient child neurology clinic of the Institute of Neurology and Neurosurgery, Havana, Cuba, who were blindly clinically examined by two child neurologists, and diagnosed as complaining an autistic disorder, based on DSM-IV criteria (American Psychiatric Association 2000 ). All of them had a classical autistic triad of impairments in social interaction, communication and imagination (Belmonte et al 2009 ; Gadow and Drabick 2012 ; Rapin and Tuchman 2008 ; Silver and Rapin 2012 ; Zappella 2012 ), with relatively intact verbal functions and with IQs over 85 (Charman et al 2011 ). They did not have epileptic symptoms and neurologic abnormalities other than those directly related to autism.…”

Autism is a Portmanteau Syndrome

“…The key difference between my view of autism and that of Belmonte et al (2009) is that they believe there is one shared neurofunctional deficit in autism. My research conducted with others, and my review of the research and theories of others has led me to conclude that brain deficit variation in autism as currently diagnosed is too great to assume that one shared neurofunctional deficit will "be found to provide a unifying causal explanation for autism" (2008, p. 284).…”