Comment by ggm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ggm | Hacker News Reader

Homeostasis across the blood brain barrier makes me suspect trivial approaches to boosting glutamate won't work. But this even begs the question if boosting available glutamate would be the right thing.

There are perverse consequences in brain chemistry and signalling: flooding a brain deficient in glutamate processing receptors with glutamate may not help, it may overload pathways and cause hindrance, not compensation.

Signs like this may be consequential, or related but not causal, or may simply turn out to be wrong.

IF a small sample effect turns out to be indicative of a larger property, and IF it's shown to be causal and IF remeditation involves boosting blood borne glutamate or precursors is 3 stacked IF.

IF its detectable in a young brain it could be diagnostic.

IF its detectable in a young brain and amenable to gene therapy and IF it's causative then treatment would be useful.

IF excess glutamate is not a problem and dietary supplemented sources cross the blood brain barrier and don't trip over homeostasis then it's possibly worth exploring.

(Not a scientist, not a biologist)

It seems you are assuming that because the majority of people have a certain quantity of glutamate receptors, that they are the healthy ones and that we should be trying to bring autistic people up to that level. Is that right?

Why not consider the opposite, that the most beneficial quantity of glutamate receptors could be somewhere below the typical amount? If that were true, then we could try to help others reduce their glutamate receptor level to become healthier and more successful (and a little more autistic).

If we found, say, an association between a lower level of neurological characteristic X and concert-level piano skill, then those who aspire to play that instrument at an elite level might try to decrease X. The fact that most of us are rubbish piano players would not be evidence that lower levels of X are harmful, but very much the opposite.

You're absolutely right that assumption was implicit. The answer was written totally in that framework. I'm not here to say what's right or wrong in determining something about people who lie outside of normal in these things, or what normal means.

So what I wrote should be read with a "if it is held to be a condition which deserved remediation or avoidance of it's manifestation" attached.

Most medical conditions are couched in this sense, that a deficit or departure from the normal is a problem. In matters of brain chemistry it pays to be more nuanced.

It is an interesting idea, but let’s not assume autistic traits make you more talented in anything. There certainly is very highly intelligent people with autistic traits that are able to use hyper-focusing to help them work very hard and succeed in academia or at work. I doubt any rational person is looking for ”a cure” for the Alan Turings and Albert Einsteins of this world. Nor even for a regular, albeit slightly odd, chap like myself, who likes reading books alone with his cat and studying math instead of seeing other people.

However there are people with severe autism that makes it more or less impossible for them to communicate with other people or live independently. If these people could have their life improved it might make huge difference to them and their families.

> All autistic participants in the study had average or above average cognitive abilities. McPartland and collaborators are also working together on developing other approaches to PET scans that will enable them to include individuals with intellectual disabilities in future studies.

Simply put they didn't even touch the keeners, nonverbalists, the piss-in-your-pants, or the perpetual 1 year old autistics. They went after people who previously would be called "Aspergers syndrome".

But everything cognitive seems to be called 'autism spectrum disorder' these days.

Of course they didn't. It would be unethical to perform non-medically-necessary PET scans on people who are unable to give informed consent due to the radiation exposure.

First, 1 PET scan is around 25mSv. 50mSv is yearly limit for radiation workers. And those are being overly safe to allow accidental overage. 100mSv is start of detectable cancer risk. So the risk for 1 scan is basically 0.

Secondly, someone has medical power of attorney over the non-functional autistics. And in reality, they are the ones at most need of (almost passive) study to help them. Us high functioning autistics dont need anywhere near the help.. And we have no way to know an Aspergers and traditional autism are even similar, other than the spectrum brigade keeps adding more and more under 'autism'.

Simply put, guardian says yes to do a single scan a year, and I see no problem with it. More than 1 a year, and we start getting into potential damage. Maybe with some pie-in-the-sky-IRB whatif situation, sure. But 1 scan/yr has no demonstrable damage.

I imagine it was a lot easier to get this version where the study participants can consent for themselves past an ethics panel. Now that there's a result suggesting something of value might be learned, there's a stronger argument for studies with greater ethical risk.

I am not sure what conclusion you would like us to draw from this. Presumably it is simpler to get people for this sort of study if you can, y’know, ask them. Next step would be to repeat the study with a larger group, eventually adding also those, who really really need help. I doubt there’s a Noble waiting for someone for creating a drug that helps a chap who likes trains to look you into eyes while they are speaking to you.

> boosting glutamate won't work.

You would not want to boost glutamate. It's the opposite. You want to reduce glutamate and/or increase GABA. The problem is overexcitation, not underexcitation.

The reason the number of receptors might be low in the first place is downregulation from too much glutamate.

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