Cristof Traudes describes his brother Erik’s struggle with Asperger’s, an enigmatic disorder that has challenged their family and Erik’s resolve.
* Editors note: Italicized text in this article represents recreated conversations. Also, Cristof Traudes learned March 14, 2008, that this 2007 story placed second nationally in Personality Profile Writing in the 48th William Randolph Hearst Foundation's Journalism Awards Program. Traudes works for a newspaper in Duluth, Minn.
I celebrated my 21st birthday last fall at a Tex-Mex restaurant north of downtown Columbia. The walls were mounted with “genuine” sombreros and large TVs tuned to ESPN. I was happy with the combination of friends who gathered — there were friends I played with in Marching Mizzou, friends from the journalism school, friends from high school.
And there was my brother, Erik, 24. He sat to my left, wearing the bright red Minnesota Twins T-shirt I had scored for him during my summer work there. It was pretty special — not every kid gets to have his big brother at his milestone birthday.
I spent a lot of the night talking to the people in my corner — my brother Erik; friends Mark, Tom, Buddy and Aaron. I turned to Buddy, an MU music student who’s been one of my best friends since our days at West Junior High School.
How’s it going? I asked. Classes and everything OK?
Yeah, Buddy said. Just the usual music school thing. Lots of practicing, lots of rehearsals. You?
It’s going well, I said. I —
Erik interrupted me midsentence.
Did you see that Georgia Tech is beating Virginia?!
Really? I said to him. Interesting. …
Neither team meant much to me.
I turned back to Buddy. I —
Whoa! Erik blurted out. Did you see the Twins’ score?
I glanced up at the TV. The Twins had lost another game that could’ve ensured them postseason play. Oh well.
I turned back to Buddy. I —
Did you — Erik again, jumping in from my left. I tried to ignore him.
— am doing well. The J-School —
Did you —
— is keeping me —
Whoa! Did you —
I never finished my conversation with Buddy. But that’s a given when Erik’s around.
It’s always been that way.
But it’s barely been a year since I understood why.
My brother has Asperger’s syndrome.
Two brothers
Erik and I both stand 5 feet 10 inches tall. We’re both relatively skinny, although he’s starting to develop a little gut. We’ve both worked at Schnucks grocery store as baggers and cashiers for more than four years, often on the same shift. And despite our three-year difference in age, we’re both seniors at MU, scheduled to graduate in May.
The similarities end there.
Erik excels at math. I get lost once the “pre” is dropped from “precalculus.”
Erik loves science fiction. I could do without the science.
Erik mellows out to the soothing sounds of Sarah McLachlan. Give me Dave Matthews Band.
And while I’m mostly indifferent about baseball and video games, Erik can — and will — talk your ear off about either.
He can rattle off the winningest manager of the St. Louis Cardinals (Red Schoendienst, followed closely by Tony LaRussa) and how many years it took to create the latest installment of the fighting game “Soul Calibur” (two).
He can tell you the year St. Louis was introduced to Major League Baseball (1882, with the creation of the St. Louis Brown Stockings) and the name, properly spelled, of the creator of the Super Mario Bros. franchise (Shigeru Miyamoto).
When my friends meet Erik, his rapid-fire knowledge first impresses, then baffles and, finally, annoys. But after trying to signal with yawns, frowns and turned heads that they’re ready to stop listening, he just keeps talking.
That’s usually the point when they come to me and ask why my brother is so weird. For years, I secretly asked myself the same question.
Now I can tell them he has Asperger’s syndrome, a “mild” neurological disorder in the same spectrum as autism. That puts Erik in fast-growing company; as many as one in 150 children in America suffer from some form of autism, according to a study released in February by the Centers for Disease Control.
What I don’t often tell friends is that Erik’s obsessions are just one characteristic of his condition. They don’t know how much he struggled in school despite his superior intelligence. They don’t know about the long nights of crying, or that his mysterious and stubborn behavior strained my family to a breaking point. They don’t know that we lived with this mystery for 23 years, not knowing what caused it and when — or if — it would end.
The world of psychology is almost as much in the dark about these aspects of Asperger’s. It acknowledged the disorder’s existence little more than a decade ago; research remains in the discovery phase.
Some things about Asperger’s are generally known. For example, its symptoms vary greatly from person to person. Some might have obsessive routines, or sensitivity to bright lights and loud sounds. Others have major motor-skill problems or are considered “little professors” because of a precocious formal speaking style.
Asperger’s is five times as likely to appear in males as it is in females. Like all forms of autism, it is being diagnosed at an increasing rate in both children and adults. It stands out because it’s a “high-functioning” disorder, usually not accompanied by problems with language development or similar learning skills.
The most universal aspect of Asperger’s, however, isn’t a scientific fact. Rather, it’s what makes its label as a “mild” disorder sadly ironic. It’s the social side: Most of those with Asperger’s have normal intelligence and verbal skills, but their fixation on select topics makes it hard for them to take part in the give-and-take of regular conversation.
As children, people with Asperger’s tend to get bullied. As adults, they often get labeled as weird and have trouble in the job market while they struggle at maintaining relationships.
Preschool
Two-year-old Erik had short, fine blond hair, brown eyes and soft, pale skin. His face was a miniature carbon of Dad’s. He laughed with his mouth wide open, exposing a tiny pair of buck teeth. People often told my parents how pretty he was.
In Mrs. Jacks’ and Mrs. Nichols’ preschool classroom in Charlotte, N.C., he usually sat alone in a corner, absorbed in puzzles or Legos. Parents of more unruly toddlers were in awe of Erik’s calmness and his ability to keep himself entertained.
Go play with Erik, they’d tell their kids.
But the same thing happened every time.
There’d be a few moments of mutual stares, then Erik would turn back to his toy.
Hi, some child would say, eager to play.
Hi, Erik would say back.
What are you doing?
A puzzle.
Oh.
And that was where it ended.
Erik might answer some direct question. But he wouldn’t ask anything in return. He wouldn’t move over to share his toys. So the other kids would walk away and join others to play house or to color together — anything that involved interaction.
