Intense world theory

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Does this seem familiar with you?

Yes.

1. yes
2. to.......many..........big.............words...............

This seems a question of balance, in a lot of words. Is there thicker bandwidth connecting some parts of the brain, in some areas? Or, is it because there is thinner wiring in some areas? Is it both? Does one come at the expense of the other? Is there even a correlation there at all? I don't know. But I know neuroscience is trying to find out.

This was really interesting, where did you take the quote from?

Ben

Neuroscience Foundation

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12061489

think Ive also seem connections between amygdala size and fear - will need to find link

Uh. Yeah.

See my thread entitled "Make it stop ..."

It's like my brain is on fire.

I think this is half of what's going on, the other half being that the world human beings are currently born into really is more intense than the environment that existed during the longest time of human evolution. That is, there is more now than there ever was of precisely the sort of things that autistic brains have trouble dealing with -- social pressure, chance/frequency of running into strangers, complex social interactions, having to think of many different things each day, having to do many different things for brief periods of time instead of a few things for long periods of time, bombardment with fragmented bits of information, noise, electric lights, distractions from current activity, space being filled with people and man-made things (i.e. less and less space to be alone with nature), and so on and so forth.

The more hectic the environment becomes that human beings are born into, the greater the proportion of human beings who will find more things going on around them than they can comfortably handle.

I'm not so sure this is the case. I've been in the mountains where there is no visual or auditory evidence of humans. There is a HUGE amount of sensory input there. Many people seem to be oblivious to it but I can get fully absorbed and even overwhelmed by it. Perhaps the difference is that human environments feel chaotic so I prefer the overload of the mountains to that of the city.

This describes my feelings exactly. The modern world, especially all the forced social interactions is torture. Many times I feel like my brain is going to explode. And just as I'm about to finish one day/week/month the same cycle re-starts the next day/week/month. The worst are the holidays and special occassions. Severe information overload that destroys me. How many times over one's lifetime can one spew out the same congratulatory drivel. Why this obsession to celebrate every little stupid event. What pleasure do people get from such stuff is beyond my comprehension.

Last edited by Kon on 18 May 2011, 8:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Very surprisingly, Markram, Markram , and Renaidii's Intense World Theory seems to me to be an exact description of what it's like to be autistic/aspergian. For once, a collection of universal theorists seem to have got it right. I didn't see that coming.

Usually the experts just get it fractionally right, (e.i. Weak Central Coherence, Extreme Male((systemmatizing)) Brain, Left-Hemisphere Encapsalation), and then, due to their own bigotry, phrase everything in the negative, and leave one feeling like garbage to the degree one differs from the neurotypical model. This model is really quite different. And frankly, does make one wonder if, perhaps, one of the authors mightn't have a dog in the fight. (?)

I've no idea about Markram et al's neurochemical and epigenetic assumptions.

But, blow me over, the essential theory seems shockingly sound.

this describes me i feel

Yes, this is intensely familiar.

This definitely sounds plausible. I take antidepressants and the I often described the effect they had as "lowering the volume on the world". I can memorize things quickly and learn quickly, but have difficulty with changes in routine or major life changes. I sometimes feel that my brain is running at a much faster rate than the world around me.

I feel the opposite: that I can't keep up with the speed of the world around me. I wish it would slow down for me. Having said that I also feel that society tends to skim through too much without much depth/analysis. To much breadth and not enough depth/focus.

I think our autistic troubles aren't caused by amount of sensory input but by number of different inputs which we can't integrate into a single whole.
Trees, birds, one bird that produces a somewhat annoying monotonous screech, sunlit snowy mountain tops, wind, subtle sounds of leaves stirred up, sore feet, needing sunglasses, distant sound of water hitting rock, the shape of an odd branch, wanting to make pictures -- I don't have serious trouble experiencing these things more or less simultaneously without getting overwhelmed. Fully absorbed, sure, but that's a good thing.

On the other hand: such people-free locations being hard to find, strangers talking to me and/or crossing my boundaries, car breaking down, a plethora of mechanical noise, when to pay which bills, parents projecting their social ambitions onto their kids, frequently not being able to find back one of the way too many things I own and am supposed to keep track of, smoking myself to death due to anxiety, a myriad of reported unrelated little news events, lies, gossip and superficial appearances, immense amounts of unpredictable aggression between human individuals and collectives, no one really having a clue what humanity as a whole is doing and where it is heading because the human world is fragmented into countless bits and pieces. Why aren't more people overwhelmed by this? Because they lock themselves up into a little bubble, blocking out everything that doesn't fit into their bubble. Autistics can't do that permanently, only temporarily by focusing on a particular subject of interest.