Hug the Monkey

Gray and White Matters

There seems to be a flood of brain research lately that helps illuminate how the brain responds to social stimuli.

An intriguing new area is looking at two kinds of tissue in the brain: white matter and gray matter.  We usually think of gray matter as the stuff we use for cognition; more grey matter tends to equal a higher IQ, for example. White matter, on the other hand, is the connective nerve tissue thought to be used for "wiring together" different parts of the brain.

Of course, it's not that simple.  Too much gray matter in some regions has been linked to trauma.

Two studies released today looked at the relationship between volume of white or gray matter and behavior.

First, a team led by Manzar Ashtari of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania looked at the brains of autistic kids. They found more gray matter than normal in parts of the brain dealing with social interactions. They think this could be related to abnormal function of the mirror neuron system.

Mirror neurons are thought to be special kinds of nerve cells that fire when we watch others. It's still speculative in humans, but they've found that monkeys have what they call mirror neuron regions that fire when the monkey watches a researcher pick up a cup. This might be related to empathy, the ability to literally put oneself in another's place. See Mirror Neurons, Oxytocin and Autism for more.

According to the Science Daily story,

"In the normal brain, larger amounts of gray matter are associated with higher IQs," Dr. Ashtari said. "But in the autistic brain, increased gray matter does not correspond to IQ, because this gray matter is not functioning properly."The autistic children also evidenced a significant decrease of gray matter in the right amygdala region that correlated with severity of social impairment. Children with lower gray matter volumes in this area of the brain had lower scores on reciprocity and social interaction measures.

Another study by James Cantor of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto  found significantly less white matter in the brains of pedophiles than in the brains of non-sexual offenders. The article says,

The study, published in the Journal of Psychiatry Research, challenges the commonly held belief that pedophilia is brought on by childhood trauma or abuse. This finding is the strongest evidence yet that pedophilia is instead the result of a problem in brain development.

I don't understand why they draw this conclusion. Plenty of studies have shown abnormalities in brain development in children who've been neglected, abused or traumatized. In fact, Victor Carrion of Stanford has found more gray matter in the prefrontal cortexes of the brains of children with PTSD. He's also found decreased total volume in the PFCs of adults and children with PTSD.

He recently told me that it's difficult to identify exactly what these differences mean when it comes to brain function and behavior. He said, "It seems like in some regions, there's a problem if you have more volume ...  in others, it's problematic if you don't have enough."

It seems to me that Cantor's study provides further evidence for two things: that early trauma affects brain development, and that this abnormal brain development leads to abnormal behavior later.

I've contacted the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health to more information on this statement. I'll post if and when they get back to me.

 

Mirror Neurons, Oxytocin and Autism

What's the relationship between mirror neurons and oxytocin? Science isn't even clear yet on what mirror neurons do, but news from the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience sparks some intriguing ideas.

Mirror neurons seem to fire when we perform an action and also when we watch someone else perform it. Most studies have been done with monkeys: They map which neurons fire when the monkey grasped an apple, and saw the same neurons become active when the monkey watched someone else hold the apple.

According to the press release from the conference, several researchers presented brain imaging studies comparing mirror neuron activity between children with autism and those with normal functioning.

Jaime Pineda, PhD, at the University of California, San Diego, did studies showing that the mirror neuron system is well-developed by the time a child is seven years old. His UCSD colleague, Lindsay Oberman, used EEG to monitor mirror neuron activity in ASD kids. She found that the system did work to some extent, and she saw normal activation of the mirror neurons when the children watched videos of family members, but not of strangers.

She suggests that people with normal brain function are able to generalize that all people are "like me," and therefore to understand them and have empathy for them, while kids on the spectrum are not able to make that leap. From the press release:

This evidence for normal mirror neuron activity in autistic children may indicate that mirror system dysfunction in these cases reflects an impairment in identifying with and assigning personal significance to unfamiliar people and things, Oberman suggests. Whether deficits in relating to unfamiliar people that are characteristic of autism are the cause or the result of a dysfunctional mirror neuron system is unclear.

