An Experimental Autism Treatment Cost Me My Marriage
well.blogs.nytimes.com
well.blogs.nytimes.com
- Jack went to trial as a teenager, facing 60 years (!) in prison for chemistry experiments (http://www.masslive.com/localbuzz/index.ssf/2009/06/actionre...)
- John showcasing a guitar that Jack's mother and Jack built for KISS (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXZi4UZjiiI&t=10)
- John's brother is Augusten Burroughs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusten_Burroughs)
I pointed Jack to this thread. I believe he went through same treatment as John at one point if people have questions.
I'll keep up on this thread, and if anyone wants to ask me a question via email you can reach me at jack@lbry.io
Is there any good, reliable source of information on the treatment described? If it started in 2008, I'm surprised I have not seen it mentioned more recently. Are results as reliably dramatic as described?
Many thanks for joining the discussion - much appreciated :-)
How it pertains to autism is very new, I'm not sure what the team has published yet. The finding that I thought was most significant is that TMS provides an instrumental test for autism - although there's a ways to go before it becomes the means of diagnosis. An autistic person has measurably different neuroplasticity than a non autistic person, this low level biological distinction has the potential to take subjectivity out of diagnosis. And it is a big step towards a low level understanding of what autism is, how it can pan out to be a gift or a disability (not mutually exclusive), and how the challenges many autistic people face work on a fundamental level.
Overall, that's a great comment. I really like most autistic people (my wife and son included). I would never consider this procedure for my son because I don't believe it would make him a better person (but the choice is ultimately his).
One minor point, I would like you tocondider the way you talk about the challenges faced by autistic people. Yes, I live with it frequently. However, it is much better to talk about the challenge in the "interface" between autistic and non autistic people. Why? Because the language you choose can create a victim mentality as it implies the challenge isn't a 2 way street. Let me put it another way, I have been the victim of an autistic boss who was a sociopath - until I recognised (and had it confirmed that he was autistic). Then, I understood that he had almost no empathy. The point is that there is a challenge from both sides.
I ask because many other aspects of autism can be much more inhibitive such as hypersensitivity (sensitivity to loud sounds, bright lights, crowded places) and learning disabilities (sometimes seemingly taken by other parts of the brain in the savant cases).
I get that an article about emotions does well in the NYT, but I think that if TMS would 'cure' autism on a lower level, that could really be world changing.
Where would one go to try out TMS? I would be quite interested in finding out what my brain is like so long as it was done in a safe manner.
i want to read more.
i had an experience in 2012 that was very similar to what you describe - it was like something was switched on and suddenly i was sensing other people's emotions.
The regions they target have fairy specific effects. While the most memorable to me dealt with sound, another memorable one made us measurably faster at responding to an emotional categorization test. In this test you have a picture of part of a face (eyes or mouth) flashed in front of you for a split second, and you have to decide which of several emotions it represents as quickly as you can.
In short, TMS can affect vastly more than just emotional blindness. But the research is still young, and it's going to take time for it to be further developed into its full potential.
During the experiment the sequence of regions was switched up between us, I'm not sure we even all had the exact same set of regions tested. They tested many regions, from the frontal cortex to the motor cortex.
>And what kind of TMS parameters？It must have been repetitive TMS, at what frequency？
They were targeting a 1cm^3 portion of the brain with something like 2 pulses per second. I'm not sure what the frequency of the magnetic field in the pulses was, I think fairly high.
Instead they wanted to lock him up and connect him to the boogeyman of the decade. And, in doing so, exposing him to the world at large, including the very kind of people who could convince him to do not-so-good-stuff.
The government is a hammer, people are the nails....
When I was younger, I was awful at reading people. Very shy with others as a result, because I was missing most of the data.
I eventually decided to learn how to read body language. I did some training to recognize expressions, focussed on one skill at a time, and viewed every conversation as practice. I improved to the point that people comment that I'm surprisingly good at reading them.
But the emotions don't hit me the way this author describes. I just....see them.
Granted, I've also practice stoicisim and mindfulness, which explicitly trains you to not worry about things like someone insulting you (or hearing a comment that might be construed as insulting).
But, I've wondered if something is going on. When I was younger, before learning to read people, I read descriptions of Aspergers and it sounded much like me. Now when I read them it sounds not very much like me, because a significant component of those symptom descriptions involve poor social skills.
Thoughts?
I've met a lot of people who describe themselves in such a way.
I think the problem is that the DSM relies on very arbitrary and subjective behavioural signs to diagnose a lot of what it considers a mental illness. That is something that really annoys me about the psychiatric profession. I would be quite keen to see a more mathematical and objectively grounded theory of mental disorder than the vague, hand waved criteria that we have now.
In your case though, I'll quote a character from the Rosie Effect (an amazing book by the way which you might enjoy reading) who said that the main criteria is... pathology. If you are able to maintain an adequate lifestyle (job, education, family, friends) then you're fine. It's only when those "autistic" traits interfere with your life and preclude you from reaching your potential that they're considered abnormal and a diagnosis is apt.
My wife and I had major conflict. My son (at 2) was showing very unusual behaviour. He lacked empathy and my wife felt it was normal. When we got to school, his behaviour exploded into destructiveness. My wife stuck to her guns until someone had the courage to say "he's almost certainly autistic". Then, a few good specialists confirmed it. My wife relented and we helped our son learn to adjust (I focussed heavily on empathy, networking, etc). Now, if we waited until it mattered, he would not be anywhere as capable as he is today. The specialists are amazed at how far he's come. The difference is that people were aware and proactive. They looked for the cues (of which there are many and I see them often - eg. Flapping fingers like a birds wings to release energy/stress).
The DSM isn't perfect, but the industry (well, maybe 1 in 5) does a good job of recognising and managing proactively, not retrospectively.
Much of what we become is hard wired by the time we are 8. The sooner problems are diagnosed and managed, the better.
TL;DR - if you find out when you're going for a job, it's almost certainly too late to influence things.
