Friday, August 18, 2006

Study: Autism Affects Entire Brain

"New research is challenging the long-held belief that autism affects only those regions of the brain that control social interaction, communication, and reasoning — suggesting, instead, that the disorder affects the entire brain. "

From CBS News.

This is what many of us with the condition would tell you. It goes much further than the diagnostic manuals say, indeed sensory perception has been much ignored until recently.

It also shows that Autism has to be a part of the natural human condition, you cannot cure it without destroying the person.

I and my autism are indissolubly linked, it has advantages and disadvantes but it is all relative. Society is going to have to live with autism just as we have to live with society.


Curly K said...

Hi Laurence, just surfing and happened upon your blog. Really love your take on the various things that make you who you are which is on your homepage. You are so right that if AS causes you to see the pieces rather than the whole that obviously you have the advantage of seeing various options for the whole that the rest of us don't see.

Joseph said...

Reading that article, I was trying to imagine how the researchers might describe the areas in which autistics outperform NTs as NT deficits or "disordered functioning" in NTs.

Their interpretation of autistic deficits as having to do with "complexity" seems premature to me.

ballastexistenz said...

As far as I can tell, it's not "pieces rather than the whole", but it's "pieces rather than only the whole, and possibly seeing different wholes altogether". Subtle but important difference. (Although nobody anywhere is going to see the entire whole of anything.)