Erik was never mean. He never acted unhappy. He was just different.
At that time — 1984 — Asperger’s was not yet a part of American psychologists’ lingo. Often, those who exhibited the symptoms were either diagnosed as having a high-functioning form of autism or some vague learning disorder.
But my parents weren’t too concerned about Erik’s social isolation yet; they thought he would grow out of it.
The beginning
Our parents, Herman and Beth Traudes, had been married three years when their first son was born. They had been introduced by a mutual friend in Lexington, Ky., when Herman was stationed there for IBM and Beth was working for the county health department. Now they were living in a skinny traditional Dutch home along a canal in the heart of Herman’s native Amsterdam.
Beth was a self-proclaimed rebel and feminist who came of age in Columbia in the 1960s. When she was younger, children weren’t part of the plan. But once she was pregnant, she insisted on giving birth at home. When she went into labor on the eve of Aug. 29, 1982, the maroon sleeper-sofa in the living room was folded open and made ready. A flurry of phone calls brought two midwives and one of Herman’s sisters to the quiet house at Westlandgracht 185.
Most of the birth went off without a hitch. Except for the contractions. They were worse than expected and focused in the small of Beth’s back.
Herman got her through the pain, massaging her back until his hand was raw.
“The biggest problem of the night was that the neighbor woman had made chicken for Herman that was full of garlic,” my mother told me recently. “Dad and I were doing breathing exercises together; he was just giving me clouds of garlic.”
In the wee hours of the next morning, she gave birth to a pretty 6-pound baby boy with a dark mop of hair.
“It was extremely cool,” Mom said. “It ranks right up there as one of the happiest moments of my life.”
Primary school
Erik started primary school with everyone else. Over the years he went to birthday parties, movies and other social gatherings. He played after-school sports. But he didn’t fit in anywhere.
He knew it then, and he remembers it now.
“I don’t feel disabled,” he said. “I don’t feel like I’m weird. I just know that from everyone’s reactions.”
The “reactions” started early in primary school.
Erik was happy in his own bubble, a fantasy world where he was the star of his own TV station. He controlled the programming and, come recess, he’d rush outside and act out whatever show was on. Sometimes he was Batman. Other times, he was the 10th Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. (In his mind, he’d already created turtles five through nine.)
Mom remembers being called to school from time to time to observe his actions. She’d see him with his arms stretched out wide, a big grin lining his face while he ran along the playground’s perimeter. What she didn’t see was him playing with other children — because it rarely happened.
When it did, it wasn’t pretty.
One time, Erik was running along the fence when some classmates called him over. One of the boys held a piece of toast out to Erik. The others smirked.
Erik was excited by the attention. Had he been more tuned in he might have noticed that something was off. He bit into the toast.
The other boys howled.
Earlier, they all had spit on the toast and plotted to make a fool of Erik. And now the freak was eating their spit.
Bullying is a side-product that many Asperger’s children face; because they misread social cues, they are easy prey.
“Social things are so complex,” said Julie Donnelly, who heads Columbia-based Autism Support Services and has an adult son with Asperger’s. “We take (understanding them) for granted.”
If being an outcast at school wasn’t enough, Erik was also the worst player on his extracurricular soccer team — or certainly the most confused.
“He didn’t do anything,” my dad said, remembering the embarrassing Saturday mornings he spent on the sidelines. “He just stood on the field and watched the ball. He’d say, ‘Guys, there it goes.’ He just didn’t get it.”
His teammates would make their annoyance clear, and Erik would go home humiliated.
It was then that he probably started developing the depression he was diagnosed with in high school and still battles today. He was 8.
Because Asperger’s doesn’t affect intelligence, those with the disorder often understand the severity of the teasing they receive. Their mental block, however, prevents them from changing.
“The toll of meanness is tremendous,” said Nancy Minshew, director of the Autism Research Project at the University of Pittsburgh. “You know the saying, ‘sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can’t hurt me’?
“Not true.”
Home life
When Erik was 9 and I was 6, we lived in Castricum, the Netherlands, the town Erik and I still refer to as the place we grew up. It was a quaint Dutch coastal village, with traditional brick streets and open markets plus butchers and bakers included. Our house was red brick topped by an orange tile roof and looked like something out of an idyllic Dutch tourism book.
I doubt we knew it then, but our family was on the verge of falling apart.
Mom stayed home then, taking care of us and the house. Dad worked 10-hour days at IBM, feeling stuck in a managerial job he never really wanted. Every morning before Erik and I headed off to primary school, Mom would make our breakfast and Dad’s lunch.
While Mom got our cereal or toast with chocolate sprinkles ready, I’d get dressed in my second-floor room. A floor above, in Erik’s room, the drama would start.
Erik, get dressed! I’d hear my mother yell up the stairs. Erik, take 20 less minutes on your shower!
Erik, brush your teeth! And — again — Erik, get dressed!
Despite her pleas, most mornings found Erik curled up in his room, reading a video game magazine or staring off into space.
I hated the yelling, so I’d hear one order and follow it. (That stuck with me for life — I’ve often been called mature for my age, probably from watching my parents give the same orders over and over. Or maybe from not wanting to add to the chaos.)
“It was a really, really tough time,” Mom told me recently.
One exhausting morning after another, after we were finally out the door, she would sink into a living room couch, turn on the TV and try to forget what was going on around her. She’d try to forget her husband’s disaffection with a job he hated. She’d try to forget that she was thousands of miles from her parents. And she’d try to forget that she had a son who didn’t seem to be learning any of the practical aspects of life.
She said she considered leaving Dad and going back home to Missouri; she loved her husband but thought her son might be better off in the United States and would benefit from a bigger family support system. But Herman would never let her leave the Netherlands with the kids, she thought. She, too, was stuck.
