Temple Grandin, an autistic woman involved in autism activism, described her inability to understand the social communication of neurotypicals, or people with typical neural development, as leaving her feeling "like an anthropologist on Mars". They may also not pick up on body language or social cues such as eye contact and facial expressions if they provide more information than the person can process at that time. They struggle with understanding the context and subtext of conversational or printed situations, and have trouble forming resulting conclusions about the content. This also results in a lack of social awareness and atypical language expression. How facial expressions differ between those on the autism spectrum and neurotypical individuals is not clear. Further, at least half of autistic children have unusual prosody.Autistic people may also experience difficulties with verbal communication. Differences in communication may be present from the first year of life, and may include delayed onset of babbling, unusual gestures, diminished responsiveness, and vocal patterns that are not synchronized with the caregiver. In the second and third years, autistic children have less frequent and less diverse babbling, consonants, words, and word combinations; their gestures are less often integrated with words. Autistic children are less likely to make requests or share experiences, and are more likely to simply repeat others words (echolalia). Joint attention seems to be necessary for functional speech, and deficits in joint attention seem to distinguish infants with ASD.
Mitochondrial myopathies are types of myopathies associated with mitochondrial disease. On biopsy, the muscle tissue of patients with these diseases usually demonstrate "ragged red" muscle fibers. These ragged-red fibers contain mild accumulations of glycogen and neutral lipids, and may show an increased reactivity for succinate dehydrogenase and a decreased reactivity for cytochrome c oxidase. Inheritance was believed to be maternal (non-Mendelian extranuclear). It is now known that certain nuclear DNA deletions can also cause mitochondrial myopathy such as the OPA1 gene deletion. There are several subcategories of mitochondrial myopathies. Signs and symptoms
Signs and symptoms include (for each of the following causes):

Mitochondrial encephalomyopathy, lactic acidosis, and stroke-like syndrome (MELAS)
Varying degrees of cognitive impairment and dementia
Lactic acidosis
Strokes
Transient ischemic attacks
Hearing loss
Weight loss
Myoclonic epilepsy and ragged-red fibers (MERRF)
Progressive myoclonic epilepsy
Clumps of diseased mitochondria accumulate in muscle fibers and appear as "ragged-red fibers" when muscle is stained with modified Gömöri trichrome stain
Short stature
Kearns–Sayre syndrome (KSS)
External ophthalmoplegia
Cardiac conduction defects
Sensorineural hearing loss
Chronic progressive external ophthalmoplegia (CPEO)
Progressive ophthalmoparesis
Symptomatic overlap with other mitochondrial myopathies

Cause
Zidovudine, an HIV medication can cause red ragged fiber myopathy. Diagnosis
Muscle biopsy: ragged red fibers in Gömöri trichrome stain. Treatment
Although no cure currently exists, there is hope in treatment for this class of hereditary diseases with the use of an embryonic mitochondrial transplant. References


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