This leads back to the oxytocin system. Many researchers think that ASD is due to dysfunction in the oxytocin system -- something is wrong with the brain's ability to produce or respond to oxytocin in social situations. Oxytocin influences generosity, increases empathy, and alleviates some of the symptoms of autism.   

Maybe oxytocin is necessary for the mirror neurons to fire; maybe it causes them to fire in response to social cues. Or perhaps, because oxytocin and dopamine are involved in social memory -- keeping track of who my family and friends are -- it's possible that the problem is in the oxytocin system, and the lack of appropriate social memory is what's keeping the mirror neurons to trigger.

This is all speculation; none of the scientists is working on this. Because human studies are so slow, costly and laborious, it seems that it's very difficult for scientists across disciplines to connect their work.

For a more detailed discussion of the research on mirror neurons, Ed Yong of Not Exactly Rocket Science has an excellent post. See Broken chains and faulty mirrors cause problems for autistic children.

Massage Could Help Autistic Kids

Tina Allen posted an article titled Autistic Children and Oxytocin, suggesting that massage can help kids diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, or ASD.

She writes,

Given that autistic children have been reported to be opposed to physical contact, it is interesting that many massage therapists, and parents, are finding great success in the use of massage therapy with autistic children.

Research has found that these children show less autistic behavior, are more social and attentive after receiving massage therapy. Regular sensory integration and safe, nurturing touch are beneficial in reducing touch aversion, inattentiveness and withdrawal.

Unfortunately, Allen doesn't offer any studies or information backing up this claim.

Nevertheless, even if it's only anecdotal, it makes sense that massage could help because it probably does encourage the release of oxytocin in the person being massaged. There aren't any studies showing specifically that massage leads to this release, that I know of.

Allen says, "Numerous studies have proven that oxytocin is released in our bodies during, and after, receiving nurturing touch." That, too, has not exactly been proven, but, again, it seems likely. However, this release is not automatic, and, in fact, a disruption in that cause/effect could be the root of some aspects of ASD.

Because of this, massage may not help some kids on the spectrum; some may reject the feelings altogether. Nevertheless, it's something well worth trying, whether parents offer massage themselves, or work with a licensed therapist who specializes in infant and child massage, as Allen does. Allen is a certified infant massage instructor, and head of Little Kidz, an organization that provides information and training.

See also "Baby Massage."

Toward a Non-Autistic Economy

Why is it so hard to get people to agree to stop killing each other? Maybe because our diplomats don't understand human nature.

New Zealander John Borrie heads the United Nations project "Disarmament as Humanitarian Action: Making Multilateral Negotiations Work." He says governments and central bankers make policy based on flawed assumptions about people and their economic decisions.

Borrie writes,

These days ..., economists more commonly couch their models and theories in terms of ‘bounded rationality’, recognizing that the availability of information and human capacity for rational decision-making are far less than perfect. The economist John Maynard Keynes himself observed in the 1930s that, "a large proportion of our positive activities depend on spontaneous optimism rather than on mathematical expectation."

You can see this in the way people play economic games, Borrie points out. In the Ultimatum Game, one person is given money that she can keep or choose to split with a partner. But, if the partner rejects the split, both get nothing. Most people split the money pretty evenly, assuming that the recipient would reject an unfair deal. And  most recipients will walk away with nothing, rather than letting the greedy donor profit-- even though $1 is better than nothing.

He goes on to discuss the "neuroeconomics" studies in which inhaling oxytocin made people behave more trustingly and cooperatively in economic exchanges. Borrie writes,

… the compound’s clear effect on human perceptions and behaviour during an investment game (as a result of some participants squirting oxytocin up their noses) was a bombshell. Who knew that a tendency to increase trust and cooperate could be triggered by biochemicals? Least of all diplomats themselves, beyond “the smell of the room” many of them sense in a negotiation.