That was the year my parents sent Erik to his first psychologist. They didn’t learn then that he had Asperger’s; the disorder hadn’t been identified yet. But they did learn that he needed special attention, and that it wasn’t their parenting that was at fault. They received tips, such as breaking down activities into smaller steps, on how to help him learn. “What we learned was we could not expect Erik to do what other children were doing at his age,” Mom said. “We had to meet him where he was and where his needs were. When we started doing that, when we stopped putting demands on him, the whole atmosphere in the house improved tremendously.”
It saved the marriage.
They were lucky.
Donnelly, of Columbia’s Autism Support Services, said that although more is known every day about Asperger’s, parents are often still left without much help.
“They’re forced to learn a lot themselves,” Donnelly said. “There’s a lot of need for information.”
Like twins
For all the trauma, I remember the early years as good years for Erik and me. We were more like twins than brothers.
He was 11 and I was 8 when we invented the future of video games: the Super Game Boy. Well, it was really Erik’s idea. He was the one who was always studying Nintendo.
The Super Game Boy would be a total upgrade — way cooler than the 8-bit monographic system that ruled handheld gaming at the time: Four more action buttons, a full-color screen and high-energy games.
During a creative burst one rainy afternoon, Erik and I bolted into my room and dug into my supply of paper and colored pencils. I carefully sketched the Super Game Boy. “This is it,” I said, showing off my drawing. “Cool,” Erik said, taking a break from his part of the production: the games.
He concocted the SGB version of “Street Fighter 2” and an SGB “Super Mario Bros.” They were just drawings of game cartridges, but to us, they came alive. We put the paper games into our paper
continued from page 11A
Super Game Boy, and voila! We played for hours.
It would take at least another four years before we started to pull apart. But it wasn’t because Erik had become a teenager with better things to do than hang with his baby brother. It was because I had outgrown him.
I wasn’t proud of that fact then. I’m still not.
High school
An IQ test administered by the MU Assessment and Consultation Clinic in 2006 placed Erik in the 99th percentile compared to others in his age group. Still, school was never easy for him.
We had moved to Columbia a
year earlier, in 1998, to be closer to Mom’s family. Erik and I had to leave our Dutch roots behind and adopt American culture. But I was mostly excited. I could refresh my image, make it whatever I wanted it to be. It would be a time for reinvention.
For Erik, there was no reinvention. Just recurrence.
On the surface, Hickman High School was refreshing for him. As one of 2,000-plus students, he found it easier to blend into the background there, which enabled him to stop being a target for bullies. He also found people who shared his passion for the fantasy card game “Magic: The Gathering.” Playing cards masked his social awkwardness.
But the high of having friends at school was a stark contrast to the despair he felt at home. As with my parents’ shouts up the stairs back in Castricum, I was a silent witness to that despair.
Erik and I had adjacent rooms in our traditional 1930s red-brick home in Columbia’s Old Southwest neighborhood. But more and more, we were less and less alike.
My room was tiny. My neatly made twin-size bed covered more than a third of the floor. Organizing became a strategic challenge. Dad bolted shelves to the green walls. A hutch added space to my skinny desk; trinkets, photos and issues of Rolling Stone were arranged inside with care. There was minimal decoration. My one poster — a massive 5-by-7-footer of the Beastie Boys — demanded total attention.
Erik’s walls were green, too. But his were plastered with posters: Yoshi, Mario, Luigi — all centerfold regulars in Nintendo Power magazine. His room was much larger, but that didn’t mean it was easier to maneuver. His double bed was rarely made. His three bookcases were stuffed with “Star Trek” fan fiction, “Hardy Boys” novels and classic American literature. His large computer desk was littered with dirty dishes and silverware. He would have had space to spare had it not been for a 2-inch thick sea of school papers and handouts that blanketed the floor.
Lying in my tiny, neat room — separated from my brother by one wall — I listened to Erik’s reality and realized I was becoming the older brother.
The tears usually started around 11 p.m. or midnight. Mom would come from down the hallway, the hardwood floor creaking under her feet.
What’s wrong? she’d ask.
I just — I just — can’t, you know, I’d hear Erik mumble. Sniffles would interrupt and garble his words. His unfinished homework would lie on his cluttered desk like an accusation. I can’t.
Sure you can, my mom would urge.
I just — I just — I ....
He explained it to me recently, the difficulty he has with schoolwork. His mind wants to start wandering as soon as he sits down. Once he finally gets focused, it takes only the smallest snag, whether it’s a question that’s too hard or a little worry that his essay won’t be the best in the class, to set his mind off again. He’d hit snag after snag until, around midnight, he’d realize he wouldn’t be able to finish the assignment. And that bothered him, because he’d always considered himself a prime student.
“I never have been able to effectively sit down and just do homework,” he said. “… I can write well. I’m a good writer. I just can’t sit down and do it.”
Many with Asperger’s have a similar experience.
“They want people to think they are really intelligent,” said Pittsburgh University’s Minshew. “They don’t want to be seen as failures.”
The problem can be compounded in the classroom. While most teachers know how to deal with students who don’t want to do homework, they aren’t always as prepared to deal with those who want to but can’t because of a mental block.
Donnelly, who works part time as a consultant for Columbia Public Schools, said some teachers take it personally when students who test high for intelligence seem to blow off their homework.
“Teachers (of students with Asperger’s) are always saying, ‘He’s rude and disrespectful,’” Donnelly said. “They need more understanding.”
For me, Erik’s educational lapses created a dark understanding: I would eclipse my older brother — the older brother whose fantasy world I once thrived in, the older brother I grew up wanting to be like.
Hearing him cry through the wall was also the first time I felt complete empathy for him.
The second time was when he flunked out of MU.
College
Erik walked across the stage of the Hearnes Center on June 3, 2000, wearing the bright purple gown and mortarboard of Hickman High. He flashed the wide-open grin of his childhood.
“I was really happy,” he told me. “I knew I was going to be going to college. It was going to kick ass and I was going to be out in four years.”
Statistics were against him. Deborah Wright, clinic director at the MU Assessment and Consultation Clinic, said many students with Asperger’s syndrome take eight to nine years to finish college. Others drop out entirely.