Yes, you are correct that it is different for children. As adults we can learn to cope and compensate for our weaknesses, but for a child whose mind is very different from the norm it could be nearly impossible to do so without outside intervention. So it's good that you persisted and found him the help that he needed!
I am very critical of the DSM, but that criticism is more due to my tendency towards mathematical purity, and I do agree that there are people helped immensely by it that wouldn't have been otherwise.
However, I also think that if we had better models of the mind, then perhaps we could even help more people. In your case your son was showing some clear signals that allowed several independent specialists to reach the same conclusion. I wonder how many children with less visible signs of autism that nevertheless would have benefited from some form of intervention and assistance in their youth. Perhaps, even, most people have some form of blind spots, be it in social interaction or mathematical aptitude, and a more individualised approach to education would allow all children to grow up maximizing their potential in every area. But I understand that that kind of thinking is utopic.
I suspect that the recurring phenomenon where adults self-identify with autistic traits is due to such a problem - they perhaps struggled with social interaction as children, but were not given the adequate tools to understand that at the time, and have only come to realize it as they grew older.
"It's only when those "autistic" traits interfere with
your life and preclude you from reaching your potential
that they're considered abnormal and a diagnosis is apt."
Regardless, much respect to you for recognizing the problem and working with your son to get the help he needs. Not an easy thing to do, but you're doing it, and in an ideal world parents would get medals for this sort of thing. Good luck!
So it went from pathology to not pathology. Very far from it. My intuition is that I couldn't learn my way out of Aspergers, and so I probably just had a case of poor social skills, in a non-clinical sense.
In a broad sense, what sort of changes did you make to the way you present your body language, and what sort of cues do you look for in other people?
That's mostly about improving the reading of body language. Send me a message if you want to know more about the other aspects, probably a bit long to write here. Contact info it in my profile.
I.e., everything (including personality traits), exists on a continuum. Diagnoses are descriptively labeled points on that continuum.
In some ways this makes me very empathic, but it also makes me avoid people expressing strong emotions, so it also makes me very stand-offish.
"I can be a real pain" = "It can be a real pain"
If so, I totally relate. In addition, I avoid most people, including family, b/c they overwhelm me. Manipulating/imploring me to do/see/think the way they do, ad infinum. It's a constant barrage.
Maybe you are too deceptive yourself? ;)
I think I was pretty manipulative as a kid and this led me to suspect that everybody messing with my emotions is trying to "engineer" me to do something for them.
It drove me insane especially when I utterly couldn't comprehend what they could possibly have out of some particular things. For example, religion totally weirded me out - I just felt like somebody is tricking me and I still haven't even figured out of what :)
Anyway, it gets better once you start to see the reasons why people play with you. Most of the time they have no goals besides self-protection and no real intent to influence you as long as you aren't making them feel uncomfortable in some of their stupid ways you would have never imagine possible.
For me, performance arts, music and theater "activated" that emotional sense. At first, I could not process it all, and I raged. Then, being used to it, I find each emotion clear.
But, others often confuse them! Disregard, or anger being classified with hate, for example. I feel their anger or loathing, but they express hate to me, and it's all frustrating and painful at times. I feel most people aren't emotionally honest, or just not that capable. Maybe it overwhelms them, or they just don't seem to look at it very deeply.
I don't know.
Aside from that disconnect, I have learned to manage empathy. It's a strong thing, and it can drain me as much, sometimes more than the person I'm sharing emotion with.
An upside is doing things like mentoring or coaching kid sports. When the good, powerful emotions happen, they happen big, and I can share that, amplify it...
Those times are very rewarding. People can be so damn beautiful and intoxicating, just as they can be painful and draining.
It seems to me like the author became very self-conscious to the point of anxiety, which is not a healthy opposite of autistic.
Possibly because he simply hadn't needed them yet, he hadn't learned to build the emotional defenses that most folks use to navigate the complex social web that is life.
Scott Adams explains this better than I can, but the most balanced people are selfish enough to guard their own emotional well-being while still being available enough to positively influence others.
That's my observation, too. When I was a teen I would completely rebel against any kind of conformity, especially against the idea of "socially expected" behaviour.
However by my 20's I ended up learning that sometimes what is socially expected is expected exactly because it's the smartest thing to do in that situation.
Funny how these things work out.
Perhaps you should develop some kind of mathematical model (say, some kind of proof calculus) for computing what is the smartest thing to do, so that teenager in the future can derive mathematical correctness proofs that it really is the best (in a mathematical sense) to do so that they can invest their hate of conformity into things that are much more worth it.
Reminded me of the time Russell tried to reduce all language to logic, only to be thwarted by a rebellious twenty-something Austrian who claimed that all logic was tautology.
So I think if those teens were really that rebellious then they might try something similar with my social-calculus.
But still, it sounds like a fun exercise. "What are the primitive elements of a social interaction?" Hmmm :)
Of course I could say: Teach your children this and this. But times will change and knowledge will change, too. But the more abstract and general it is, the longer it stays correct. Thus my idea to formalize it as an abstract proof calculus.
I'm totally with you on the whole "wasted a lot of time in my youth pursuing unsuccessful paths" thing. And looking back, yeah, it's the stuff that the adults/authority figures in your youth don't tell you that really throws you off. So many times in the ten years that I've left school I've had those "aha" moments, and then I thought "well, that would've been pretty useful to know a decade ago". And the annoying thing is, is realizing that there were people my age who already knew that thing back then, due to a slightly different upbringing. It would be nice to minimize that sort of unpredictable randomness from the process.
Do you want to chat more about this off-site? I think we could come up with some interesting ideas between the two of us!
Quick sanity check: should this logic be powerful enough to prove every true fact about natural number arithmetic? ;)
I'm very pragmatic: If such a proof calculus is able to prove useful things, it serves its purpose. If someone found out that there is a deep connection to, say, natural number arithmetic, I would, of course, be very delighted. I personally think it's much more realistic to expect that connections to rather different mathematical topics will be found first: For example many people have contradictory opinions at the same time. If by such a calculus we had a model with strong predictive power how humans resolve such ambiguities by emotions, this could lead to a leap in developing artificial agents that work in an environment with contradictory data. Or to a development of a theory of error-correcting codes for data that is much more highly structured than words over some alphabet.
