Causes of Autism Spectrum Disorder

Discuss about the Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The assignment would be mainly based on the video published by TEDx Talks  on October 26 2015 by a famous professional called the Dr. Susan P. Sherkow. She is mainly practicing as child, adolescent as well as adult psychiatrist, who had been trained in the Tufts University School of Medicine. She was also the member of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine as well as the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. Her recent role is that of the Director of the The Sherkow Center for Child Development and Autism Spectrum Disorder. In the video, the professional had been seen to talk about the ways by which the parents as well as the therapists can understand and thereby cope with the Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The video opens by an honest revelation about how the respected professional had neglected neuroscience and had provided more importance to typical psychiatry practices. However, she had thereby stated that with her growing years in treatment of the children with such disorders, she had found a huge association of neuroscience with that of Autism Spectrum Disorder. For many decades, the scientist are trying to understand the biomedical causes of the Autism Spectrum Disorder by using the molecular genetic studies for recognizing the susceptibility genes yet a clear explanation is still missing in the neuroscience world (Christensen et al. 2016). One interesting study conducted by Cambridge scientists have stated that the amygdale part of the brain is seen to remain underactive when individuals with such disorder when they try to decode any form of emotional facial expressions. The professional had also stated an important data that in the last year she had received a data that autism affected 1 in 80 children but now the data stands at 1 in 55 children. She had also provided a ratio that is four boys to one girls. Researchers who have worked on this have found that fetal testosterone helps in shaping the brain development and has the role in altering the cognitive profile of the child by binding to the androgen receptors in the brain and amygdale is full of such receptors (Wong et al. 2015). Therefore, the researchers had shown that higher prenatal testosterone levels seem to be associated with the reduction of social skills but superior’s attention to details in the infants. Therefore, the professional had correctly stated the ratio.

Symptoms and Challenges

The professional had been seen to help the audience by trying to describe the disorder in simple terms that the audience can understand. It was appreciative, as the professional did not use any technical jargons that could have made her description difficult to be understood (Lossifov et al. 2014). The children have the major issue is that the children with the disorder are seen to be socially incompetent or that they are socially out of tune. They are seen to lack empathy. The professional had stated that such children do not have a “theory of mind” for which they cannot read the minds of the others and feel that others could not read their mind.

The professional puts a wonderful discussion forward where she had very simply given an example about the issues faced by a normal child and the autistic child helping parents and theorists to understand the psychology of the child playing behind it. The professional has just touched the concept of nerves as the substance that helps in linking actions and memories and help in reflexes by “wiring and firing” without going into the details of the work of neurons. This might be due to preventing information overload may affect the audience ways of understanding the issue. She had stated an example to relate with the frustrations that parents of such child might have due to failure in connecting with their babies. When a normal bay wakes up from his sleep and starts crying in his crib for food, the mother arrives at the door and immediately takes the baby in her arms, cuddles him and feeds him (Bourgeron et al. 2015). Normal babies have the mechanism of effective “firing and wiring”. Therefore, from the next day, after waking from sleep, when the baby is hungry, he would cry but when he would be seeing the mother coming from the door, he develop the feeling that he would now be cuddled and fed and accordingly the brain of the child undertakes the firing and wiring. Therefore, the mother becomes happy that his child is able to develop and connect with her successfully. However, the scenario is different in case of the autistic child and the professionals first want to clear out the ideas so that they can control their frustration and develop the rationale behind their autistic child’s different behaviors. The example states that autistic child would not behave as the normal child did on the following days. He would continue crying and even the arrival of the mother at the door will not evoke “firing and wiring, “effectively preventing the child to link the activities of the mother. From this, the mother would be frustrated as the child cannot respond to her or might feel that the child is not developing effectively. The professional had stated that each day of the child is like a new surprise for him and thereby cannot develop the memory of the actions of the mother and cannot relate to them either. This should be well understood by the parents, as this would help them to undertake actions accordingly.

Effective Therapies for Parents and Therapists

One of the most significant things seen is that as the children continue to grow, their expectations on them make them frustrated as they cannot fulfill them (Schreibman et al. 2015). On the other hand, the mothers are also seen to be puzzled, frustrated as disappointed as they cannot understand the demand of their children and feels helpless, lost and demotivated. Therefore, within few days, to help the children are seen to play with their cars, or toys and seem to be less connected socially as they find no help and comfort in socializing but more happier to be with themselves playing with toys.