Borrie's article ties in with one in the June 11, 2007, issue of The Nation. In "Hip Heterodoxy," Christopher Hayes, a senior editor at In These Times, writes about the battle for credibility of what's known as behavioral economics within traditional economics.

The dominant theory, the neoclassical approach, remains wedded to the idea that people and markets behave logically in ways that will maximize their own economic interests, leading to a stable marketplace with appropriate prices for goods and services. These theorists, Hayes writes, "fully embrace the logical extremes of a world of self-interested rational actors."

On the other hand, behavioral economists -- those espousing the heterodoxical theory that human nature isn't rational -- find real people to be "systematically biased in their calculations of risk, disposed to punish antisocial behavior, even at a cost to themselves."

According to Hayes, the idea that people doing business might be motivated by anything other than economic gain is downright heretical among academics.

Borrie seems to think that negotiators should use what neuroscience has uncovered primarily to make sure that they aren't being swayed off the rational course. He writes,

By uncovering the empirical underpinnings for some aspects of human behaviour that aren’t learned, or which aren’t obvious to our constrained perceptions, they can help multilateral negotiators recognize and compare their intuitions with their human capacity for rationality.

But he also says,

Successful diplomacy is a knife-edge balance between intuitive savvy and rational calculation. It’s easy to confuse one with the other. If multilateral negotiations are to become more effective – and they need to if the appalling record of disarmament and arms control diplomacy over the last decade is any guide – they’ll need to be open to new approaches from unorthodox quarters.

Such as being more, well, human? Being open to empathy and compassion? Recognizing the hopes, desires and needs of our fellows? Maybe so. Borrie goes on,

Central to the project’s approach is that multilateral disarmament be seen from the referent point of the security of the individual human being, as well as the traditional focus on the nation state. “Humanitarian” needs to encompass what it means in specific perceptual terms to be human in outlook and behaviour if we are to successfully alleviate the complex and almost intractable security problems of so many communities around the world torn apart by conflict.

We are hardwired to connect, in the words of the <a href="http://www.americanvalues.org/ExSumm-print.pdf">Commission on Children at Risk</a>: Our evolutionary heritage as cooperative breeders and highly social individuals makes it feel good to cooperate. This feel-good goes deeper than emotion. Oxytocin is tied into not only social interaction in our brains but also into the health of our bodies. We need to connect.

Even in business.

In his Nation piece, Hayes also talks about a 2000 protest among students at the Ecole Normale Superieure against what they called the "autistic economics" being taught in universities.

In their manifesto, the students demanded a pluralistic approach that would allow economists to actually become useful to society and individuals by explaining the real world we live in, instead of promulgating abstract theories. They said, "We do not accept this dogmatism. We want a pluralism of approaches, adapted to the complexity of the objects and to the uncertainty surrounding most of the big questions in economics (unemployment, inequalities, the place of financial markets, the advantages and disadvantages of free-trade, globalization, economic development, etc.)"

You can read the history of the Post-Autistic Economics Movement <a href="http://www.paecon.net/HistoryPAE.htm">here</a>.

It's telling that many scientists think that autism involves a breakdown in the oxytocin system. People with autistic spectrum disorder have difficulty feeling empathy for others. No one has watched them play the Ultimatum Game, but if they did, it's likely that intellectually average people with ASD would behave with superbly rational self-interest.

Suddenly, oxytocin seems central to economic endeavor. So, let's posit an oxytocin-centric economics.

Would this be a world where the goal of business would be to profit by solving the problems of society? By fulfilling people's needs? Would universal health care suddenly seem important? Would a different kind of person be drawn to the business world? Would this be a revolution?

Adopting for Love

Ralph James Savarese's op-ed in yesterday's Los Angeles Times is so inspiring for its depiction of a parent's unyielding love for a child.

Savarese is the author of "Reasonable People: A Memoir of Autism and Adoption," coming out today from Other Press. The book tells the story of their son's rebirth after eight years in their care. The six-year-old they adopted had been diagnosed as autistic, abandoned by his mother and abused in foster care.