But one never knows...
:)
So, it seems plausible that neurologically the same sort of sensitivity and then regulation could be at work for someone who had been essentially blind to emotions and then had their visibility switched on suddenly.
I also would like to know if you notice different body language based on culture, race, gender or not. If so, can you describe how?
I am also quite bad at reading body language, and learning some basic acting skills helped me to read body language a bit better, but I would love to have more information about this subject.
Thanks!
The most important thing is to pay less attention to the content and more attention to the tone, stance, demeanor, circumstances, likely self-interest in the situation, notice the little things everywhere and that will give you a clearer picture of what you're dealing with. Do this often enough, over and over again, and it'll become second habit.
Content is rarely useful unless you're engaging in a very data heavy conversation, like for example you would when describing requirements for a project at work. During regular conversation, everything is generally geared toward communicating emotional state, so focusing too much on content dulls your senses and you don't pick up what you need to pick up.
I may have just crossed my arms, but if you'll look closely you'll notice I wasn't looking at you when I did so. It's not that you said something that I'm closing myself off from, it's that it sent my mind on a tangent that made me feel insecure. There's a number of reasons to cross one's arms other than shunning away from people around you.
It doesn't matter why you're closing yourself off.
You start wondering about the why, you'll set out on the path of trying to figure out what people are thinking ... and let me skip to to the end, that path is a dead end. People feel and think things that are based on their experience, but you have no idea what the totality of that experience is.
You mention you like jazz. The other person crosses their arms because they stubbed their toe in the morning and jazz was playing in the background, now they remember their toe hurts and they're feeling shitty. How can you possibly foresee that? That sort of random stuff comes up in conversation all the time. The proper response isn't to try to mind read or to convince them that jazz is wonderful.
It's to talk about something else.
That is pseudoscientific BS
So it's highly worthwhile to, at least, be cognizant of your own body language and what you may be subconsciously telling others. It is an enormously powerful skill.
Meisner emphasizes reacting to the scene partners, and its basic training includes perceiving extremely subtle nonverbal messages from other people---"reading behind eyes". After several classes, I remember walking streets and I saw every people's eyes were illuminated as if shone by spotlight, sending out messages. (I don't say I could truly read what they were thinking like telepathy---what I perceived might be completely off from what they actually thought. But for the purpose of acting, perceiving something and reacting to it is what matters.)
The book to read is "Sanford Meisner on Acting", but I believe you need to actually do it (with a partner, under proper trainer) to see.
where my extraverted friends who never formalized their
knowledge can know what they're feeling but not
necessarily formulate why it is.
(I am sure that this happens with all languages; English is simply the one I have experience with)
Also, as for different culture, race, gender: not really. I learned expressions that are universal. The cataloguing system they were based on did extensive cross cultural studies.
Obviously there are certain tendencies (Italians often do talk with their hands! Even they say so), but nothing you'd want to take as a hard rule.
You'll certainly notice body language based on social status though.
He goes through video examples from news clips, interview, late night show, etc and points out the body language of the people.
Wow, that's... Wow.
Reminds me of the early 1900's eugenicists posters about "facial features shared by criminals".
Craniometry and phrenology were based on the physical shape of parts of ones noggin and their supposed links to behavior; this is based on habitual behaviors.
Sometimes they get upset when someone tries to belitte them for being autistic. Working with the public is hard for them.
Wow! I thought I was the only one who did this. As a kid, I too felt like I was missing out on something everybody else understood. Similarly to you, I just kind of naturally viewed it as something I could learn and get better at. Over the years, I did, and now I'd consider myself better than average at it.
Unlike you said, though, I do feel others' emotions. Sometimes too strongly, I think.
"I read descriptions of Aspergers and it sounded much like me. Now when I read them it sounds not very much like me, because a significant component of those symptom descriptions involve poor social skills."
Poor social skills are a common symptom, but I do strongly believe that for somebody with high intelligence these skills can be learned to an extent, like you and I feel we did. In my by-no-means-professional opinion I would not say that "learned" social skills rule out the presence of autistic symptoms.
That said, the lack of ability to share and care about others' feelings does not sound like the mild end of the autism spectrum as I know it. Anecdotally a lot of people with these diagnoses feel others' emotions strongly, they just struggle to understand others' emotions more than the average person does, ie: "Colleen is really sad today, and it's making me sad, and everybody else seems to intuitively understand why she's sad but I don't. And this kind of thing happens a lot."
And for the other comment below, I'd say my learning processes were both conscious and unconscious. I used conscious thinking to note what needed practice and assess progress, but used intuition and practice to actually improve them. From what I've read of skill development this is pretty typical.
I read people well but I don't really emphasise with them on an emotional level, I'm told I'm good at reading people and have worked in sales in the past but its purely for a rational, if I was in this persons position what would I do, likely to be feeling analysis.
I don't really have strong emotions either or more correctly I have them but they are transient and then I return to a ground state, neither happy nor sad just a strange sort of equilibrium, I don't understand people who carry hate or anger, I've experienced both (for sound reasons) but think they are a poison you take til the other person dies (read that somewhere).
I've had a lot of experience with consciousness shifts and exploring different states. If there is one thing I learned, it would be there is no such thing as "normal". Social norms are largely an illusion, and what lurks in the psyche can wildly vary.
Some people don't have intense emotions. Others do. Some have greater empathy than others, in some case edging into parapsychology.
This was something my wife and I were talking about today too. For me, the idea of being "socially well-adjusted" is founded on deep flaws. We have this bias that somehow conflates the inability to speak well with being unintelligent.
We all have different communication channels in which we can connect to people. An emotional connection is one part of it. The emotions lead to some important things related to the human and spiritual experiences, but just because you can feel emotions doesn't mean you got a handle on them, or yourself.
