Mirror Mirror on the wall, who is the most beautiful neuron of us all?

... It's not me anyway because in all likelihood my mirror neurons are not functioning how they should be!

I have a form of high functioning autism. Are we on a break through here? Do we have the first mental disorder that will be diagnosed with fMRI and EEG?

Once again we have extreme proof that people like me lack empathy. Emapthy, a word that represents goodness and something we desire. So having lack of it is bad and evil.

Does anybody else worry just like me about the ethics of "measuring empathy" ?

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http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicaln...

I have read about this study and have some gripes. For starters, I can't get past the fact that the sample size was only 10 children. Even the most lax statistician would argue it's validity. Secondly, it makes no mention as to the ages of both sets of children. It is known that autism is a developmental disability. That does not mean that development doesn't occur, but development may occur at times that differ from the typical population. Activity in this part of the brain may develop later in childhood, adolescence or even adulthood. This study indicates that development won't occur because the brain is defective.

To me, this study seems to be jumping the gun a little but so does everything coming out recently regarding autism. Everyone wants to be the one to identify the cause of autism so the studies are rushed to publication and the testing usually doesn't stand up to peer reviewed scrutiny. This is unfortunate as the only purpose it serves is to put more bad information out there. We both know there is enough junk science being applied to autism.

As far as ethics are concerned, there is no way to stop trying to identify what makes autistics autistic whether it is right or wrong. There are tons of studies going on and most are well funded. It is a mystery to science so I support the efforts in that regard. What troubles me is what will happen when the elusive cause is identified. As of now, it seems that Autism is a genetic variation and not environmentally induced. Based on my own research, I agree that it is genetic. My family is loaded with Auties, too. However, America has a terrible track record when genetic variations are identified. Ask anyone with Downs. Since the prenatal screening became available, 90% of them have been aborted in the name of compassion despite the fact their quality of life is pretty good now. I see an autism prenatal test on the horizon and I fear the results will be much the same. There is an eugenics movement going on disguised as progress and nobody seems to notice. Scary stuff indeed.

I believe empathy has a lot to do with a persons natural dispotion. For people who don't suffer a menta illness there is not set amount of empathy a person should have. Some people are very empathetic and some people are just plain cold, not to say that a mental illness would not play a huge part in this, but its not the main factor.