Dylan is a 10-year old boy with autism spectrum disorder who has difficulty with social communication and interaction. Autism affects various parts of the brain responsible for emotional responses, memory, movement coordination, and higher mental functions. Characteristics of autism include difficulties with social reciprocity, joint attention, nonverbal communication, and restrictive or repetitive behaviors. While there is no cure for autism, early intervention and behavioral therapy can help develop skills. The causes of autism are still unclear but are thought to involve genetic and environmental factors that disrupt brain development.

1. The complexity of autism
Dylan is a 10-year old child that has a neurodevelopmental disorder called social spectrum
disorder (known as autism); his mother Tara Leniston has a YouTube channel called “Coming
home to autism” where she talks about having a child with this disease. The disorder doesn´t
actually affects Dylan that much, but it is difficult to his family because this syndrome has a
problem with communication:
Developmental milestones in children are physical, problem solving, language, communication
and socializing. If the last ones are impaired there is isolation, resulting in autism.
The parts of the brain affected by autism are: the amygdale, responsible for all emotional
responses; hippocampus, important to working and explicit memory; brain stem, passes
messages between different parts of the body and cerebellar cortex; cerebellum, it tunes motor
activity, regulates balance, body movements, coordination and the muscles used for speaking;
corpus callosum, connects the right and left hemispheres of the brain and allows them to
communicate with one another; basal ganglia, it is the gray mass deep within the cerebral
hemisphere that connects the cerebrum and the cerebellum, it helps to regulate automatic
movement; and the cerebral cortex, a thin layer of gray matter on the surface that is
responsible for higher mental functions, general movement, perception and behavioral
reactions.
Some characteristics are: Social reciprocity: The individual prefers to be alone than talking or
playing games with others. Joint attention: The individual doesn’t share interests with the
people around. Nonverbal communication (prosody): “Maybe they can´t use body language to
express themselves and they can´t “read a person´s expressions”, meaning that they don’t
interpret the prosody of others, such as gesticulation or context.” Says Professor Mason.
Social relationships: it´s difficult to them to make new relationships and maintaining the ones
that have been made. Restricted or repetitive behavior, interests, and activities: they have
routines or attitudes such as being really organized or timetabled everything. There is
significantly motor incoordination and postural instability. Neurological comorbidities such as
motor dysfunction, sleep impairment and epilepsy are prevalent. Anyway each person is a
world, so they can have unique symptoms or deficits;
When Dylan was five months he had eye contact, he was a happy boy, loved being kissed and
hugged. At the fourteenth month, eye contact started to go, he didn’t respond to his name. At
three years old he started repeating a lot, he didn´t sleep at night, he started laughing or crying
hysterically alone, he also cried when their parents tried to hold or hug him. When he was four
years old, he didn’t speak, make any eye contact or like being touched. He lined up his toys;
he started stimming (doing specific behaviors that include hand-flapping, spinning or repetition
of word and phrases). He doesn´t like loud voices or bright light.
There is no cure, and the treatment has to be specific for each patient, this can include
educational programs and behavior therapy. Tara found out that early intervention is a key to
develop Dylan´s behavior with others. Their parents got him in a specialist nursery setting
school; they started play therapy, so through playing they would get a bond.

2. Research shows that autism impacts many systems in the body, including the metabolic,
mitochondrial, immunological, gastrointestinal and the neurological. Then the family looked into
diet. That doesn’t cure autism but it can help. After that, he started to respond to his name, he
made more eye contact and decreased his irritability.
Now he is ten years old and with his mother he has an incredibly strong bond. “They think a
different way, they still have emotions, they still feel and they still love. They might not show it
sometimes or at all, but they do.” Tells Tara.
Autism is thought that a gene affects the brain development; the researchers found that
neurons that lacked the RNF8 protein formed about 50% more synapses than those with the
gene; it influences how neurons connect and communicate with each other in the brain,
according to a study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. But that´s all
they know. There are no clear risk factors or environmental triggers but it is thought that from
environmental toxicants or infection can contribute to cause autism through causing a
disruption of brain development.
The anterior cingulate cortex has unusually weak neural activity; it reacts atypically to the
deviation between expectation and actual events in people with autism. Their neuronal activity
only shows a slight change during situations in which other people experience something
unexpected.
"There is the possibility that there may be too many synapses in the brains of patients with
autism," said senior author Azad Bonni, PhD, the Edison Professor of Neuroscience and head
of the Department of Neuroscience at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
“An increased number of synapses create miscommunication among neurons in the
developing brain that correlates with impairments in learning, although we don't know how."
Disruptions to the hippocampus and its circuits could determinate some of the cognitive
difficulties among people with autism. This could explain features of autism ranging from poor
social skills to difficulty switching from one idea to another. The hippocampus “it’s more like an
orchestra conductor” Mason says, touching off patterns of activity elsewhere in the brain, in
areas needed for processing sensory stimuli, emotions and so on, that result in the experience
of a memory. People with autism may have trouble using memories to make decisions (a
process that requires rapid toggling between internal thoughts and the external world).
Deciding what to say in a conversation, for instance, involves listening to someone, registering
their meaning and matching that with stored information and experiences.
It has been found that many of the social skills involve the superior temporal sulcus (STS) and
there are numerous differences in function between people with autism and typically
developing individuals. The STS is attuned to socially meaningful stimuli, such as a person’s
tone of voice, facial expression or body movements. By capturing such information, it plays a
role in perceiving another person’s thoughts and feelings and predicting their actions. It is also
involved in processing language. The STS shows diminished activity during joint attention and
enhanced activity during solo pursuits. The studies are told by Spectrumnews.
The increase of the brain appears to be disproportionately from white matter enlargement.
Evidence also exists for an increased excitatory/inhibitory neuronal activity in the autistic brain.

3. Early overgrowth of the brain is caused by an accelerated expansion of cortical surface area
but not cortical thickness before the age of two years. An early white matter differences might
explain the brain being connected atypically. This source is from The National Center for
Biotechnology Information of Unites States of America.
The cerebellum is indispensable for movement and learning motor skills. Some of the
recognizable symptoms of autism involve control of movement. When we learn something that
is hard we use vermis, paravemis and cerebral cortex, it is a close and quick loop. Without this
function the patient can´t keep up with the world round him. The cerebellum is important in
high cognitive functions such as language and attention, as I said, people with autism often
have language delays and pay unusually intense attention to objects or topics that interest
them.
Abnormalities in Broca's area (produces language), superior temporal sulcus, and Wernicke's
area (understands language) might be related to defects in social language processing and
social attention, the frontal lobe, superior temporal cortex, parietal cortex, and amygdala might
mediate impairments of social behaviors, the orbitofrontal cortex and caudate nucleus have
been associated with repetitive behaviors. Deficits in social cognition in children could be
explained by the impairment of the capacity for visual analysis of emotional facial expressions.
To conclude, this course actually changed me, because before this, I didn´t think about how
painful could be dealing or be around someone that has a medical problem. And Professor
Mason´s did a really good job putting ourselves in each other’s position and trying to
understand different reactions. Having a disease is hard enough, so we should help or don’t
disturb the person than adding even more pressure. From now on, I am going to try to express
that feeling to others so that we can make a better place where we don´t critic every time
without using our brain.