That said, coursera did an amazing course on emotions recently by an Italian AI researcher, Jordi Vallverdú. I think it's been taken offline now, unfortunately.
I would say that to go from not feeling them to feeling them full force isn't at all normal. I think the emotions themselves are normal, it's just the neural pathways that process them aren't used to it. So they're experienced far differently than those of other people.
Can you recommend any resources?
Do you think it could help one become (or adopt a mindset of) apathetic, so office politics and various other nonsense wouldn't be so agitating?
Of course, a big part of the latter two books was also structuring my life so I don't have situations where I need to deal with office politics as part of my livelihood. But I can confirm that the techniques do work for very real stresses I've had that can't be avoided.
Mind elaborating on this? I'm looking for something like this but can't find any good step by step resources suitable for someone who is primarily logic driven. (Don't think I'm on the spectrum, or if I am its too mild to matter)
It is a difficult path to walk. I learned most of it intuitively as a young child. When I saw a gesture, it would trigger panic, almost certainly creating a self fulfilling prophecy. I also faked my body language to hide it from others, making me near impossible to read. As a young person (under 10), it was a social disaster.
Just so you know, everyone is on the spectrum. There is a threshold that makes it clear if you are autistic or not and often relates to under/over sensitivity of senses. My son is sensitive to sound and light (as an example). He also struggles to string tasks together and can't organise anything. They're all common traits.
Thanks I'll do so.
>Just so you know, everyone is on the spectrum.
Yeah half knew that but couldn't think of a better way to convey what I needed. After reading the thread a bit more I guess I could have said neuro-typical.
* Paul Ekman's course on microexpressons * Whatever came up when I googled resources on body language for shy people, people with anti social disorder or people with aspergers
This was in the mid 2000s, so I may have had more academic/professional results than you'd get now. I imagine results now would be cluttered with blogspam.
Also, a caveat is that I've seen some doubts expressed against Ekman's microexpressions theory. However, I was just using the course to get feedback on the expressions themselves and develop an intuition for them. The microexpressions in the course are the same as macroexpressions you'd see people make over a prolonged period. I haven't seen anyone say his facial categorizations are wrong.
So I did the course, and got feedback identifying expressions. That was one element. Then I'd also go through the other resources and practice things I was bad at individually.
For instance, eye contact. I'd have weeks where I just paid attention to eye contact during conversations. I used to not do any, so I focussed on making more. Then I'd pay attention to how people reacted. Too much or too little eye contact will weird people out, in different ways. So you can use reactions to calibrate. Then after doing it long enough, it becomes intuitive and you don't need to work on it consciously. Move on to the next item.
Another I remember was smile lines around the eyes. Genuine pleasure will make people smile with their eyes. Fake smiles are mouth only. So I'd pay attention to when people laughed, and check the eyes. Do this long enough and you get an intuition for real smiles vs. fake. Then you don't have to think about it anymore.
And so on.
1. Identify weakness 2. Devise way to get feedback 3. Focus on it for a bit 4. Once it becomes intuitive, move on to something else
If done correctly, you can learn to do everything at an automatic rather than an intellectual level.
I didn't find body language books that helpful, because they don't have focussed practice. I think something that categorizes expressions + asks you to correctly identify expressions is essential. Then something which just lists things involved in social skills, and practice them to mastery.
As a result I went from being far worse than average to better than average.
This question reminded me of a podcast I heard a couple of weeks ago [1] where they talked about people that just couldn't bear to be with others, because of some sort of over amplified sense of empathy [2].
1: See "Entanglement" at: http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510307/invisibilia 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror-touch_synesthesia#Link_...
I would also like to know. I feel for people, but I don't usually feel with people. I sympathize often, but rarely to I empathize with anything but the more mundane. It's worse the more extreme the emotion. I'll "feel" more for someone describing an annoyance I share than for someone that explains their parent just passed. I'll feel bad for the person, but in a very detached way. This may be a defense mechanism.
The signals I now picked up about what my fellow humans were feeling overwhelmed me. They seemed scared, alarmed, worried and even greedy. ... As exciting as my new sensory ability was, it cost me customers at work, when I felt them looking at me with contempt. It spoiled friendships when I saw teasing in a different and nastier light. It even ruined memories when I realized that people I remembered as funny were really making fun of me.
To me, the article reads as if his newfound ability to sense emotion was very poorly calibrated, at least initially. Or I'm just not seeing signals other people see. I don't find it likely that a customer would stare at you with contempt, that your friends teasing would be nasty, that people are making fun of you. Then again, if I'm mostly blind to these things, then my perception of how often they happen could be way off.
> Granted, I've also practice stoicisim and mindfulness, which explicitly trains you to not worry about things like someone insulting you (or hearing a comment that might be construed as insulting).
So have I, but not under any specific plan. It's more are trying to have a detached view of the best outcome of my actions. For example, I usually forego the idea of justice for the sake of punishment, when it may also negatively impacts me, and isn't likely to reduce the problem behavior later. Such as responding to bad or annoying drivers. Letting them know their mistake is fine, but making sure they are aware how much they pissed me off (even if it's a lot) is something I strive to avoid in most cases. I figure if they know they screwed up, they'll either feel bad or not, and me pressing the issue won't change that for the better (indignation at perceived overreaction seems to override shame).
> But, I've wondered if something is going on. When I was younger, before learning to read people, I read descriptions of Aspergers and it sounded much like me. Now when I read them it sounds not very much like me, because a significant component of those symptom descriptions involve poor social skills.
I feel the same way. I also had a hard time reading situation when younger, and Aspergers has always seemed like it might fit, at least somewhat. For me, social interactions are almost never frictionless, and take non-trivial effort. I feel I get by well, sometimes better than those around me, but mainly because I had to train myself to that point. I find myself not wanting to be around people as much because I don't want to waste the brainpower in layering the correct context over their words (even if it's automatic now, it's still taxing).
That's doing with intellect, what most people do naturally and subconsciously. This is how an Aspie learns social skills, using intellect to cover up a natural deficiency.