They had bonded with him when Savarese's wife, an autism expert, had attempted to help the mother. Their love for him was already too strong to let him slip away into a life of trauma.

He writes,

"Despite the stigma attached to "special-needs children," people do adopt these kids. And yet, many more Americans spend gobs of money on fertility treatments or travel to foreign countries to find their perfect little bundles. I'm haunted by something my son wrote after we taught him how to read and type on a computer: "I want you to be proud of me. I dream of that because in foster care I had no one." How many kids lie in bed at night and think something similar?"

His editorial is full of righteous anger at the callous way society looked at his son, and it's full of steady love. This should be a terrific feel-good book for all parents and a must-read for anyone who wants to have a child, biological or adopted, disabled or not.

The Next Autism Crisis

Kids with autism spectrum disorder need an immense amount of therapy, and local and national organizations are grappling with how to provide every family with resources and support. At the same time, more families are competing for those limited resources.

The Centers for Disease Control recently upped its estimate of the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders; one in 150 American children will be diagnosed with ASD.

What happens when these kids grow up?

Cathy Pratt, chair of the Autism Society of America, warned a group of researchers, clinicians and parents that autism lasts a lifetime. Speaking at the International Meeting for Autism Research in Seattle today, she said that 65 percent of the people on the spectrum who are out of school are unemployed. The average income of this group is just $6500 a year.

"We have individuals on the spectrum who are living in poverty, who are homeless, who do not have options," she said.

Parents worry about what will happen to their children, who may survive them by 40 or 50 years. There are few transitional services and little employment opportunities even for high-functioning people.

The Combating Autism Act is good legislation, Pratt said, but it wasn't funded. "We don't have the money," she said. "Every state is asking, 'How are we going to fund the need?'"

Pratt called autism an economic and social crisis. Every year, that crisis worsens. While screening is getting better, IMFAR 2007 makes it clear that there's no cure in sight.

For more information and help with ASD, visit www.AutismSociety.org.

The Elephant of Emotion

If you're looking for an article on the emotions of elephants, see this excellent story: An Elephant Crackup?

How can we understand our feelings when we can't really describe them? Neuroscientists, psychologists, anthropologists don't mean the same thing when they talk about fear or love. When we talk to each other, we borrow from these sciences, and even more from movies, books and music, but each of us has our own inchoate definition of each emotion. We're all of us -- academic and lay person -- blindly describing an elephant.

I'm in Los Angeles for Seven Dimensions of Emotion, a conference put on by the Foundation for Psychocultural Research, and there's a fascinating mix of scientists and academics talking often at cross-purposes about fear, disgust, empathy, grief, anger, love and hope.

I'm here to hear Sue Carter, Helen Fisher and Jaak Panksepp talk about love, and all of them have taken the neuroscience approach to understanding emotion. Their work has been revelatory to me not only because, combining it with Allan Schore's studies of how the brain develops after birth, it provides a framework makes sense of my own experience. Most important, Schore shows how this scientific understanding can be used to heal.

Panksepp's talk was the most exciting so far. He's working to prove that animals and humans share the same emotions. He said, "The nature of affect is the most important scientific question in emotion research." He said that in the 20th century, animals "lost their feelings to behavioral neuroscience." The behaviorists, in an attempt to be ultra-objective, reduce everything to stimulus and response; Panksepp called this an intellectual tragedy.

He studies play behavior in animals as one of the most universal and primary affects (or emotions). He's identified the sound of rats laughing!

Panksepp says his work has potential for helping kids with autistic spectrum disorder or attention deficit or hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In dogs, blocking the activity of opioids, the brain's natural morphine, makes them more interested in social contact, as evidenced by increased tail-wagging and licking the faces of humans. He says about 40 percent of autistic kids also respond to opioids-blocking by increased social behavior -- but only when they're in a rich social environment.

He thinks that the vast majority of kids diagnosed with ADHD are really play-deprived. "ADHD is largely a cultural disease," he said.