Erik started at MU as a computer science major intending to program his own video games one day. He moved into a dormitory. He and his roommate had little in common and barely talked.
It was one of the happiest times of his life.
He could play video games without getting so absorbed in them that his schoolwork faltered. His depression was receding, despite having little social interaction. At fall’s end, his grade-point average was 3.579 out of a possible 4.
Spring semester was different.
Erik was still happy. He was making a slew of new friends. All of them were deeply interested in video games and seemed to spend all of their time playing them — just as Erik wanted to do. He even started dating.
It was a social high point for the former boy in the corner.
But Erik’s mind was where it had always been. While he thought his friends played video games 24/7, they were able to set them aside for the two to three hours they needed to do homework. When time came for Erik to do the same, the added social distractions made him forget his priorities.
His grade point plunged to 1.136. Seven months later, it was 0.900.
MU booted him.
He moved back home. He worked part time at the grocery store. He lost his pride, his joy and his hope. He took a deep plunge back into depression. The former nights spent in anguish about high school homework were nothing compared to these months worrying about his future.
“They say you can accomplish whatever you set your mind to,” Erik said to me recently, eyebrows tightened together. “Setting my mind to it isn’t enough. You also have to set effort to it. But when I hit a snag, that was it.”
Dad
Predominant evidence shows Asperger’s is a hereditary disorder. My father has always quietly felt responsible for Erik’s differences.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Music critic describes life wth Asperger's syndrome
Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic Tim Page is being brought to MU by the schools of Journalism and Music, the Thompson Center, the Center for Arts and Humanities and MU Extension’s Community Development. A story on page 1A Friday of the Missourian left out three of the sponsoring groups.
COLUMBIA — Tim Page wouldn’t wish Asperger’s syndrome on anyone.
As a kid, he fixated with feverish intensity on details the rest of the world overlooked. He immersed himself in a handful of topics — music, silent films, large chunks of the 1961 Worldbook Encyclopedia — and vigorously absorbed everything he could about them.
In spite of his zest for learning, he struggled through school. Teachers sometimes called him a genius. Then, they’d assign him failing grades.
In his career, Page said he’s angered people with his tendency to offer unfiltered opinions, a product of his perpetual struggle to recognize and decipher social cues. In his personal sphere, forging friendships and relationships has been a lifelong labor. Page has lived much of his life shouldering burdens of confusion, isolation and unhappiness.
“It’s been kind of a lonely life and remains a lonely life,” Page said. “You get the sense that you don’t have the connections with people you’d like to have.”
An estimated four to five out of every 10,000 people have Asperger’s Syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder that hinders social interactions and entails intense fixation on topics that are often offbeat and “are not always productive”, said Janet Farmer, co-director of the Thompson Center for Autism & Neurodevelopmental Disorders at MU.
“You might have a child who gets very interested with sea animals, air conditioners, presidents,” Farmer said. “And they sometimes have negative interactions with other people. In other words, it can be very disabling.”
Page, however, has transformed disability into ability. It’s a real-life twist on making lemonade out of lemons: When life handed Page Asperger’s Syndrome, he forged an illustrious career out of music criticism.
“Would I wish Asperger’s on anybody? No,” said Page, who was diagnosed in 2000. “On the other hand, it seems to me that a lot of things I did and am doing in my life happened because I had Asperger’s.”
At 53, Page has a formidable resume that could incite envy among journalists and music afficianados many years his senior. He will visit MU on Monday and Tuesday, offering a series of lectures and discussions about his disorder, his career and the symbiosis between them. He worked for the Washington Post critiquing classical music starting in 1995. In 1997, he won a Pulitzer Prize in criticism for his work with the Post — work the Pulitzer board called “lucid and illuminating.” He used to be the chief music critic for Newsday, penned stories about music and culture for The New York Times and was the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s artistic adviser and creative chair from 1999 to 2001.
Now, Page is a visiting professor with the Annenberg School of Journalism at the University of Southern California.
In 2009, Page will be able to pencil in “autobiographer” on his resume, when he’ll release a memoir detailing his experience with Asperger’s Syndrome. In August 2007, Page wrote a similarly themed piece for The New Yorker called “Parallel Play: A Lifetime of Restless Isolation Explained.”
After reading the article, Sandra Hodge, an associate professor at MU, contacted Page via e-mail to see if he’d be interested in visiting campus, figuring “the worst thing he could say would be no.”
Spearheaded by Hodge, bringing Page to MU was a collaborative effort among the journalism and music schools, the Thompson Center, the Center for Arts and Humanities and University Extension, Community Development. Page’s main appearance will be a University of Missouri Distinguished Lecture Monday evening.
“He’s achieved all these wonderful things in his life,” Hodge said. “I think he’s an inspiration for parents whose children may have the same syndrome. He’s met a number of challenges and has been very successful."
Finding his niche didn’t necessarily take a lot of work. When it came to music, Page said he took to it “like a duck to water.”
“Music was not something I had to learn about from middle C,” Page said. “I knew about it intrinsically from the moment I heard it and needed to learn how to deal with that, how to put that together. There’s no doubt that it had something to do with (Asperger’s) because I was extraordinarily sensitive to music from the time I was two or three. After that, I just inhaled it.”
Paired with a knack for writing, Page’s passion paved a path to success. It’s this kind of success that Farmer said can offer real inspiration to people whose lives are affected by autism spectrum disorders.
“It’s an important message about how you shouldn’t make assumptions about an individual that are negative,” Farmer said. “They may be able to find a perfect match and be very successful in life.”
Professional success aside, Page is straightforward about the obstacles he’s faced on a more personal level, citing two marriages that ended in divorce.
“Would I give up my Pulitzer for a really, really ecstatic and happy marriage?” Page said. “Yeah, I probably would, but maybe I don’t have to choose one or the other.”
Though he’s frank about its challenges, Page said Asperger’s shouldn’t be looked at as “some sort of horrible emotional death sentence.” With three sons and many friends he cherishes, Page maintains a relatively positive outlook on life.
