In autism, the cerebellum is hypoactive and does not have as many purkinje cells and this impacts motor skill development, emotional regulation, short term memory, spatial awareness, and many other things.
In autism, the cerebellum is hypoactive and does not have as many purkinje cells and this impacts motor skill development, emotional regulation, short term memory, spatial awareness, and many other things.
In this episode, I talk about what I've struggled with and acknowledge these struggles and vulnerabilities that I experience and likely will continue to experience in my life.
Today I'm going to be talking about how the cerebellum is impacted in autism and some of the issues that this creates.
The cerebellum is the part of the brain known as the "little brain" or mini-brain. It is less than 10% of the brain's overall volume, however, it contains greater than 50% of the brain's total neurons!
There are believed to be cells inside the cerebellum called Purkinje cells—cells which are deficient in autism. And so not only are there reduced Purkinje cells, but there are also reduced connections of the cerebellum, which is in the back of the brain.
It is located pretty much if you put your hand on the back of your neck and then move up—that is the start of the basal ganglia, which has then connections to the cerebellum. And so both the basal ganglia and cerebellum are impacted in autism.
The cerebellum is the part of the brain responsible for motor skills and motor skill development.
So what does this look like in someone's daily life? For me, it means that for most of my life I would constantly run into things—even things that I already know are there. Every day, pretty much once a day, I'll hit my elbows on the walls, or I'll trip over things, or I'll bruise myself from running into the corners, hitting couches. I literally have bruises on my body every single week because of the impact that the cerebellum has!
In autism, the cerebellum is hypoactive (hypo meaning not enough), and so this creates a lot of problems. For me, it is part of the reason why my depth perception is so bad. If I'm—suppose I'm going to jump over something, my idea of how far that distance is, is like completely off. So I might overshoot and jump too far, or I might undershoot and not jump far enough. As someone who loves to hike, this has presented a problem more than once! And it also means that I'm constantly hurting myself. It's an unfortunate reality for me that unless I do exercises specifically targeting my cerebellum to increase connections, then I go through life hurting myself and hitting things and not having good reaction time.
The cerebellum also controls reaction time, which is why a lot of autistic people either can't drive or struggle with driving. Because when you have reduced reaction time, driving is really scary—it's quite terrifying! Because if you know you don't have good reaction time, you have to drive defensively and do whatever you can to give yourself enough time and space to react to new traffic conditions.
And driving in general being as risky as it is—cars constantly cutting in front of you, especially in some of the bigger cities—it's not always easy for autistic people to learn how to drive, or even if you can learn how to drive, to do it well because of that delayed reaction time.
The cerebellum impacts so much more than most people think. It can even tie into social skills as well—that's something I'm still studying and learning more about (it's not the main part of the brain for social skills, but it is linked).
The cerebellum also is linked to:
Emotional regulation and inhibiting impulsive decision-making.
Working memory: Short-term memory issues are no joke. I struggled for so long with trying to remember basic things about where did I park my car, where did I set my sunglasses. I would lose things all the time, every single day—my mom would get so frustrated with me! And no one really understood that this is a fundamental part of my brain wiring.
What happened is that in order for me to get past it, I had to create routines and I had to create habits around everything: where do I put my keys? On the hook. Where do I put this? There. If I don't put it there, it's gone, it's lost.
And just knowing you can't rely on your short-term memory, it's really stressful. It's really stressful to not be able to remember things, especially things you want to remember. Suppose you have a friend that you think is really cool, and he tells you when his birthday is, and you want to remember it because you want to get him a birthday present. But he says the date, and immediately you don't remember it unless you come up with some memory algorithm for remembering it! I like to take the digits of the date, add it up, and see if there's any patterns—if I can somehow make the memory as weird as possible, then there's a higher chance I might remember.
All of this is caused by the deficiencies in the cerebellum, but there are certain exercises that I do that make a huge improvement. Jumping on the trampoline every day for like 15 to 20 minutes can rebuild the connections in the cerebellum which are deficient in autism.