> When I was younger, before learning to read people, I read descriptions of Aspergers and it sounded much like me.
It likely is you; neuro-typical people don't have to "learn" how to read people, it's innate.
That goes for anyone who isn't a trained professional. But it goes triple for you, given your rudimentary understanding of aspergers, intellect, or how people learn to recognize emotions.
"I didn't diagnose anyone"
Wow, do you even LISTEN to yourself when you say things?
"nor do you know anything about me or my understanding of anything"
Yes I do. I can infer sufficient from what you've just wrote.
1 - I asked you not to tell random people that they're autistic because it's bad form (fact) and questioned your knowledge of the matter (my opinion). No personal attack on you has been made.
2 - You retaliated by contradicting yourself and sending two ad hominem attacks at me. No attempt to disprove my claim of your lack of knowledge besides another deflection .
3 - I point out that you've contradicted yourself.
4 - You reply with another two ad hominem attacks on me.
Yeah, I rest my case. You enjoy your day.
I'm pretty sure I'm neuro-typical. At least I'm not atypical to the point that it was ever a problem.
And I too had to learn how to read people. I could always read them innately, but after some conscious effort, it became like a superpower. People always say how great I am at knowing how they feel.
The real hard part, though, is learning how to emote back. Especially after moving to a different continent. It's really really hard to display appropriate emotions because, for the most part, knowing and understanding other people's emotions, just doesn't really trigger an emotional response. It's all on an intellectual level.
I've always wondered whether that was normal or not.
Then you didn't "have" to learn, you learned to be better than typical, completely different thing.
Oh, so also atypical. It's almost like there isn't a typical for us to measure against. Who knew.
If you thought of a real steeple you had actually seen then you probably tend towards autism. If you thought of an abstract non-existing steeple then you don't tend towards it.
I was at a gathering of employees in my company. There were about a dozen random people sitting around a table. I tested the whole group at once. Every single programmer answered with a real steeple and every non-programmer thought abstract.
I know this doesn't represent a real study and chance was involved. But it matches something else she said. Functional autistics with jobs are predominantly programmers. She quoted a number, like 70%, but I don't remember for sure.
I, a programmer, personally prefer human interaction on the web. Meeting in real-life, not so much.
*Smacks your hand and gives you a bloody nose
Besides the latest research on autism defines it as a hugely vast spectrum. So vast that I thought many were thinking everyone is technically on the spectrum.
Most spectrums start at zero.
Over-analyzing myself. I think Kant stared out at a church steeple for a lot of his life. And that was memorable to me in college. I've hardly ever gone to church. So I don't have many images. I imagined some sort of steeple as seen from across the street like Kant might've seen. But with a clear blue sky background.
My steeple was steep too in case that helps. Kidding aside I think how we visualize things hardly has binary correspondence with anything, let alone autism. But probably it has some correlation.
Here is one of her papers where she mentions the steeple question and processing memory in the visual centers of the brain if you want to read more: http://www.grandin.com/inc/visual.thinking.mind.autistic.per...
What's the rationale for that?
https://www.quora.com/If-Aspies-often-have-difficulty-with-a...
"Abstract thinking" is a huge category and a lot of Aspies and people in the autism ballpark have trouble with some parts and are good at other parts.
In particular, I think many of us are good at abstract thought that is formal. Not formal in the sense of wearing a tie or whatnot, but formal in the sense of being based on precisely described relationships. Take math. Math is a creative activity, just as much as painting or any other art. But math is a formal creative act. Like a painting, a mathematical proof can be beautiful, elegant, inspiring. Unlike a painting, a mathematical proof can be wrong.
Or take computer programming. Again, writing a program is creative and a program can be beautiful. But a program is written in a very formal language: Any computer language has strict rules.
On the other hand, many of us are bad at abstract thinking that is informal or, perhaps, a good word is mushy. How do we read a person's facial expression, body language etc? The same thing means different things at different times; there rules, but there are (usually) exceptions; and the rules aren't written.
Unfortunately, I already saw your spoiler in the next paragraph before I re-did the exercise.
I'm skeptical, however.
People who don't see steeples often will probably think abstractly and people who do probably won't as much.
I live about a mile from a church [0], so thought of that first. I've also seen the Crooked Spire in Chesterfield [1] a few times, so thought of that as well.
On the other hand, ask me to think of, say, a skyscraper, and I'll picture a abstract building. There may be some merit to the test, but I share your thoughts that it'll be changed by people's experiences.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_All_Saints,_Aston_cu... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_St_Mary_and_All_Sain...
It's a real-life instance of our cultures abstraction of the steeple into something concrete using our hands. I'm unsure what category that would really fall into (I'm guessing that is a 70% 'real steeple' category instance?)
Spoiler: I am almost certainly not very autistic if I am at all. Or so I come off to others.
Dreams are vivid and nearly real, at least that's my impression of them when I wake up, my imaginings or "Day dreams" are nowhere near as vivid, and I certainly can't see the details of my wife, kid or anything or anybody else on the level of "seeing an image of them."
You are saying you don't visualize locations you are not at when navigating, organizing things, or trying to remember where you last left something?
You can infer what the steeple is, but it isn't an often used term for a spire around here.
In everyday conversation you can get away with using them largely interchangeably though, so don't worry too much about it.
What does that mean about me?
Edit: more seriously though, hands are real things you've seen
I think, of myself steepling my hands?
I have no idea why you're being downvoted. The notion of 'abstract' here is vague.
I thought of a red-brick steeple attached to a church surrounded by trees and a gravel parking lot (yes, this was all split second). This steeple wasn't a specific one I've seen, but it wasn't as abstract as thinking of the metaphor or a sparse geometric object.
I think that is the meaning of abstract for this question.
I don't remember what type of mental illness he was referring to, but it was probably autism.
Then again, I do suffer with some degree of mental illness (OCD/anxiety), so maybe it is working as intended...
The obvious issue is that the person is taking the question very literally instead of answering the intended question. I could see how you could think that was a form of Autism, but for some reason the schizophrenia idea is stuck in my head.