“I’ve had a lot of the blessings that life has,” Page said. “It’s just a little complicated. Everybody’s life has some rain in it.”
COLUMBIA — Tim Page wouldn’t wish Asperger’s syndrome on anyone.
As a kid, he fixated with feverish intensity on details the rest of the world overlooked. He immersed himself in a handful of topics — music, silent films, large chunks of the 1961 Worldbook Encyclopedia — and vigorously absorbed everything he could about them.
In spite of his zest for learning, he struggled through school. Teachers sometimes called him a genius. Then, they’d assign him failing grades.
In his career, Page said he’s angered people with his tendency to offer unfiltered opinions, a product of his perpetual struggle to recognize and decipher social cues. In his personal sphere, forging friendships and relationships has been a lifelong labor. Page has lived much of his life shouldering burdens of confusion, isolation and unhappiness.
“It’s been kind of a lonely life and remains a lonely life,” Page said. “You get the sense that you don’t have the connections with people you’d like to have.”
An estimated four to five out of every 10,000 people have Asperger’s Syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder that hinders social interactions and entails intense fixation on topics that are often offbeat and “are not always productive”, said Janet Farmer, co-director of the Thompson Center for Autism & Neurodevelopmental Disorders at MU.
“You might have a child who gets very interested with sea animals, air conditioners, presidents,” Farmer said. “And they sometimes have negative interactions with other people. In other words, it can be very disabling.”
Page, however, has transformed disability into ability. It’s a real-life twist on making lemonade out of lemons: When life handed Page Asperger’s Syndrome, he forged an illustrious career out of music criticism.
“Would I wish Asperger’s on anybody? No,” said Page, who was diagnosed in 2000. “On the other hand, it seems to me that a lot of things I did and am doing in my life happened because I had Asperger’s.”
At 53, Page has a formidable resume that could incite envy among journalists and music afficianados many years his senior. He will visit MU on Monday and Tuesday, offering a series of lectures and discussions about his disorder, his career and the symbiosis between them. He worked for the Washington Post critiquing classical music starting in 1995. In 1997, he won a Pulitzer Prize in criticism for his work with the Post — work the Pulitzer board called “lucid and illuminating.” He used to be the chief music critic for Newsday, penned stories about music and culture for The New York Times and was the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s artistic adviser and creative chair from 1999 to 2001.
Now, Page is a visiting professor with the Annenberg School of Journalism at the University of Southern California.
In 2009, Page will be able to pencil in “autobiographer” on his resume, when he’ll release a memoir detailing his experience with Asperger’s Syndrome. In August 2007, Page wrote a similarly themed piece for The New Yorker called “Parallel Play: A Lifetime of Restless Isolation Explained.”
After reading the article, Sandra Hodge, an associate professor at MU, contacted Page via e-mail to see if he’d be interested in visiting campus, figuring “the worst thing he could say would be no.”
Spearheaded by Hodge, bringing Page to MU was a collaborative effort among the journalism and music schools, the Thompson Center, the Center for Arts and Humanities and University Extension, Community Development. Page’s main appearance will be a University of Missouri Distinguished Lecture Monday evening.
“He’s achieved all these wonderful things in his life,” Hodge said. “I think he’s an inspiration for parents whose children may have the same syndrome. He’s met a number of challenges and has been very successful."
Finding his niche didn’t necessarily take a lot of work. When it came to music, Page said he took to it “like a duck to water.”
“Music was not something I had to learn about from middle C,” Page said. “I knew about it intrinsically from the moment I heard it and needed to learn how to deal with that, how to put that together. There’s no doubt that it had something to do with (Asperger’s) because I was extraordinarily sensitive to music from the time I was two or three. After that, I just inhaled it.”
Paired with a knack for writing, Page’s passion paved a path to success. It’s this kind of success that Farmer said can offer real inspiration to people whose lives are affected by autism spectrum disorders.
“It’s an important message about how you shouldn’t make assumptions about an individual that are negative,” Farmer said. “They may be able to find a perfect match and be very successful in life.”
Professional success aside, Page is straightforward about the obstacles he’s faced on a more personal level, citing two marriages that ended in divorce.
“Would I give up my Pulitzer for a really, really ecstatic and happy marriage?” Page said. “Yeah, I probably would, but maybe I don’t have to choose one or the other.”
Though he’s frank about its challenges, Page said Asperger’s shouldn’t be looked at as “some sort of horrible emotional death sentence.” With three sons and many friends he cherishes, Page maintains a relatively positive outlook on life.
“I’ve had a lot of the blessings that life has,” Page said. “It’s just a little complicated. Everybody’s life has some rain in it.”
“I can’t change my Asperger’s Syndrome so I may as well get on with what I can do”
Neil Shepherd – Software Developer
Introduction
Software Developer, Neil Shepherd was shocked to discover he had Asperger’s Syndrome. Up until the age of about 31, he had lived with the condition without even knowing he had it. Asperger’s Syndrome is a form of autism and is often referred to as a hidden disability because it is not easily recognised. It’s also described as a 'spectrum disorder' because it affects people in different ways. According to the National Autistic Society, people with Asperger’s Syndrome have difficulties with social communication, social interaction and social imagination.
However, Neil’s disability has not been a barrier to his career. He is a computer science graduate and has been able to find employment that allows him to make the best use of his qualifications and his talents. “I need to keep busy all the time and I find my work challenging, in a positive way” says Neil who works for Esteem, an IT company.
Employer's story
Although the nature of the professional work at Esteem is highly technical, Human Resources Manager, Joanne Smart, always looks for more than technical skills and qualifications when recruiting new staff. She tries to employ people who will fit in with the company and its culture. “It’s not something you can determine from a CV or application” says Joanne, “you can only really assess whether someone will fit into the company when you meet them at interview.”
Best person for the job
Esteem’s two stage interview process gives Joanne and other managers the opportunity to learn more about a candidate’s personality, attitude and motivation. In Neil’s case, Joanne says that his ‘personability’ was a key strength of his interview and this, along with his qualifications and experience made him the best candidate out of the ten people who were interviewed for the job.
