Why eye contact over stimulates people with autism

One of the hallmark signs of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is the avoidance of eye contact with others. This is typically interpreted as social avoidance or indifference. But the truth is, people with autism need social connection just like the rest of us. It’s just that things such as eye contact cause their brains to short circuit from too much activity. People with autism say eye contact is stressful and uncomfortable, and some even say it “burns.”

Harvard Medical School researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital have been investigating this phenomenon and discovered neurological clues to what makes eye contact so stressful for people with autism.

Their main finding was the inability to make eye contact does not mean lack of concern or interest in other people. Instead, eye contact over stimulates areas of the brain responsible for reading emotions in other people’s faces.

This area of the brain is called the subcortical system and is the layer beneath the cerebral cortex, the folded outer layer of the brain that plays a role in consciousness and thought.

Direct and sustained eye contact and emotional facial expressions of others activate the subcortical system to respond. This development begins in infancy as the newborn instinctually orients to human faces. But for the person with autism, these avenues of connection over activate the subcortical system and raise stress levels.

Using an MRI to scan autistic brains

The researchers used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to measure how different brains respond to facial expressions.

In both subjects with autism and the neurotypical control subjects, being able to freely choose to view facial expressions activated the subcortical system in similar ways.

However, the results varied quite a bit when both groups were constrained to viewing only the eye area of faces. Looking at the eyes of happy, angry, and neutral faces over activated the subcortical region in subjects with autism. This over activation was especially heightened when looking at the eyes of scared faces.

The researchers hypothesize autism creates an imbalance between networks in the brain that perform activating and inhibiting functions in the brain.

In a neurotypical brain, balance between these two systems maintains a calm equilibrium.

This imbalance creates a neurologically triggered aversion to both eye contact and facial expressions and thus abnormal development of the social brain.

Additionally, newer research shows we can see early signs of autism risk in newborns — these babies’ brains struggle with reading faces and making eye contact well before they are old enough to exhibit more obvious signs. This further inhibits proper development of social interaction.

Neurologically appropriate ways to connect with autism

This study shows why behavioral therapy techniques that force a child with autism to maintain eye contact can be extremely stressful and neurologically inappropriate.

The researchers suggest a more effective and less triggering approach may be gradual habituation to eye contact over time to gently strengthen and relax the over active subcortical region.

In functional neurology we use many techniques to identify areas of imbalance in children with autism and gently rehabilitate those areas. Functional neurology frequently produces significant improvements in quality of life in these individuals. Ask my office for more information.

Why childhood autism, ADHD, Tourette’s, and OCD so common

Does your child have ADHD, autism, Tourette’s, OCD, dyslexia, learning disabilities, or another brain-based disorder? Or are you having second thoughts about conceiving because the risks of giving birth to a child who develops autism, ADHD, or other brain development disorders is so much higher today?

Some couples today are choosing not to have children because the risk of autism, ADHD and other disorders is so much higher today. Autism and ADHD rates continue to rise and ADHD now affects 11 percent of children. Research shows environmental and lifestyle factors influence childhood brain development and many cases can be prevented prior to conception if parents tend to their immune health.

Environmental and lifestyle influences on genes


A parent’s diet, physical activity, stress hormone levels, immune health, and exposure to environmental chemicals can affect a child’s brain development beginning in utero.

This is called epigenetics—when environmental factors influence gene expression. It doesn’t mean genes are mutated, but instead diet and lifestyle determine whether genes turn on or off. If we turn off the genes for healthy brain development in the mother or the father before conception, those genes can pass on to the children in the turned-off position. Researchers have been able to trace this in up to 11 generations.

Simply improving the maternal diet before pregnancy can alter gene expression in the offspring and their susceptibility to certain diseases for up to four or five generations. Epigenetics means couples can reduce the risk of giving birth to a child who will develop a disorder by choosing dietary and lifestyle factors that favor healthy brain development.

Using functional neurology to help children’s brains


We can also positively influence genes after the child is born by removing inflammatory foods, supporting good nutrition and brain health, and activating specific areas of the brain to recover missed stages of development (such as learning to crawl) in functional neurology.