I know this was probably an unintentional statement but it's important, especially as humanity grapples with the issue of better integrating neuro-atypicals into our societies.
While I respect the desire to not stigmatize those who can function with some adjustments (on both their part and those of society's), it is imprecise to suggest that no ASD person has mental illness. To do so seems counter-productive, since it makes many people dismiss your legitimate concerns.
The idea that there's a difference is sort of problematic since the mind and the body are the same thing, and it's not falsifiable either unless you can test someone's brain for autism without going through their mind.
There's also a popular claim among tumblr-type people that autism is good and that charities looking for "cures for autism" are evil. Probably not what they meant though.
Can you explain what someone neuro-typical looks like?
Just today a study revealed that high functioning autistics have 12 years lower life expectancy → https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11312039
Just the author of the book. She didn't claim it was scientifically studied. Neither did I.
Edit: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=autism+abstract+thinkin...
I mean I see steeples all the time living in Vermont and New York. So it was pretty easy to imagine one of these pretty white steeples when you asked this question.
Now I'm trying to picture the opposite. Just can't think of one.
http://www.ted.com/talks/temple_grandin_the_world_needs_all_...
If you'd prefer not to watch it, let me try to explain. For this test, I think of an abstract church-y building (I dunno .. maybe like the size of an old schoolhouse), and then think of a small tower with something pointy on top.
When Temple describes it (see her TED talk(s), seriously!), she talks about how, in contrast, she (and frequently other autistic people) imagine a VERY concrete steeple. Concrete as in, you an describe that it's iron on top of brick, with a wooden border along the bottom. You can describe the pattern of ironwork, the guy holding a wheelbarrow on its weathervane, the color of the paint, and the fact that it's been bent from when some local teens
NONE of those things are in my first imagined visual image of "steeple". Sure, I can make that kind of thing up, but my natural inclination is not to do so, and I don't remember any specific images of steeples. In contrast, Temple first imagines that complex image of a Specific Thing (often a memory of a specific one she has seen) instead of the abstracted image.
I think this answer places you squarely in the non-abstract group. Not that it means anything.
[0] In case you hadn't heard of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-H3E33o4URc
Or the programmers might live close to a church.
Combine this with the test not being very good and you've got a recipe for wasting time.
But of course. If HN has taught me anything, it's that everyone here is autistic. But never in a particularly negative way, always in a way that makes the people slightly awkward socially, but highly-intelligent. Like a movie.
Whenever you make a large change in yourself, you are going to alienate people in your life. This doesn't say anything about whether the change is good or bad.
The set of people currently in your life is highly biased towards people who like you the way you are. If they didn't, they wouldn't be in your life.
The more interesting question is after you make a change and get a new set of people, how do those people compare to your old set?
Different quantitatively but I think similar qualitatively, my best friend (despite my warning) attended a high-intensity motivational/NLP weekend seminar a few years back. It is no exaggeration that he came out a completely different person, in the sense that the stimuli/response has radically changed. He was more emotional, open, intense, etc. My reaction initially was confused and highly negative; and eventually settled down on "The person I knew is in some ways gone; but let's give this new person a chance and see how we get along".
Others, erm... did not react as positively :P
Some research opposes the deficits of autism to the excesses of schizophrenia. Not sure it's totally relevant to this item, but seeing emotional meanings where they don't exist is a very schizotypal (positive schizotypy) phenomenon:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/how-is-c...
For someone who is habitually barefoot, by contrast, walking around on very rough surfaces is no problem.
Same kind of thing here.
I started wearing mostly thin soled shoes a few years ago: simple leather moccasins, $5 Chinese canvas shoes, Vibram Five Fingers. (I don’t typically walk around outside barefoot.)
When I first started, if I walked barefoot, stepping on a tiny pebble was painful. Wearing thin-soled shoes itself let me very dramatically feel the ground in a way I didn’t when wearing stiff-bottomoed shoes. Now, a few years later, the effect is much reduced, even though the skin on the bottom of my foot is not noticeably more callused than before. I can notice how the ground feels if I pay careful conscious attention to it, but it’s not constantly in my mind as I walk around.
I think the walking barefoot -> calluses idea is exaggerated in popular imagination. I have a friend who does significant amounts of barefoot trail running, and frequently run barefoot on pavement. His feet are also not obviously more callused than anyone else’s.
You do retain the careful walking/running skill, but without the thick skin you can't really run effectively on gravel, etc.
So to hear that someone who was in the dark is blinded by the light is not surprising.
But, it does sound like there was a second factor, which is that he also saw a greater ugliness in people that he hadn't seen before. It sounds like he had a sense of naivety that hadn't been seen before.
So really, this is less like walking out of a dark room into bright sunlight and more like walking out of a dark room into sunlight illuminating a tragic accident.
A serial I'm following[0] has a character going through something like that, for various reasons one of the main characters initially experiences almost no emotions, as the story progresses things change and these emotions are overwhelming to them even though they're objectively nothing special, but the character never developed an "immunity" or a coping mechanism to emotion so any deviation from the emotionless baseline is subjectively enormous.
[0] Citadel
It's relatively easy to imagine seeing the world in black and white and then having the colour switch flipped. I can't imagine the same for emotion... what a wild ride it must have been. It must have been so painful at first, especially when he realized that some of his "funny friends" had really been making fun of him...
The article reminded me of Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, where she meditates on Marius von Senden's book Space and Sight. Von Senden recounts the effects of the first widespread successful cataract operations and the overwhelming effect the restoration of sight had on people who had lived there whole life blind and whose brains had not developed the ability to naturally process visual sensation.
A passage from Dillard's book that resonates with the author's account here:
The mental effort involved in these reasonings proves overwhelming for many patients. It oppresses them to realize, if they ever do at all, the tremendous size of the world, which they had previously conceived of as something touchingly manageable. It oppresses them to realize that they have been visible to people all along, perhaps unattractively so, without their knowledge or consent. A disheartening number of them refuse to use their new vision, continuing to go over objects with their tongues, and lapsing into apathy and despair.