Neil was the first employee with Asperger’s Syndrome that Joanne recruited so she researched the condition to learn more about it. She also consulted Neil to find out how he felt the company could best support his needs.
Message to other employers
“We don’t view disability as an issue or a problem. Our priority is to ensure that employees have the right skillset and fit in with the company”.
Joanne Smart. HR Manager
Employee's story
So far, Neil’s job as a Software Developer has met his expectations. His job involves using programming languages to design systems that control computer functions. Neil says that the job suits his personality and his passion for numbers and computers. “I really enjoy working with numbers” says Neil, “and I love seeing the sequences and patterns in them.”
Making the most of talents and skills
Neil makes the most of his talents and skills at work and hasn’t allowed his disability to get in the way of his career. From his own personal experiences, Neil is aware that some employers view people who have long term health conditions as ‘a problem’. However, as far as his employment is concerned, Neil treats his Asperger’s Syndrome as a self-managing condition.
Neil has developed strategies to deal with situations that he finds difficult or uncomfortable. He has also learnt much from the example of his father. “My dad was a good role model” says Neil, “he had Asperger’s Syndrome and Multiple Sclerosis but worked in spite of his disabilities because he always focused on what he could do rather than what he couldn’t do.”
Introduction
Software Developer, Neil Shepherd was shocked to discover he had Asperger’s Syndrome. Up until the age of about 31, he had lived with the condition without even knowing he had it. Asperger’s Syndrome is a form of autism and is often referred to as a hidden disability because it is not easily recognised. It’s also described as a 'spectrum disorder' because it affects people in different ways. According to the National Autistic Society, people with Asperger’s Syndrome have difficulties with social communication, social interaction and social imagination.
However, Neil’s disability has not been a barrier to his career. He is a computer science graduate and has been able to find employment that allows him to make the best use of his qualifications and his talents. “I need to keep busy all the time and I find my work challenging, in a positive way” says Neil who works for Esteem, an IT company.
Employer's story
Although the nature of the professional work at Esteem is highly technical, Human Resources Manager, Joanne Smart, always looks for more than technical skills and qualifications when recruiting new staff. She tries to employ people who will fit in with the company and its culture. “It’s not something you can determine from a CV or application” says Joanne, “you can only really assess whether someone will fit into the company when you meet them at interview.”
Best person for the job
Esteem’s two stage interview process gives Joanne and other managers the opportunity to learn more about a candidate’s personality, attitude and motivation. In Neil’s case, Joanne says that his ‘personability’ was a key strength of his interview and this, along with his qualifications and experience made him the best candidate out of the ten people who were interviewed for the job.
Neil was the first employee with Asperger’s Syndrome that Joanne recruited so she researched the condition to learn more about it. She also consulted Neil to find out how he felt the company could best support his needs.
Message to other employers
“We don’t view disability as an issue or a problem. Our priority is to ensure that employees have the right skillset and fit in with the company”.
Joanne Smart. HR Manager
Employee's story
So far, Neil’s job as a Software Developer has met his expectations. His job involves using programming languages to design systems that control computer functions. Neil says that the job suits his personality and his passion for numbers and computers. “I really enjoy working with numbers” says Neil, “and I love seeing the sequences and patterns in them.”
Making the most of talents and skills
Neil makes the most of his talents and skills at work and hasn’t allowed his disability to get in the way of his career. From his own personal experiences, Neil is aware that some employers view people who have long term health conditions as ‘a problem’. However, as far as his employment is concerned, Neil treats his Asperger’s Syndrome as a self-managing condition.
Neil has developed strategies to deal with situations that he finds difficult or uncomfortable. He has also learnt much from the example of his father. “My dad was a good role model” says Neil, “he had Asperger’s Syndrome and Multiple Sclerosis but worked in spite of his disabilities because he always focused on what he could do rather than what he couldn’t do.”
Sunday, May 11, 2008
How 'Second Life' therapy helps Asperger's patients
Have you ever been to Second Life?
It's an online world where people meet, date, conduct business and travel with virtual identities and pseudonyms.
But now, the funky computer pastime has been adopted by a local brain research center for treating autism, with very real results.
Matt Kratz, a brain health center client, brags about himself in a virtual job interview, where he can practice real-world social skills.
He has Asperger's Syndrome, a mild form of autism.
"I'm listening to the conversation, to pick up keys as to what to say and when to say it," he said.
It's part of an innovative new therapy offered at UTD Center for Brain Health, where patients interact with others as digital characters, or avatars, in Second Life - a virtual online world.
"Second Life is kind of this in between stage between what happens to him in real life, but it's beyond a therapy session, where it's kind of just role play," said director of the Center of Brain Health, Sandra Chapman.
The digital character conducting the practice job interview is a clinician in another room who's prepared to ask Kratz some challenging questions.
Asperger's patients typically have normal intelligence but some cognitive flaws involving change or social skills.
In the virtual therapy, Kratz actually trains his brain to adapt and respond.
"Of course, with the brain that's really about making new connections, so synapses or connections between nerve cells are really how behavior changes," said Kratz.
Kratz says the therapy has already helped him in real-life situations.
And the potential for this kind of therapy is broad.
"We're not only asking how's the brain working, but how do we make it work better?" said Chapman.
Training the brain using real-time conversations in a make-believe world.
It's an online world where people meet, date, conduct business and travel with virtual identities and pseudonyms.
But now, the funky computer pastime has been adopted by a local brain research center for treating autism, with very real results.
Matt Kratz, a brain health center client, brags about himself in a virtual job interview, where he can practice real-world social skills.
He has Asperger's Syndrome, a mild form of autism.
"I'm listening to the conversation, to pick up keys as to what to say and when to say it," he said.
It's part of an innovative new therapy offered at UTD Center for Brain Health, where patients interact with others as digital characters, or avatars, in Second Life - a virtual online world.
