Autism and the Salience Network, and topics to prepare for a future episode about Sex-and-Diagnosis Differences and the Nucleus Accumbens (NAc)

We expand on a critical network discussed in the Autism and Adaptive Responses episode. The biology that gives us Autism, gives us a condition the outside world is chaotic. The trade off is our inner world is comfortable. See criteria B.3.

The Salience Network is used to determine what we send our attention to as we orient ourselves with the outside world. You can see this in Autism versus Non-Autism. Autistics orient to single objects or single interests more than multiple objects or interests. That's Criteria B of Autism- Restricted, Repetitive Interests, Behaviors, or Activities.

In Autism, the Salience Network connects to different regions compared to Non-Autism, and this is shown at Six-Weeks-Old. And, this implicates our Social Attention and Social Motivation. Remember Hans Aspergers called the children "little professors" because Autism provides a path of Superpowers based on those fixated interests that are "abnormal in intensity or focus."

Covered Here. Also, we prepare for another discussion with a leading scientist from UCLA.

Study on Six-Week-Old https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-024-06016-9

GENDAAR https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34050743/

(0:00) Intro; Human's Capacity to Think; the Salience Network and the NAc

(2:56) Insula

(4:47) Defining the Salience Network and Salience Detection; getting "hijacked" and metabolic bank account

(7:42) the Biology that gives us Autism causes a Chaotic outside world

(9:00) Returning to Six-week-olds and the Salience Network

(10:28) The Prefrontal Cortex and Human Cortex quiets things so we can properly evaluate things

(13:52) Salience Connections of six-week-olds; social attention at 3-12 months; Autistic traits at 12 months

(17:40) Sex-and-Diagnosis Differences; GENDAAR study using 8-17 year olds; Salience Network and Sensorimotor and Repetitive Behaviors

(20:47) Second Key Finding and possible cause of Boys Bias with Autism

(21:30) The Nucleus Accumbens- Reward Hub; Two Parts; shell and core

(25:20) Preparing for a future episode

(30:27) Reviews/Ratings and Contact Info

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