Play needs to be free and self-directed, Panksepp said, and it needs to involve plenty of rough-and-tumble activity. Such play is about pushing limits, and, inevitably, there comes a moment of complaint, when one kid becomes uncomfortable with what's happening. Such moments are opportunities for dramatic social learning, he says, because it forces kids to learn to negotiate on the spot.

"Kids aren't given enough free play," Panksepp said, "and I think many of them don't know how to renegotiate that moment."

Now, think of the modern play date, where kids' activities are closely monitored by moms or nannies. Each monitor is hypervigilant that their kid neither gives cause for complaint nor becomes a target. They're so quick to jump in and deliver controlling commands. "Seth, give the truck back." The children are under a microscope and may feel that they're more of the adults' surrogates than self-directed individuals free to follow their joy.

All this has nothing to do with oxytocin nor with my book. Which brings me back to the elephant of emotion. Panksepp told an illustrative anecdote. Speaking about grief, he said that he himself had experienced great grief, that is very strong when he's alone. When he's with another person, no matter what they talk about, the grief dissipates somewhat. He attributed the lessening of his grief to his shift from activity in the limbic system, the subsystem of the brain that processes emotion, to the cortex, the part of the brain that handles higher reasoning.

But what about the oxytocin response? Social contact, especially but not only with those we trust, causes the brain to release oxytocin, which calms us and makes us feel more at peace. Grief could be defined as pain caused by loss of social contact; social contact can help ease that grief.

Opioids but not oxytocin are part of Panksepp's emotional elephant; both opioids and oxytocin are involved in social bonding, especially that state that we somewhat randomly call love.

See also Prairie Voles and Me (and You),

The Time is Right for "Holding Time"

It's time for another look at an 18-year-old book on repairing the attachment between mother and child.

When Martha G. Welch wrote Holding Time in 1989, the idea of attachment -- the bond between mother and baby -- was something intuitively understood, but not scientifically proven. Since then, studies of rodents, mammals and humans using functional MRI have begun to show how early nurturing shapes the brain, and how the lack of it harms brain development.

Welch treats attachment disorder using holding therapy at her treatment centers in New York City, Chautauqua and Greenwich, Conn. She's a psychiatrist at Columbia University's Department of Neuroscience, and she's studying both the role of oxytocin and secretin in autism and possible therapeutics using these two peptides. (Secretin is a gastric hormone that prompts the pancreas, stomach and liver to release digestive enzymes.)

Welch's method aims to repair the bond between mother and child. A baby's nervous system and brain aren't fully formed at birth, and development takes place in response to interactions with her mother.

Holding, nursing and nurturing develop the oxytocin response and they seem to determine the amount and sensitivity of oxytocin receptors in the brain, especially the parts of the brain that deal with social interaction. Oxytocin also is critical in moderating the fight-or-flight response.

If a baby experiences fear or abuse, she develops a strong and oversensitive stress response. If she is neglected, or doesn't get enough holding and attention, her brain won't learn to release oxytocin when she does have physical contact -- and contact, even soft nurturing, may seem intense and scary to her deprived body.

The diagnosis of reactive attachment disorder is a catchall similar to autism spectrum disorder. But, no matter the symptoms, its roots are trauma, neglect and the lack of a secure bond with a mother. (I'm using mother here to describe a role; anyone who is the primary caregiver and nurturer of a baby is acting as her mother.)

In Welch's method, the mother takes the child into her lap and attempts to make and keep eye contact. Welch's holding therapy typically goes through three stages: confrontation, rejection and reconciliation. In the first stage, holding often means restraining the child on her lap. In the second stage, the child may reject not only being held but also his mother, telling her he hates her, she smells, she's bad. The mother may express her own feelings, saying, "It makes me feel bad that you won't look at me," for example.

Finally, all the negative feelings having been expressed, the child and mother feel peaceful and can connect lovingly. According to Welch, this process is a more expressive version of the gentle cycling between arousal and calm that ideally happens when a mother interacts with her newborn. Being restrained on Mommy's lap gets the child's adrenaline going; that leads to the expression of rage, fear and sorrow, leading to release of those feelings and a new kind of arousal, that of pleasure in being close to Mommy.