Early childhood milestones are vital to proper brain development and meeting them too late, too soon, or not at all is typical for many children with autism, ADHD, and other brain development disorders. Functional neurology is yielding unprecedented results in these arenas.

Dropped connections in the brain

The human brain is divided into two hemispheres that work together. It is the ability of the human brain to fire in both hemispheres simultaneously that distinguishes us from other species. The slightest disruption in the timing of this firing can have devastating affects on brain function. In autism, ADHD, Tourette’s, OCD, and other brain development disorders the brain is extremely good at firing short-range connections within one hemisphere of the brain, which may make a child gifted in particular areas, such as math.

However, we see poor simultaneous firing of long-range connections between the left and right hemispheres. This poor long-range firing is also evidenced by a smaller than normal corpus callosum in children with autism, the bridge between the left and right hemispheres across which communication travels. This poor long-range firing can begin in utero or during the first few years of life due to epigenetic influences.

The left brain is responsible for math, sciences, and language, whereas the right brain is responsible for art, creativity, and social skills. Brain disorders such as autism and ADHD are left brain dominant issues, which explains why a student might do well in school but have no social or relationship skills.

As a result of this lopsided stimulation, one side of the brain may become over developed while the other side never catches up to normal, which makes communication between the two sides difficult. It’s like a brand new computer trying to communicate with an old, outdated computer.

Imbalanced development of the autonomic nervous system, which governs our “fight or flight,” “rest and digest,” or “freeze” mechanisms is another factor that affects the development of the brain. These imbalances can be seen as early as in newborns by a practitioner who understands early brain development.

In autism, ADHD, Tourette’s, and OCD, we see a left brain that is overdeveloped compared to a weaker right brain. This explains why these children have unusually strong skills in some areas and unusually weak skills in others. Dyslexia or learning and processing disorders are examples of right brain over development. Researchers have been able to identify these imbalances by looking at how different areas of the brain vary in size, electrical imbalances, and concentrations of blood flow.

Although this is an overly simplified explanation, it introduces you the concepts of how subtle imbalances early in life can lead to significant brain disorders as the child matures.

Ask my office for advice on how functional neurology can help you improve your child’s brain before you even conceive, or help rehabilitate your child’s brain if you suspect a brain development disorder.

Is being stuck in “fight or flight” wrecking your health?

When something stressful happens, our body goes into “fight or flight” mode, pumping out stress hormones, raising blood pressure and pulse, and shunting blood away from the organs and towards the limbs. When the stress is over, a healthy body bounces back and returns to normal.

Unfortunately, many people are stuck in fight-or-flight mode. This is especially true in people dealing with a chronic health or brain disorder, as their health itself is a chronic stressor in a self-perpetuating vicious cycle.

The autonomic nervous system, which runs such bodily functions as digestion, heart beat, breathing, etc., consists of two arms:

• The sympathetic system, also known as the fight-or-flight system.
• The parasympathetic system, also known as rest-and-digest system.

When you're in a life-or-death situation, you don't need to digest, detoxify, or regenerate cells — duties for the parasympathetic rest-and-digest system. The priority is simply to keep you alive. Once you’re safe, the parasympathetic system kicks back in.

The problem is modern life has many of us on hyper drive, in what feels like an ongoing attack. This keeps us in sympathetic mode longer than we should be.

Causes of chronic fight-or-flight mode

It’s not just daily stress that can keep a person stuck in sympathetic mode. It could be stress from the past that has been hardwired into your brain, a concept referred to as negative plasticity. The neuron pathways in your brain have become highly efficient at stress so it takes less and less to trigger a stress response.

The most common example of this is post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. It can also come from long periods of overwork and sleep deprivation that have essentially trained your brain to be agitated all the time, even though your health is being sacrificed.

Signs of chronic sympathetic stress

Signs you are stuck in sympathetic mode include problems with sleep, anxiety, blood sugar issues (even with a blood-sugar-balancing diet), sexual dysfunction, brain fog, memory issues, fatigue, difficulty recovering from exercise or stressful events, getting sick easily, and chronic pain.

Chronic sympathetic stress not only creates negative plasticity, it also damages the gut lining, leading to intestinal permeability, or leaky gut. This allows undigested foods, bacteria, yeast, and other pathogens into the bloodstream, where they trigger inflammation. This chronic inflammation is the foundation to many health maladies.