It was comforting to read that the author here, John Elder Robison, adapted over time. But I agree that it must be something very hard for those who haven't experienced it to imagine.
Can you give examples of the other shifts you're referring to? I realize many of them may not have names (or may not have names in the western culture), but it would be very meaningful to me if you gave it a shot.
Direct experience of "oneness" is another one. This can range from feeling the interconnections of everything, to feeling that all is One (monism), and there ever just the One.
Seeing through your acquired self is another. That sense that the acquired self -- the socialized personality -- has never been real. People often come back from that one thinking "my ego died". (Well, it often resurrects ;-)
Another is direct experience of Nothing (similar to the Oneness experience), where things somehow, mysteriously, spontaneously arises and passes. Also related is spaciousness.
Then there's a host of parapsychological effects which might make you feel crazy. They don't feel as insightful as the examples that I listed, but they do break down the conventional beliefs most people have and think of as "normal". For example, clairvoiyance, clairaudience, etc.
There are actually transpersonal psychologists holding Ph.D.s who specializes in counseling for spiritual emergence. There's a great thread on Quora related to that integration process. I'd find it right now, but my wife is waiting for me to go with her to the grocery store. ("Chop wood, carry water" You never thought you'd understand that koan, eh? :-D)
Feel free to email me at talktohosh at gmail.com if you want to continue this conversation.
I've found that the emotions we read out of people are often exaggerated from their true thoughts. It's easy to feel like there's some harsh judgment occurring when, in fact, there isn't. Someone should've told the author this, and not to take his new "emotional superpower" too seriously.
Even if TMS 'activated' the emotional areas of the brain (right frontotemporal) correctly, the person still may not be ready to use that brain region effectively. This is where therapy would likely help.
Through research, its believed that Autistic Spectrum Disorders are the result of poor neuronal connectivity between certain regions of the brain. I'm not sure TMS would help with that.
Disclaimer: I'm not a physician and this isn't medical advice.
Just out of interest, do you believe that neuronal connectivity between regions of the brain are involved in ASD?
But, there are other issues as well. In developing ASD brains, there have been shown to be areas of excess cortical thickening, areas of cortical thinning, underactivation, etc.
Connectivity certainly plays a role, but given that structure and function are so deeply interrelated, it doesn't make much sense to try and separate them.
We think there's a strong genetic component, but nobody's been able to figure it out yet. It appears to be more developmental/structural, but there could also be a neurotransmitter component, given that a large fraction of ASD people have elevated serotonin levels, and report intestinal issues (intestines have huge numbers of ST receptors).
In short, pretend you're debugging an intermittent parallel error in a network 50x greater than the total number of computers on earth, every computer had to coordinate its protocols on the fly, and your only tools are telnet and email. I respect what my former colleagues do, but reality was way too murky.
How about one where you see a list of links to articles with their original title, and then users of the site will read them and then submit better titles that you can read first?
Oh wait, that's HN.
I can understand preferring the glass half full, though.
I agree in the general case, but not everywhere. Shit like "Scientist cures cancer!" is equally dramatic and clickbaity in spite of being hugely positive.
Your version is less catchy.
Negative effect of a treatment is more interesting than positive effects.
I probably didn't notice other people's emotions a lot when I was younger, to the effect that now that I'm older, and do notice them, I frequently don't have any idea what to do with that understanding.
Mostly what I do with all this is just accept it. My feelings are not their problem. Their feelings are not my problem. If I choose otherwise, that's my choice, and so are the consequences. Mostly, I try to take feelings like I take the weather.
That doesn't come easily, though. I feel like I'm learning things that most people learn at 15. Right now I'm working my way through a workbook on DBT, which teaches people emotional regulation skills. It seems crazy to have to sit down and learn things that come so naturally for other people. But then, I'm not other people, so I try to keep pressing ahead.
Navigating the emotional world is very important and should be taught, not dismissed. As someone who only picked up these skills later in life, its incredible how much life makes sense now. People's emotional responses more or less rule the world. Logic and rationality take a backseat to all of that and being able to gauge other people's emotions and knowing how to respond to them is the difference between failure and success in so many parts of life. Especially if you aspire to any kind of leadership or founder role.
The method I described is actually quite deep even if on the surface it appears to be simple. It starts with this: http://www.imsb.org/teachings/vipassana-practice/ and might wend it's way through something like: http://www.amazon.com/Feeding-Your-Demons-Resolving-Conflict...
What I was describing is the opposite of dismissing it, and if anything, much healthier. You do realize I was talking about Vipassana and directly experiencing the suffering of others, right?
You should check out the practice in Tsultrim Allione's book, "Demon Feeding: Ancient Wisdom for Resolving Inner Conflict" some time.
Another practice I did for a while to really start examining intense, often unpleasant emotions within myself and others is this: http://www.amazon.com/Feeding-Your-Demons-Resolving-Conflict...
At the end of the day, someone's suffering is their own. By "suffering" I am really talking about dukkha, the Sanskrit word better translated as existential anguish. This is something every person has. It is only when one can clearly see it that they can allow space for someone to work through it. By "witnessing", I am talking about something like practicing vipassana while in the presence of someone suffering. And believe me, that is not as easy as it sounds, neither for the practitioner, or for the person in deep suffering.
I was diagnosed when I was 17, and I get to interact with a lot of other students on the spectrum every day at my school. There are a few students that believe autism is something to overcome, and that if they try hard enough perhaps one day they won't be 'autistic'. Most of us are comfortable with the fact that we're different.
As someone who is also on the functional end of the spectrum, I'm tired of having to intellectualize a feeling of empathy for others. It's draining, and I'd rather have that brain power to work on something more meaningful. For better or worse, most of our work involves other people, and being able empathize with them makes that work much more productive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU6o2_UFSEY
I was formally diagnosed with ADHD a year ago after realizing a few years prior. There was a long time where I struggled to come to terms with it, and I still do get frustrated with my differences. At the end of the day though it's a significant part of who I am, and I don't think I would want it any other way. I may struggle with some things quite a bit, but I think it gives me a unique way of seeing things and going through life. There's even been a few smaller studies recently showing those with ADHD are better at divergent thinking, more likely to receive awards related to creativity, as well as an inability to ignore irrelevant thoughts being correlated with high creativity.
