Fuuuck, my depression seems to be rapidly alleviating after the breakthrough, but these incredibly OCD rapid thought patterns are coming back where I'm just going through all the major subjects I've read over the years, the things I thought mattered most in life, and processing it to come up with new things, develop my understand. Just a constant rapid fire barrage, and as some of you may remember my thoughts were really really out there at times.
Right now I'm thinking about my understanding of autism and pharmacology, neuroscience, any relevant fields.
I'm afraid that if I actually do recover with Nardil, which commonly causes hypomania (not necessarily a bad thing) I won't be able to contain it. I had severe insomnia and other sleep problems when younger. I could end up like some people who just sleep 5 hours a day and the rest they're just obsessively pursuing their passion at a manic speed, then they collapse exhausted and start the cycle over again. I could need a massive dose of sedatives just to be able to sleep if I want to prevent myself from going insane.
Lanny, if this happens make me your muse and hire me for a startup. You can have control of it and most of the pay, but no sexual favors as a benefit package because of the immense trouble mixing work and personal life can cause, particularly in startups.
I've gotta crack this thing. The information and understanding is still there. The neuroscience, neurological differences that have been confirmed, countless papers, understanding of so many drugs, the neurotransmitter and their implications, insufficient synaptic pruning, a deficit in the GABAergic pathway which leads to an effective imbalance between it and the brains primary excitatory and the most common neurotransmitter glutamate, excessive levels of which are implicated in a variety of modern theories of old disorders, abnormally low levels of serotonin, which I posit do not generally effect mood, but largely modulate various aspects of social behavior, has a strong effect on OCD behavior and thought patterns, and of course there are various subreceptors that each do something different, and most of it is in the gut, which could very likely play a large role in the extreme food sensitivities and other gut issues autistics have. Amygdala hypertrophy, mainly asymmetrical in the region dealing with negative emotions. This causes an amplified response, which along with the deficit in the GABAergic pathway lead to emotional responses that are far overly intense and outside the range of human behavior. If you think about it, the asymmetrical amygdala hypertrophy will cause a response that's mediated by norepinephrine, which makes perfect sense thinking about its principle role in the stress response. It's all based in our evolutionary history, the primitive fight for survival, fear of death in order to live to spread selfish genes, one of the strongest drives and emotional-behavioral responses there is. Norepinephrine abbreviated as NE, the vasoconstriction, contraction of the blood vessels, can be thought of as tightening a hose, the water, blood, goes out with more force. This forces it throughout your body and into your lower extremities, and the extremities are the main tools for survival in those situations, your legs and feet to run and kick, maneuver, climb, your arms to punch and grasp. Going back, of course this drives up your heart rate in order to be able to maintain the elevated flow of blood rate, it's fairly simple mechanics, so your heart beats faster, you breath more rapidly to maintain a level of oxygenation. The hypertensive response also helps keep you from passing out in these incredibly stressful situations because it also forces blood to your brain. Acetylcholine is confirmed to be on average 75% lower, which along with GABA causes the differences in muscle tone, a standard symptom. For example, one of the GABA subreceptors has been specifically implicated in muscle relaxation, this is why a standard effect of benzodiazepines is considerable muscle relaxation. The other effect of anxiety from insufficient effective GABA levels, fear response from the amygdala, and sensory sensitivity, causing extreme discomfort and greatly contributing to the other effects as well. Are you starting to see? It's all synergystic, like an endogenous-exogenously mediated self-perpetuating traumatic cycle. Back to Acetylcholine, it also has a primary function in triggering rem sleep, a clear implication for why the amount of REM is so much lower, and of course you can start to see how all these other factors will contribute to the enormous sleep problems that are common. I've noted before that I either don't dream or barely remember my dreams, and if I do they seem shallow and insignificant, not particularly intense or lucid, and my experimentation with galantamine before bed, which I posted some research/writing about it's use by some in lucid dreaming, commonly considered the most effect supplement there is for it, confirmed that with surprisingly intense and lucid dreams. Back to synapses, you have this insufficient pruning which leads to vastly increased electrical activity and is a principle cause of the extreme sensory issues, to the point where they have to wear earmuffs, sunglasses, and special clothing. You can become uncomfortable in your own skin from it, stimming behaviors are an attempt at self soothing and distraction from this, and an attempt to drown it out. It's also been confirmed that at rest neurological activity is about 40% higher median, once again stemming from synapses, an effective imbalance between glutamate and GABA from the deficit in the GABAergic pathway (something along the line of the process is broken, which masked the importance of this because simply measuring levels of GABA in the brain showed normal levels), this is again related to all these other factors working in conjunction, why autistics retreat into their own inner world, because the world is so overly intense, bombarded by sensory information, that it's completely overwhelming, to the point where other people are drowned out and they don't even respond to their own parents much of the time. This locked in state also amplifies the traumatic cycle I described above, lost in their thoughts replaying trauma over and over. The hypermemory aspect also contributes to this, GABA levels have been shown to have a clear inverse correlation with certain forms of memory. The OCD thought patterns from serotonin and glutamate. The amygdala and it's response is clear, in our evolutionary past you had to navigate enormous landscapes, requiring vast amounts of information. As described above the importance of this fear response makes it clear that, and it is undoubted, that, for example, if you come across a bears den and masturbate you'd better damn well remember to stay away from there in the future. It's like a piece of computer hardware encoding information far more rapidly and effectively than normal, but this can backfire.
Put it together and you have an autistic individual. Even if we haven't found the big bang, one big trigger that causes it all, some vast chain, or it could be very polygenetic, which would make it very difficult to treat, you can still very effectively address these symptoms. I know the clear cocktail of drugs we have available, some experimental or used in animal testing, to alleviate them. The therapy, modifications in environment and interactions with other people, primarily the parents, is also relatively simple and crystal clear.
By god, I wrote that all in one go, a stream of consciousness rant, and there are bound to be some things that I missed, but the main parts are there. There are so many studies I'm able to find because I can recall unique or uncommon strings of words, particularly memorable segments, and then use a simple google boolean search or search on a specific site (The NCBI/PubMed). There's so much data I could pour into this to fully flesh it out the full paper would be immense.
It's the beauty of neuroscience, the attempt to understand ourselves, the primary medium responsible for our perception and interaction (Will and Representation!) with the world, what perceive as consciousness. It's all a chain of causality and if you have the neurological abnormalities, the extreme end of human behavior/traits, that can help you grasp this, despite all the drawbacks, a mediated form of autism (Asperger's) you may be able to contain the enormous complexity and develop a higher level of understanding, a hyper-systemized order of information in your mind.
