High Functioning autism entities

Clinic

HFA is an autism classification where a person exhibits NO intellectual disability, but may exhibit deficits in communication, emotion recognition and expression, and social interaction.

HFA vs Asperger

HFA has a significant delay in the development of Early speech / Language skills, before the age of three years. Asperger syndrome has no language delay.

Further HFA Characteristics are:

• Lower verbal reasoning ability
• Better visual/spatial skills (higher performance IQ)
• Less deviating locomotion (e.g. clumsiness)
• Problems functioning independently
• Curiosity and interest for many different things
• Not as good at empathizing with other people
• Male to female ratio (4:1) much smaller

Comorbidities

• Anxiety, OCD , ADHD and Tourette syndrome
• Association between HFA and criminal behavior is not completely characterized yet.

Cause

• Regions identified in the "social" brain include the amygdala, superior temporal sulcus, fusiform gyrus area and orbitofrontal cortex.
• Further abnormalities have been observed in the caudate nucleus, believed to be involved in restrictive behaviors, as well as in a significant increase in the amount of cortical grey matter and atypical connectivity between brain regions.