bad opinion on temple grandin

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Yeah, as far as I know (correct me if I'm wrong) she's quite pro-meds and I remember reading something like "for ASD people videogames are drugs for the eyes". These two facts alone guarantee her my eternal dislike.

I've met Temple Grandin. Now, there's a savant. She has done so much for those of us with Asperger's and autism that I can easily forgive her for any faults. Hmm, come to think of it, I may have a few faults too......Nah.
If Bill Gates is not aspie, he sure does a good job playing one. I met a dentist who knew him as a kid and she remarked that he was one odd kid. Read the book "I Sing The Body Electric." to see what it's like to have a savant aspie boss. When he went to Rwanda and met President Kagame, he was wearing a sports coat and baseball cap while Presidents Clinton and Kagame were wearing black tuxedoes.

Hey Marty,

I'm not saying Eistein wasn't autistic (let's see, he couldn't tie his shoes but look at that mathematical genius!)... BUT what I am saying, it is NOT fact.

When they dissected his brain, that you mentioned, when was this? Where is that report? Because as far as I know, when he died, they didn't go out of their way to look for autism in him So Far, the reports I have seen have been suggestive based on anecdotal evidence only.

Time for another history lesson, boys and girls.

While Dr. Asperger did indeed describe the syndrome he called "atypical autistic psychosis" in the 1940s, his research was effectively buried for decades - first because he did his work in Vienna during that period, which got him labeled a "Nazi scientist", then later because Skinnerian behaviorist nonsense became such a strong fad amongst psychologists, especially the armchair variety (as if a person could be programmed and reprogrammed as easily as a computer). Then came Bettelheim and his "refrigerator mother" noise, which meant that only the most severe, hardest-to-ignore cases of autism were properly diagnosed (because nobody wants their parenting skills criticized, and that's what the Bettelheim hypothesis meant about autism).

It wasn't until Lorna Wing chose the autism spectrum for her doctoral work in the late '70s that she uncovered Asperger's earlier work; her doctoral dissertation wasn't published until the '80s sometime, and Asperger's Syndrome didn't make it into the DSM until the fourth edition, in 1994 (meaning that prior to 1994, AS wasn't even a diagnosis in the US).

Albert Einstein died in 1955. Since he could talk and didn't wet his pants, no one even knew to look for "autistic traits"in his brain. However, his brain was dissected and analyzed (without permission, but hey). The inferior parietal region was found to be rather larger than normal, with a statistically significant increase in the number of glial cells in the left inferior parietal - an area commonly used, in MRI imaging, with association of different sensory inputs. Couple this with Einstein's observation that his thought patterns were primarily visual, rather than verbal or conceptual, and his apparent behavior patterns, and it becomes possible to assign at least a likelihood of a differential diagnosis of AS or HFA. Such a diagnosis was not available when he was alive, sadly.

Okay, but why can I NOT find the actual report of his dissection, news story, something other than someone mentioning that this has happened? Where is the actual first report of findings? Is it not online? That's possible. I like to read things like that myself.

And while Xray and MRI cannot right now identify Autism brain "abnormalities" for want of a better word, MRI imaging DOES show some differences from an NT brain. The research is ongoing... and VERY exciting

http://www.dana.org/news/cerebrum/detail.aspx?id=3032

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein%27s_brain

thank you lelia, reading now.

Making generalizations, as Temple Grandin did or has done, is a highly human trait we all possess and don't think it should be viewed so negatively.

I found this document interesting, particularly in association with the savant/autism issue. In my own case, I have both autism and suffered a brain injury at birth.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... ?full=true

Quote from document:

Extraordinary talents

GLOBALLY there are around 100 "prodigious savants", who show one remarkable skill in complete isolation to their other mental functions. Savants either have autism or have suffered brain damage at birth or later in life, and their general intelligence, excepting their remarkable skill, is poorer than average. Some have photographic memories of complex scenes and can draw or sculpt unbelievably accurate representations. Others can calculate numbers, squares, primes or calendar dates. Some can remember entire books and some can rattle off a piano concerto after a single hearing. Yet others can draw perfect circles. What leads to such islands of intelligence?

There are many theories. Savants always have amazing recall in some sphere or other, though the neuropsychological basis of this is not clear. Some researchers claim that practice, which is clearly obsessive and focused in some savants, could explain their skills. Others believe that developmental errors in the brain leave a few rare people with an incredible focus on detail, while losing the more general view. This might be because of damage, or perhaps an unusual pattern of connectivity in the left hemisphere, which sees the big picture, with overcompensation by the more detail-conscious right. Certainly, injury to the left hemisphere can lead to symptoms of autism, and MRI scans of people with autism suggest differences in white matter, with hyperconnectivity in some regions but fewer connections overall.

However, research by Allan Snyder from the Centre for the Mind in Sydney, Australia, has convinced him that savant-like skills lie within us all. He believes they result from a shutting down of some of the higher-order, "rule-based" cognition, which usually makes thinking more efficient and generalisable. These higher cortical functions normally turn large amounts of basic subconscious information into useful conscious concepts. Snyder has used transcranial magnetic stimulation - a blast of magnetic pulses that temporarily and harmlessly interrupts higher brain functions - to inactivate a small area of the cortex in volunteers, who he then asks to draw, proof-read or perform difficult calculations. He claims that this improves these skills in ordinary people. If Snyder is correct, the outer limits of some of our memory and information-processing capacities may only be revealed when parts of the brain are inactivated.

Savant-like skills may result from shutting down higher-order cognition

that is interesting. My oldest son has HFA/Asperger's. He also suffered brain injury at birth. He doesn't (yet) show any savant skills though but definitely interesting nonetheless!

I had a brain injury at birth as well as have HFA. Nope, no savant skills either.

Darn out luck

But we're still pretty awesome people nonetheless.

And while generalizations are generally speaking a human trait, doesn't mean they're right (or wrong, depending on context).