Welch writes, "As the struggle continues, the child usually experiences a whole range of emotions but in the safety of his mother's arms. This time the state of arousal is associated with being held lovingly, resolutely, and closely."

It's important for the mother to also be able to release some of her frustration and anger, Welch believes. She writes, "Holding time allows both of you to discharge your pent-up aggression in a safe way."

Welch's method has much in common with Theraplay: The child being controlled and kept in therapist's or mother's lap; the therapist or mother taking charge of the interaction (designed to let the child know there is an adult in control); the goal of mutual gazing and intimacy; and the theory of consciously recreating the experiences that lead to healthy brain development in the infant.

While Theraplay uses activities to distract the child from her distress and engage her less directly with therapist or parent, the holding time method asks mother and child to stay with their feelings and work through them.

The book and Welch's treatment have come in for criticism because of the enforced holding, especially in light of the horrible cases where RAD kids have died during different types of holding therapy, when they were covered in blankets of grownups laid on top of them.

But her work makes sense in light of attachment theory. Children who aren't well attached to their mothers may be either anxious -- desperately craving attention -- or avoidant. Avoidant kids have learned that being close to Mommy means being hurt -- either being rejected or being yelled at. So, they've decided the safest course is to cut themselves off from anyone else.

I grew up avoidant. I still remember the moment when I consciously decided, "I'm not going to let them hurt me anymore." I still craved love and connection, but when it was offered to me, I froze. I desperately needed someone to break through the ice, take hold of me and love me. I kept waiting for someone to do that, but of course, since I couldn't reach out or ask for it, no one ever did.

From my own experience, I think holding therapy may be just what an avoidant kid needs.
Holding Time explains how to use this method; however, I'm not so sure parents should try it without training. The key to holding therapy is that the mother accept the child's rage, letting him know she loves him no matter what. This is easier said than done.

In the examples in the book, the mothers always respond by expressing their needs or feelings in non-judgmental ways. "I know you are angry at me, but I still love you." "I feel upset when you scream and fight. I am going to hold you until we both feel better."

This kind of response is tough for any of us to do; and, to be brutally honest, if this kind of interaction comes naturally to a mom, her kid is not likely to be in need of holding time. (In the book, Welch doesn't discuss the special needs of adopted children, who may have been traumatized or deprived before being adopted; this was before adoption became as widespread as it is today.)

A parent who hasn't been trained in how to respond could end up damaging the child more. As one Amazon.com reviewer, a self-described survivor of forced hugging, put it, "I found it punitive and abhorred it. Who wants to be yelled at and told to look at somebody while being subdued by force?! Who wants to be the recipient of false accusations with no recourse or defense?!"

If the mother hasn't learned how to give love, if she uses holding time to express herself in ways that frighten or hurt her kid, it will damage the bond even worse, by denying the child the one defense he has: withdrawal.

But if mother and child learn to do this with the support and guidance of a therapist, it could be that revelation that Welch promises: "a closer, more satisfying and truly wonderful relationship with your child."

Theraplay to Shape a Child's Brain

Interview: Dafna Lender, Theraplay Institute

Phase 2 Trial of Oxytocin for Autism within 12 Mos.

Nastech, the biotech company that has proprietary technology for intranasal drug delivery,  plans to launch phase 2 clinical trials of  a synthetic oxytocin treatment for autism within 12 months.

The plan is to use carbetocin, a synthetic used to control bleeding after  labor and delivery, to control the core  symptoms  of autism, such as repetitive behavior and lack of sociability.

The company uses what it calls "tight junction biology" to squeeze molecules through cells in order to deliver larger molecules, such as the peptide oxytocin, and deliver them to the central nervous system via the epithelial membranes inside the nose.

