People with autism do experience empathy. I'm autistic and I am a HSP. I feel everything all the time. It's very overwhelming.

'Lack of empathy' is such a poor way of framing it. Just because we have difficulty recognizing & defining the emotions of others doesn't mean we don't care!

Hyper-empathy.

We are blessed/cursed with this.

Some say that he still holds that cup till this day.

Small side note: if an adult patient in diagnosis asks to leave their parents out of the process because they won't be of much help, by all means please do humour them. My own diagnosis had been held off for several decades because every time I made an attempt to get what I knew to be true written and stamped on a certificate so I'd qualify for getting help/meds/therapy, the doc insisted that parental input be very important and proceeded to allow them to ruin the diagnosis. "No, my son isn't crazy, he isn't an autist, there never were any problems. I have a perfectly normal son, nothing wrong with him!" Especially among the elderly you're going to find many parents who view having an autistic child, especially one that wasn't diagnosed during childhood, as an accusation of bad parenting, one so strong that they have to deflect it, even to the detriment of the child.

In my experience and as a Autistic woman, with 3 Autistic boys. We have more empathy than neurological people and often end up partnered with narcissistic people, romantically and or friendships.

Especially because we struggle to pick up on obvious social cues, all the whilst believing we are reading the room correctly. And those that avoid narcs tend to get burned in the school system and the sensory overload of it all, with a seamingly low pay off for efforts.

Once the pattern is recognised tho, alot of Autistic people then realize that its more peaceful to isolate to a certain degree.
Once burned, twice shy as they say...

I am autistic and LOVE patterns and repetition.  I'm also a weaver, and can't help but think that long ago when we were still hunters and gatherers (which was a much larger period of time in human evolution than agricultural societies)  that the "skilled" craftspeople probably tended to be those with some form of autism.  Things like weaving, making flints, bows and arrows, pottery etc. all require intense periods of focus for long hours and most of all the repetition.  Most people don't have the patience for these types of tasks and would rather be with the rest of the group socializing, hunting etc. So if each little group had a few people who were very skilled at things like weaving, it would makes sense that this ability to focus and less need of socializing became a trait that stayed in our genome and has stayed with us.

"It's about the dose of social interaction a person needs."

Yes, yes. So much yes.
I hate excess socialising. But doesn't mean I'm not happy to hang out on zoom with a bunch of people. ...Probably about half of whom are every bit as autistic as me.
There's a good analogy with introverts and extroverts, where the main difference is how you recharge your batteries by being alone, or by being with people. We all have different levels of interaction or alone time we can stand.

As a side note, people with very high empathy can be at risk of being taken advantage of by narcissists and predators.

This idea that having autism is just about being different, not worse, is just preposterous. I am autistic, and the very hard life I have had is very much related to my autistic traits.

Being aspie I really wish these vids would start with the lecture and not with the preamble!

I’m an Aspie... people been fkn with my perfect universe since day 1.

My sons and husband are on the spectrum.  I wish they didn't have empathy at the level they do. They have more empathy than any neurotypical people I've met. They just don't express it in the same way and at times they try not to connect because the empathy is overwhelming for them.

Microsoft, the company, at least on the main campus in Redmond, WA, has an entire separate suite for people with autism/Asperger's that is literally designed differently (providing for low noise distractions, privacy, etc.) because the company and beyond that, the field of competing science, really can utilize the special gifts of those whose brains are structured in this way.  Their groups make huge contributions to the R &D side of the company's endeavors.

Omg, he said, "finding them very confusing".  Uh, no. It's he and others who find us very confusing.  We are more repelled than confused. We see what's going on and it's shocking and horrifying. We choose to not participate in what is dysfunctional.  When we are forced to in order to survive it takes a savage toll.

Excellent presentation. I want my 18 year old nephew, who is high functioning autism, to see this. I once told him that it may turn out he is a step forward in human evolution. I didn’t want him to ever think that there was so wrong with him. His behavior today is much more teenager than autistic.

People with Asperger suffer a great deal of anxiety all their lives.  Worried about the pass and future and not being able to express their feeling is exhausting.   Loneliness is the only safe place to be.  Just think why asperger people feel depress ... Man has gone to the moon and medicine still don't figure out how the brain works.

I think we need more research on empathy in autistic females. As an undiagnosed but evidently neurodivergent woman in her late thirties, I can attest to having high awareness of other people’s psychological makeup but, more often than not, nowadays, choosing to disengage socially out of self-respect. In my teens and twenties I would contort myself in order to maintain some level of relevance in several circles of friends. I was on the periphery of all those circles, but at least I had some type of social safety net, however flimsy...Point being, when I was more concerned with surviving than becoming an authentic person, I was more “empathetic.”

What about anxiety in aspies? That is some research worth doing. Especially that anxiety and depression end up causing suicides

The reason that children with ASD tend to look at mouths and not the eyes and/or predomiantly object is that our sympathetic nervous system is wired into the eyes.  The eyes powerfully communicates our sympathetics, our autonomic physiological state/ nervous system (i.e. our emotions).  It is NOT because they have a "preference" in the typical use of that term but rather and simply they "feel" emotionally-sensory overwhelmed!  This is not permnanetly as it were "hard wired" but provisionally wired, meaning that there is an ENORMOUS amount of neuroplasticity. As the child becomes more pleasurably comfortable/ curious and desires to engage with others (i.e. affective feeling of "Relational Safety" rather than sympathetic fight/flight/withdrawal) then, his/her face to face engagement (the FFA fusiform face area of the FG fusiform gyrus) becomes much more neurotypically activated.  This is NOT some sort of speculation.  This is evidenced based fact.  Unfortunately, ithis is NOT generally emphazised!

My two year old son has just being diagnosed with Autism and as a first time father found this very difficult to accept and understand, this lecture has helped to reach a better understanding and appreciate my son is not “Broken” he is just different, thank you 🙏🏻