"Second Life is kind of this in between stage between what happens to him in real life, but it's beyond a therapy session, where it's kind of just role play," said director of the Center of Brain Health, Sandra Chapman.
The digital character conducting the practice job interview is a clinician in another room who's prepared to ask Kratz some challenging questions.
Asperger's patients typically have normal intelligence but some cognitive flaws involving change or social skills.
In the virtual therapy, Kratz actually trains his brain to adapt and respond.
"Of course, with the brain that's really about making new connections, so synapses or connections between nerve cells are really how behavior changes," said Kratz.
Kratz says the therapy has already helped him in real-life situations.
And the potential for this kind of therapy is broad.
"We're not only asking how's the brain working, but how do we make it work better?" said Chapman.
Training the brain using real-time conversations in a make-believe world.
'Second Life' therapy helping Asperger's patients
By JEFF BRADY
WFAA-TV
Have you ever been to Second Life?
It's an online world where people meet, date, conduct business and travel with virtual identities and pseudonyms.
But now, the funky computer pastime has been adopted by a local brain research center for treating autism, with very real results.
Matt Kratz, a brain health center client, brags about himself in a virtual job interview, where he can practice real-world social skills.
He has Asperger's Syndrome, a mild form of autism.
"I'm listening to the conversation, to pick up keys as to what to say and when to say it," he said.
It's part of an innovative new therapy offered at UTD Center for Brain Health, where patients interact with others as digital characters, or avatars, in Second Life - a virtual online world.
"Second Life is kind of this in between stage between what happens to him in real life, but it's beyond a therapy session, where it's kind of just role play," said director of the Center of Brain Health, Sandra Chapman.
The digital character conducting the practice job interview is a clinician in another room who's prepared to ask Kratz some challenging questions.
Asperger's patients typically have normal intelligence but some cognitive flaws involving change or social skills.
In the virtual therapy, Kratz actually trains his brain to adapt and respond.
"Of course, with the brain that's really about making new connections, so synapses or connections between nerve cells are really how behavior changes," said Kratz.
Kratz says the therapy has already helped him in real-life situations.
And the potential for this kind of therapy is broad.
"We're not only asking how's the brain working, but how do we make it work better?" said Chapman.
Training the brain using real-time conversations in a make-believe world.
WFAA-TV
Have you ever been to Second Life?
It's an online world where people meet, date, conduct business and travel with virtual identities and pseudonyms.
But now, the funky computer pastime has been adopted by a local brain research center for treating autism, with very real results.
Matt Kratz, a brain health center client, brags about himself in a virtual job interview, where he can practice real-world social skills.
He has Asperger's Syndrome, a mild form of autism.
"I'm listening to the conversation, to pick up keys as to what to say and when to say it," he said.
It's part of an innovative new therapy offered at UTD Center for Brain Health, where patients interact with others as digital characters, or avatars, in Second Life - a virtual online world.
"Second Life is kind of this in between stage between what happens to him in real life, but it's beyond a therapy session, where it's kind of just role play," said director of the Center of Brain Health, Sandra Chapman.
The digital character conducting the practice job interview is a clinician in another room who's prepared to ask Kratz some challenging questions.
Asperger's patients typically have normal intelligence but some cognitive flaws involving change or social skills.
In the virtual therapy, Kratz actually trains his brain to adapt and respond.
"Of course, with the brain that's really about making new connections, so synapses or connections between nerve cells are really how behavior changes," said Kratz.
Kratz says the therapy has already helped him in real-life situations.
And the potential for this kind of therapy is broad.
"We're not only asking how's the brain working, but how do we make it work better?" said Chapman.
Training the brain using real-time conversations in a make-believe world.
Music critic describes life wth Asperger's syndrome
By REBECCA DELANEY
March 13, 2008 | 4:19 p.m. CST
Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic Tim Page is being brought to MU by the schools of Journalism and Music, the Thompson Center, the Center for Arts and Humanities and MU Extension’s Community Development. A story on page 1A Friday of the Missourian left out three of the sponsoring groups.
COLUMBIA — Tim Page wouldn’t wish Asperger’s syndrome on anyone.
As a kid, he fixated with feverish intensity on details the rest of the world overlooked. He immersed himself in a handful of topics — music, silent films, large chunks of the 1961 Worldbook Encyclopedia — and vigorously absorbed everything he could about them.
In spite of his zest for learning, he struggled through school. Teachers sometimes called him a genius. Then, they’d assign him failing grades.
In his career, Page said he’s angered people with his tendency to offer unfiltered opinions, a product of his perpetual struggle to recognize and decipher social cues. In his personal sphere, forging friendships and relationships has been a lifelong labor. Page has lived much of his life shouldering burdens of confusion, isolation and unhappiness.
“It’s been kind of a lonely life and remains a lonely life,” Page said. “You get the sense that you don’t have the connections with people you’d like to have.”
An estimated four to five out of every 10,000 people have Asperger’s Syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder that hinders social interactions and entails intense fixation on topics that are often offbeat and “are not always productive”, said Janet Farmer, co-director of the Thompson Center for Autism & Neurodevelopmental Disorders at MU.
“You might have a child who gets very interested with sea animals, air conditioners, presidents,” Farmer said. “And they sometimes have negative interactions with other people. In other words, it can be very disabling.”
Page, however, has transformed disability into ability. It’s a real-life twist on making lemonade out of lemons: When life handed Page Asperger’s Syndrome, he forged an illustrious career out of music criticism.
“Would I wish Asperger’s on anybody? No,” said Page, who was diagnosed in 2000. “On the other hand, it seems to me that a lot of things I did and am doing in my life happened because I had Asperger’s.”
At 53, Page has a formidable resume that could incite envy among journalists and music afficianados many years his senior. He will visit MU on Monday and Tuesday, offering a series of lectures and discussions about his disorder, his career and the symbiosis between them. He worked for the Washington Post critiquing classical music starting in 1995. In 1997, he won a Pulitzer Prize in criticism for his work with the Post — work the Pulitzer board called “lucid and illuminating.” He used to be the chief music critic for Newsday, penned stories about music and culture for The New York Times and was the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s artistic adviser and creative chair from 1999 to 2001.
