more interesting news from the BBC regrding autism

[sesley]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12937009

 

I know son/s brain seems wired differently and has a amazing memory.

[baddad]

Not sure there's anything new to this, is there? Perhaps it's a slow news day?

 

Maybe just the reporting, but the research seems to be overlooking huge numbers of autistic people who aren't visual thinkers - the 'pattern' thinkers and 'language-logic' thinkers (i.e.) Temple Grandin writes about... I think it's okay to talk about 'different wiring', but the researchers shouldn't then try to lump all autistic people as 'identically miswired', which is what they seem to suggest. Saying there's just degrees of what is essentially the same 'type' of different wiring is a huge oversimplification.

 

'Good memory' is a bit misleading too. I think some savants have memories like sponges and a ram system that can access all of those memories at (reasonable) appropriate times, but I think the major difference is in the 'recall' part, not the memory itself. Many autistic people (and NT people too come to that) have heads full of 'rubbish', but lack the kind of access to information that most people can use appropriately. Sitting a history exam, for example, the difference between the kid who gets an 'A' because he can remember every date, fact, and figure and the names of all the major players in a particular historical period and the one who gets an 'F' 'cos he can only remember some piece of Trivia like the name of Oliver Cromwell's cat isn't necessarily a 'wiring' issue. Both brains are likely to have approximately the same information - or capacity for information - but the difference lies in how they store it, the significance the 'conscious' brain attaches to it and the effectiveness of the retrieval mechanism /filing system attached to it. Someone like Temple Grandin will be labelled an 'autistic' genius, while a nuerotypical person with a string of firsts from Oxbridge will be labelled just 'genius'. Someone who shows precisely the same skills for recall, organisation and interpretation but with regard to, say, clothes they and their immediate family have worn every day since 1977 will attract a very different label! And maybe someone with a learning disability has all the capacity, but a completely compromised retrieval system(?)

 

L&P

 

BD

Edited April 5, 2011 by baddad

[puffin]

I saw this on the news - I think that the bit that is new is that they have actually identified differences in the brains of autistic people

[coolblue]

They are always identifying differences in the brains of autistic people.

 

But,as baddad points out, the one thing we can be sure of about autistic people is that they are different - to each other. So are the differences they've found this time going to give us any insight into the brains of all autistic people? Probably not.

 

You can tell, from an autistic person's behaviour, which bits of their brain would be *different*. You can get a pretty good idea, from *anyone's* behaviour - autistic or not - which bits of their brain are going to be different. London taxi drivers tend to have an enlarged hippocampus - involved in spatial memory. Well, there's a surprise!

 

If an autistic person has nystagmus, or visual hyperacuity or poor control of eye movements they will have a lot of activity in their occipital lobes (visual areas) because they will be doing a lot of processing there as their visual system doesn't get consistent visual input and has to work extra hard to co-ordinate it all.

 

cb

[GaryS]

Not sure there's anything new to this, is there? Perhaps it's a slow news day?

 

Maybe just the reporting, but the research seems to be overlooking huge numbers of autistic people who aren't visual thinkers

 

Really??

 

 

while a nuerotypical person with a string of firsts from Oxbridge

 

 

Seems like a contradiction in terms to me!

[baddad]

Really??

 

 

 

 

Seems like a contradiction in terms to me!

 

Nope - not 'getting' either of those?

 

1. Are you saying the research doesn't miss out autistics who aren't visual thinkers, or expressing your opinion that it does miss them out, but you're not surprised by that, or expressing your opinion that all autistics are visual thinkers, or something else entirely?

 

2. Is this meant humorously? An oxymoron stylee joke that a nuerotypical couldn't achieve a string of firsts at Oxbridge, and therefore anyone who does must by definition be autistic?

 

 

L&P

 

BD

[GaryS]

1. I was surprised at "research seems to be overlooking huge numbers..."

 

2. Kind of yes; extending my implication that original thought is an autistic process but of course it is not necessary to demonstrate original thought to obtain "firsts", perfect recall and all that.