The professional had been seen giving one the best forms of therapy advice to the audience through one of her case studies. She stated that once she had a pediatric client of 30 years old who had a very problematic relationship with his mother and both the members were extremely angry, disappointed, frustrated and not at all connected with each other. The mother needed help to overcome such situation. the professional noticed that when the mother was discussing about the frustrations she has with the boy, the boy was continuously pulling and pushing with the cars and colliding them with other cars and singing a song on crashing the cars. It seemed the frustration that he had of not being understood. She had several sessions with the boy and after summer vacation and the case that happened in the 9/11 terrorism, the mother complained of the son watching the same clips of the crashing of the towers gain and again and doing nothing that frustrated her. To this the professional was seen to state of a wonderful therapy that gives the modern day therapists as well as the parents to gain an idea about how such children should be explored and treated.

The professional immediately get down from her chair to the floor where the boy was crashing with the toy cars. She also took several cars and crashed them equally singing the same song that the boy was singing when he was playing crashing with cars. To this, the boy as quite startled and then he moved on to a box of blocks. Taking this, the professional prepared twin towers and tried to crash it and to this, the boy stated that it was very scary. The professional again built the tower and asked the boy to crash it. The boy did so and this helped in staring a playful relationship between them. They continued this knocking down game and all the while the professional was seen singing the “ crash song” and also stating how scray and fearful the situation was throughout their sessions. Through this, she was trying to make sense of the child about what he was thinking and how he had been the weekend to the mother, she saw a weird action of the boy. The boy went to the bookshelf and he was trying to spot-hide himself from his mother. To this the therapists stated to the boy that he might have felt that crashing the blocks would disappoint his mother and he is trying to hide to hide his feelings from his mother to which the boy replied by “yes”. The professional comforted the child by asking that did he think that his mother is going to be angry and not hug him, console his or protect him from such scary things. To this, the mother agreed and the boy ran to his mother and hugged and it was miracle moment for both the mother and child in the therapy.

From this therapy, the mother understood that her son was reachable. It is learnt that every therapists and the parents that every action and seemingly meaningless behaviors had symbolic as well as behind the scene meanings that need to be identified as the first action. If words are to be used, then there should be a ten-minute pause as words where something can be represented by some actions. This model therefore teaches us that it is important for parents and therapists to understand the symbolic language, his play and other aspects and interpret the feelings of the child from such actions. This would help in reconnecting and repairing the relationships. This would help them to be on track with others and this would help his parents to be successful in understanding them and caring for their children and thereby develop a social fabric.

References:

Bourgeron, T., 2015. From the genetic architecture to synaptic plasticity in autism spectrum disorder. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 16(9), p.551.

Christensen, D.L., Bilder, D.A., Zahorodny, W., Pettygrove, S., Durkin, M.S., Fitzgerald, R.T., Rice, C., Kurzius-Spencer, M., Baio, J. and Yeargin-Allsopp, M., 2016. Prevalence and characteristics of autism spectrum disorder among 4-year-old children in the autism and developmental disabilities monitoring network. Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, 37(1), pp.1-8.

Helping Parents and Therapists Cope with Autism Spectrum Disorder, Tedx Talks, 2015 retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYPeOm5A8XQ&t=55s

Iossifov, I., O’roak, B.J., Sanders, S.J., Ronemus, M., Krumm, N., Levy, D., Stessman, H.A., Witherspoon, K.T., Vives, L., Patterson, K.E. and Smith, J.D., 2014. The contribution of de novo coding mutations to autism spectrum disorder. Nature, 515(7526), p.216.

Schreibman, L., Dawson, G., Stahmer, A.C., Landa, R., Rogers, S.J., McGee, G.G., Kasari, C., Ingersoll, B., Kaiser, A.P., Bruinsma, Y. and McNerney, E., 2015. Naturalistic developmental behavioral interventions: Empirically validated treatments for autism spectrum disorder. Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 45(8), pp.2411-2428.

Wong, C., Odom, S.L., Hume, K.A., Cox, A.W., Fettig, A., Kucharczyk, S., Brock, M.E., Plavnick, J.B., Fleury, V.P. and Schultz, T.R., 2015. Evidence-based practices for children, youth, and young adults with autism spectrum disorder: A comprehensive review. Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 45(7), pp.1951-1966.