I think it's time we start to recognize that mental differences or disorders aren't necessarily disabilities and something to be cured or looked down upon
"This kid is not good at following orders and is unwilling to engage in long hours of monotonous and repetitive tasks? Clearly we need to fix that".
If you think about it, what would ADHD mean in the animal kingdom? Most animals just run around and do whatever they feel like in the moment. Humans are the only species where that's not the norm. I wonder why.
When we read an article like this we tend to think of autism as mostly a diagnosis for the high functioning end of the spectrum, and we completely forget that there is a large percentage of the population with autism that lacks communication skills or the ability to even connect a few words.
Please be careful when speaking for "most" of those with autism. There are many (what percentage is hard to say based on the numbers changing so rapidly) that can't speak for themselves.
There is a trend of the high functioning population (see 'neurodiverse' or ND) debating those that advocate for the low functioning as to whether or not we should try and help the low functioning to "change". It's more complicated than that, but those that advocate for the lowest functioning get frustrated by the debate. It usually comes down to "if you have the ability to say you 'like' your autism, you can keep it, but don't try and prevent others from trying to help those who can't advocate for themselves."
If orik was only referring to a handful of fellow students, he/she wasn't speaking for all of the spectrum and I misinterpreted who was meant by "us".
Let's take @orik's observation at face value -- that "most of us are comfortable with the fact that we're different". In that case, who is uncomfortable, the people who are autistic, or the people who are not? The dysfunction is in the people who feel uncomfortable and have difficulty accepting someone as they are.
By the way, I am not autistic. I'm speaking as someone who has had a lot of experience working with intense emotions.
I mean, seriously, Charlie undergoes a beyond belief transformation as a result of his medical intervention, and later...(won't spoil it, read the book), while the person in the linked article has an emotional awakening of sorts, which itself could have very likely been influenced by a midlife crisis and general dissatisfaction in a marriage to a chronically depressed spouse.
I grew up in an environment where nobody every expressed themselves. I was also given the impression that I was the smartest person in town. This is not a combination that makes for deep human connections. But I was fortunate enough to have the friendships of several very charismatic people over the years. Their ability to make instant connections with basically everybody around them seemed magical, and remained mysterious for years. But as I watched them and gradually opened myself, I found that skilled observation wasn't enough. Not only did I need to be open to others and willing to say what was on my mind, I also had to drop my pretensions and try to engage people on their own terms, even if those terms were things I would have previously found silly, like tarot or fireplace ceramics. When I've been successful at this (which isn't all the time, but it happens more and more), I've made new friends and learned all kinds of weird and interesting things. Even though the same period has contained some of the roughest periods of my life, I can honestly say that I've never been happier to be alive, and it's the beauty I find in small, everyday human connections that keeps me going.
This effectively putting a current the the subject's brain and can be dangerous if not administered by a doctor
Or are you saying that people at home should not attempt to reproduce it.
Those are two very different statements, and the first raises many more questions about the original article.
This effectively putting a current the the subject's brain and can be dangerous EVEN IF administered by a doctor
I talked about my suspected Asperger syndrome with the psychiatrist, and she said "I could medicate you for that, but are you really sure you want to change?".
Situations can be turned upside down when trying to think from the perspective of a person with stronger emotional responses.
Lyrics include:
The thing that scares me most / Is the fear I see in others / And the thing that really frightens me to the core / is when I see that fear in you
I wondered how that would go, we all go through years of social interaction and have to build walls. Nowadays, I don't know if my walls have become too thick or if I never had the same emotional range as others in the first place.
Having some measure of "thick skin" is part and parcel for existence as a social animal.
What this guy is experiencing is not so much different from a meditator who has recently reawakened empathy, or a psychonaut whose psychedelic experiences open up to the world of emotions. "Coping" is no longer authentic, and is seen for the illusion that it is. For such people, the dysfunction is not in the awareness, but in that most people around you lack sufficient awareness -- yet think they are "normal".
Let's start at the beginning then. This is an experimental treatment. There was almost zero knowledge of the impact, at the time it was done, since it was experimental (and probably still is?). I very much so doubt they could have been able to predict the outcome with any certainty.
Second, why would age have any play in whether or not a treatment of this type is attempted? I think you should really explain yourself a bit more.
If it gets out of the lab, though, I think an adult should always be able to make the informed choice, rather than being denied because he is too old.
Your comment really pissed me off. The idea of having some doctor choose this for him is really a special kind of evil.
No such desire here. In fact, I'd not be opposed to a treatment that made people autistic, or, for a (perhaps) more attractive proposition, synesthetic.
As long as there is informed choice by an adult.
You can want neurodiversity, and think it is a good thing. Maybe it is. But imposing it on others, for me, is not defensible.
Now, setting diversity aside for a moment...
> Medicine is not the Wild West...
No. In general, we only allow people treatment when we think they have a disease(1).
This idea has merits: for example, it seems "obviously better" to treat the hypocondriacs hypocondria than to allow them to take unnecessary surgery.
But it also has problems: the definition of disease becomes a matter of consensus (i.e.: a political matter, even if the politics just happens amongst doctors - or worse, philosophers or politicians) and individuals are disallowed choosing what and who they want to be, by themselves.
Perhaps the best way to go is to have a "waiting period", to force you to consider and seek alternative treatment before undergoing procedures that are dangerous. I dont know, and I fear this is one of those "really no good answer" questions.
(1) This might be a circular definition, "disease" being a thing we can treat for
What? There was no follow up on this. Why would anyone say that - how does this even make sense at a basic level? Was there no follow up question by him?
``The operation is a success, and within the next three months Charlie's IQ reaches 185. However, as his intelligence, education, and understanding of the world increase, his relationships with people deteriorate''