Getting out of chronic sympathetic stress mode

The most obvious first step to managing sympathetic stress is to address the cause of stress. The cause can be metabolic, such as chronic infection, blood sugar issues, hormone deficiencies, inflammation, or undiagnosed autoimmunity.

Or it can be lifestyle, such as a toxic job or relationship, not sleeping enough, or taking on too much to do and never taking time off.

Another commonly overlooked cause is a brain-based disorder. The less healthy or more degenerated the brain is, the less able it is to dampen sympathetic stress.

If you suffer from brain fog, memory loss, poor cognitive skills, and lack of brain endurance, you may also find you’re often in fight-or-flight mode.

Problems with your vestibular (inner ear) system or cerebellum, both of which play a role in balance, can cause chronic sympathetic stress because the brain is constantly feeling unbalanced.

People may also have issues with the basal ganglia — which acts as the gas and brake pedal of the brain — that keeps them chronically stressed out. These are just a few ways in which a brain-based disorder can contribute to sympathetic stress.

In functional neurology we look at all facets of health to help you unwind sympathetic stress. Sometimes the issue can be as simple as removing certain foods from your diet that are inflaming your body and brain, gluten being the most common.

Other times it takes a neurological exam and some sleuthing to determine whether the issue is brain-based. Often it is a combination of metabolic and brain-based causes.

Ask my office how we can help get you out of chronic sympathetic stress and into a more balanced neurological state that includes plenty of restful and restorative parasympathetic activation.

Those strange functional neurology exam tools…

When you go for your first functional neurology exam, you’ll likely encounter exam procedures and tools not found a conventional doctor’s visit. Although high-tech equipment isn’t necessary for a functional neurology exam, it can help the practitioner perform a more thorough evaluation.

For the patient, the functional neurology exam may include wearing strange goggles, being spun in a chair, following dots of light on the wall, and standing on a platform that records your micro-movements.

Whether you’ve had a brain injury, or are struggling with poor brain function or other brain-based disorders, all of these tests can help identify problem areas and direct customized rehabilitation.

Videonystagmography (VNG)

Videonystagmography (VNG) is an exam procedure that involves wearing infrared goggles to video record the movement of the eyes in response to various movements and tasks (such as being slowly spun in a chair, head position changes, following a visual target). This test detects abnormalities in the vestibular system.

The vestibular system, which involves the inner ear, eyes, and brain, tells you where you are in space. It plays an important role in keeping you stable and aware of where you are in relation to the environment. Poor vestibular function also plays a role in anxiety, irritability, and mood instability.

The vestibular system is fragile and easily damaged from head injury, falls, whiplash, or blows to the body. Common symptoms of vestibular problems include poor balance, dizziness, motion sickness, and anxiety.

By examining the movement of the eyes in both darkness and light and in response to various movements and stimuli, VNG testing can determine whether symptoms are coming from the brain, the vestibular system, or both. Knowing this helps the functional neurologist create customized rehabilitation techniques that target specific areas of dysfunction.

Computerized Dynamic Posturography (CDP)

Computerized dynamic posturography (CDP) involves standing on different types of surfaces and following simple instructions (such as look left, look right, look up, close your eyes). This testing measures how you respond to different balance challenges, which identifies areas of the brain not functioning properly.

Gait Analysis

Gait analysis simply involves having the practitioner observe your gait when you walk. You may be asked to challenge your brain while walking by counting backwards by sevens or reciting every other letter of the alphabet. You also may be asked to walk by placing one foot directly in front of the other, touching heel to toe, to make balance harder. Your walking stance, arm swing, posture, and balance all give clues to areas of brain dysfunction.

Metabolic Assessment

Your brain can only be as healthy as its internal environment. Your diet, lifestyle, stress levels, hormone balancing, gut health, blood sugar, and more all play a significant role in your brain health and function.

We also use your symptoms to assess the activity of the neurotransmitters, brain chemicals that relay communication between neurons. For instance, low serotonin is involved in depression and low dopamine in lack of motivation. This is also called functional neurochemistry. Functional neurology is a multi-faceted discipline that includes brain assessment and rehabilitation in total health care. Ask my office for more information.