In the company's earnings call today, CEO Steven Quay said Nastech has entered into an exclusive license of the intellectual property of Eric Hollander of the Seaver and New York Autism Center of Excellence. Hollander recently reported that he and colleague Jennifer Bartz had reduced some of the symptoms in adults with autism spectrum disorder with intravenous oxytocin.

Nastech's inhalant technology removes the needle barrier in oxytocin therapy.

Quay said, "We think current the scientific evidence provides useful insights: Autistic children have lower levels of oxytocin than normal children. In theory, we may be able to overcome this deficit through a nasal spray that uses our tight junction technology."

Nastech will work with Hollander on clinical trials. The plan is to conduct studies on dosage this year, and then, in 12 months, move into stage 2 trials with adults with ASD. Hollander will conduct the studies.

I recently spoke to Sue Carter of the University of Illinois' Brain Body Center. She is one of the foremost oxytocin researchers, and she's written extensively about the possible role of oxytocin and vasopressin in ASD.

She thinks we're moving too fast with oxytocin therapies. She pointed out several issues with dosing humans with oxytocin. First, it's not clear how much relation there is between serum levels of oxytocin and levels in the central nervous system. Second, it's possible that the problem with ASD is related to vasopressin rather than oxytocin. Finally, she said that with any hormone, there is an optimal level and a balance with other chemicals in the body. We don't know whether increasing the level of oxytocin will throw other things out of balance, or cause a shut-down in the body's natural production.

But, as Quay said during the call, so far there is no drug approved to treat the core symptoms of autism -- and one that worked could be a blockbuster. The CDC recently announced that the rate of autism in children was higher than its previous estimate: One in 150 kids will be diagnosed as on the spectrum.

For more on Drs. Hollander and Bartz's work, see "Oxytocin Therapy for Autism Gets Closer." See also "Love in a Whiff" and "Another Oxytocin Patent."

Are We an Autistic Society?

Donna Williams, a self-described "mad, autistic artist" -- as well as a teacher, author and consultant -- wrote an article for American Chronicle that boldly questions whether our technology-oriented, individualistic society is creating more infants with reactive attachment disorder and autism.

She writes,

Is possible that we’re living in an age where some pregnant mothers being so busy with cerebral, passive interactions with technology and its related increase in time use that they don’t have the range of movements, emotional experience, that it’d be conceivable some don’t develop the same full prenatal bonding with their child that may have been more common before the 80s and 90s?

I'd answer yes to that. But I don't think that technology, and specifically our reliance on computers, is completely to blame. I think that the medicalization of childbirth, cutting mothers off from the biggest oxytocin rush a human will ever get and from the opportunity to bond immediately and bodily with their newborn babies, may be the biggest factor.

Add to that the necessity for most mothers to work, being away from their children for most of the day, and our reliance on television as a surrogate for human interaction, and you have a recipe for isolation and thwarted empathy.

Williams asks,

what if society is improving upon detachment, passivity, being more cerebral than emotional and physical, and progressively then mistrusting and fearing unexercised real interaction with ’strangers out there’?

We are all, already, becoming more ‘autistic’ and the ‘geek syndrome’ generally associated with Asperger’s Syndrome is so widespread that mild cases are not even worth diagnosing lest we end up losing sight of any measuring stick of ‘normality’ (which is all relative anyway).

Williams raises the spectre of the "refrigerator mother," the idea in the 1940s that some women were intrinsically not motherly enough, thereby causing their kids' autism. The pendulum has swung away from blaming the parents -- which is a very good thing. But it may have swung too far.

Mothering matters more than anything else in our lives. Without mother love when we're babies, our brains don't develop the oxytocin response -- as well as many other systems and responses we need to successfully navigate the world.

Williams writes,

If so, if today’s generation benefit from, enjoy or are addicted to those causes, and if voracious consumer economy feeds, encourages and entrenches those addictions through increasingly consumed media, will we ever wake up? Will we be ‘allowed’ to? And in a dog-eat dog society of stone throwing tabloid press, witch hunts and bitching public forums, can we ever calmly look at even hints of the refrigerator mother yet empathically envision ourselves in their shoes?