I've been trying this and it's literally been life-changing! I'm starting to remember things. On the days where I jump on the trampoline, I don't bruise myself and scratch myself on everything, and I'm more spatially aware of where I am and what's going on. But on the days where I don't do the trampoline, it's like back to the usual. And it's sad, honestly, that the usual for me means hurting myself—I'm so tired of just bonking my head on random places, even when you think that there's no possible risk, I'll still somehow find a way to hit my head on stuff or hit my elbows on stuff.
And I'm not telling you this to complain; I'm telling you this to illuminate that this is a really huge problem in the autistic community: spatial awareness. Not only spatial awareness of our bodies—spatial awareness in regards to other people, how close you should stand to other people, how far you should stand from other people, when is the first distance when you should interact with other people.
I think that the cerebellum impact is very understated in autism. Like, this is—this is the biggest problem in autism: that this part of the brain doesn't work right, because it's linked to so many things. It's linked to emotional regulation, which means that if something happens, you don't just start panicking or freaking out.
One way that I found to improve emotional regulation a lot—tremendously, even—is a meditation practice, and so that's why I meditate every day. That's kind of what got me into yoga, and being a musician helps a lot because when you're in a really deep state of making music, it is very similar to a meditation! And meditation can improve overall global brain communication, which is deficient in autism.
So these are a few solutions that I've found to help, but it's still not—it's still not 100%. I engage in extremely intense cardio sport every week because I'm trying to build up my cerebellum. I joined a dance class because—like, I joined it at the time because I liked it and I needed some type of stimulation (I didn't know that then), but looking at it now, it makes perfect sense that I would have picked a sport where I'm jumping a lot and moving my body and getting that vestibular stimulation, which is so important in autism!
Really, any act of jumping up and down vertically is going to have a huge positive effect on the cerebellum, and anyone who's autistic, I highly recommend: if you're not jumping every day, you should, you definitely should! Whether you have a trampoline or not, that's okay—jump roping could do the same thing, or just jumping up and down on your feet. I'd say trampoline is probably the easiest way to get around this because you don't have to put in as much effort to get the same type of vertical movements, but any kind of jumping is extremely useful.
The cerebellum also impacts not only emotional processing, but:
Social withdrawal
Blended emotional expression
Impulsivity
I don't know if you've ever met an autistic person who will just blurt out the first thing that comes to their mind—well, this is tied to the cerebellum as well! The cerebellum is literally linked to so many parts in the brain. Think about that: more than 50% of the neurons in your brain are in this cerebellum. 50%! That's a huge, huge aspect of your life. This is an aspect that most people are completely unaware of because theirs works, but in autism it doesn't work properly. And not only does that affect the cerebellum, but it affects all the connections around the cerebellum too, like the basal ganglia and several other parts of the brain that are linked to the cerebellum.
In particularly bad cases, cerebellum damage can actually cause tremors, muscle spasms, and like total misalignments of bodily awareness. So if I say, "Okay, close your eyes and then touch your nose," most of you could do this just fine. But for someone who's autistic—maybe level two or level three—this would not necessarily be an easy task! Because in order to close your eyes and touch your nose, you first have to:
Know where your nose is in space.
Know where your finger is in space.
And so there's also some cerebellum exercises—you can look it up on YouTube if you're interested—where you touch different dots, go back to the first dot, like you stare at one dot and then you touch other dots. There's a video describing this if any of you are interested in some cerebellum exercises.
It's still something that we struggle with; it's not easy to solve. And I think that it's really important to admit your vulnerabilities and your struggles, because pretending like we don't have struggles or not talking about it doesn't improve awareness of these issues.
You can't bypass what you're experiencing; you have to go head-on, right through it. I know the cerebellum is something that I struggle with and probably will continue to struggle with through most of my life. However, I have found that if I create specific habits in my life—my workout plan, jumping every single day on the trampoline, meditation—these habits tremendously improve the brain wiring to the point where I can get through life in a much easier way.
Does that mean that I'm not still autistic, and that it's not sometimes disabling? No, it doesn't mean that. But it does mean that I am going to do whatever it takes to find ways to make life easier for me, and to be able to heal my brain and heal these connections which are hypoactive in autism.