Now, Page is a visiting professor with the Annenberg School of Journalism at the University of Southern California.
In 2009, Page will be able to pencil in “autobiographer” on his resume, when he’ll release a memoir detailing his experience with Asperger’s Syndrome. In August 2007, Page wrote a similarly themed piece for The New Yorker called “Parallel Play: A Lifetime of Restless Isolation Explained.”
After reading the article, Sandra Hodge, an associate professor at MU, contacted Page via e-mail to see if he’d be interested in visiting campus, figuring “the worst thing he could say would be no.”
Spearheaded by Hodge, bringing Page to MU was a collaborative effort among the journalism and music schools, the Thompson Center, the Center for Arts and Humanities and University Extension, Community Development. Page’s main appearance will be a University of Missouri Distinguished Lecture Monday evening.
“He’s achieved all these wonderful things in his life,” Hodge said. “I think he’s an inspiration for parents whose children may have the same syndrome. He’s met a number of challenges and has been very successful."
Finding his niche didn’t necessarily take a lot of work. When it came to music, Page said he took to it “like a duck to water.”
“Music was not something I had to learn about from middle C,” Page said. “I knew about it intrinsically from the moment I heard it and needed to learn how to deal with that, how to put that together. There’s no doubt that it had something to do with (Asperger’s) because I was extraordinarily sensitive to music from the time I was two or three. After that, I just inhaled it.”
Paired with a knack for writing, Page’s passion paved a path to success. It’s this kind of success that Farmer said can offer real inspiration to people whose lives are affected by autism spectrum disorders.
“It’s an important message about how you shouldn’t make assumptions about an individual that are negative,” Farmer said. “They may be able to find a perfect match and be very successful in life.”
Professional success aside, Page is straightforward about the obstacles he’s faced on a more personal level, citing two marriages that ended in divorce.
“Would I give up my Pulitzer for a really, really ecstatic and happy marriage?” Page said. “Yeah, I probably would, but maybe I don’t have to choose one or the other.”
Though he’s frank about its challenges, Page said Asperger’s shouldn’t be looked at as “some sort of horrible emotional death sentence.” With three sons and many friends he cherishes, Page maintains a relatively positive outlook on life.
“I’ve had a lot of the blessings that life has,” Page said. “It’s just a little complicated. Everybody’s life has some rain in it.”
March 13, 2008 | 4:19 p.m. CST
Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic Tim Page is being brought to MU by the schools of Journalism and Music, the Thompson Center, the Center for Arts and Humanities and MU Extension’s Community Development. A story on page 1A Friday of the Missourian left out three of the sponsoring groups.
COLUMBIA — Tim Page wouldn’t wish Asperger’s syndrome on anyone.
As a kid, he fixated with feverish intensity on details the rest of the world overlooked. He immersed himself in a handful of topics — music, silent films, large chunks of the 1961 Worldbook Encyclopedia — and vigorously absorbed everything he could about them.
In spite of his zest for learning, he struggled through school. Teachers sometimes called him a genius. Then, they’d assign him failing grades.
In his career, Page said he’s angered people with his tendency to offer unfiltered opinions, a product of his perpetual struggle to recognize and decipher social cues. In his personal sphere, forging friendships and relationships has been a lifelong labor. Page has lived much of his life shouldering burdens of confusion, isolation and unhappiness.
“It’s been kind of a lonely life and remains a lonely life,” Page said. “You get the sense that you don’t have the connections with people you’d like to have.”
An estimated four to five out of every 10,000 people have Asperger’s Syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder that hinders social interactions and entails intense fixation on topics that are often offbeat and “are not always productive”, said Janet Farmer, co-director of the Thompson Center for Autism & Neurodevelopmental Disorders at MU.
“You might have a child who gets very interested with sea animals, air conditioners, presidents,” Farmer said. “And they sometimes have negative interactions with other people. In other words, it can be very disabling.”
Page, however, has transformed disability into ability. It’s a real-life twist on making lemonade out of lemons: When life handed Page Asperger’s Syndrome, he forged an illustrious career out of music criticism.
“Would I wish Asperger’s on anybody? No,” said Page, who was diagnosed in 2000. “On the other hand, it seems to me that a lot of things I did and am doing in my life happened because I had Asperger’s.”
At 53, Page has a formidable resume that could incite envy among journalists and music afficianados many years his senior. He will visit MU on Monday and Tuesday, offering a series of lectures and discussions about his disorder, his career and the symbiosis between them. He worked for the Washington Post critiquing classical music starting in 1995. In 1997, he won a Pulitzer Prize in criticism for his work with the Post — work the Pulitzer board called “lucid and illuminating.” He used to be the chief music critic for Newsday, penned stories about music and culture for The New York Times and was the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s artistic adviser and creative chair from 1999 to 2001.
Now, Page is a visiting professor with the Annenberg School of Journalism at the University of Southern California.
In 2009, Page will be able to pencil in “autobiographer” on his resume, when he’ll release a memoir detailing his experience with Asperger’s Syndrome. In August 2007, Page wrote a similarly themed piece for The New Yorker called “Parallel Play: A Lifetime of Restless Isolation Explained.”
After reading the article, Sandra Hodge, an associate professor at MU, contacted Page via e-mail to see if he’d be interested in visiting campus, figuring “the worst thing he could say would be no.”
Spearheaded by Hodge, bringing Page to MU was a collaborative effort among the journalism and music schools, the Thompson Center, the Center for Arts and Humanities and University Extension, Community Development. Page’s main appearance will be a University of Missouri Distinguished Lecture Monday evening.
“He’s achieved all these wonderful things in his life,” Hodge said. “I think he’s an inspiration for parents whose children may have the same syndrome. He’s met a number of challenges and has been very successful."
Finding his niche didn’t necessarily take a lot of work. When it came to music, Page said he took to it “like a duck to water.”
“Music was not something I had to learn about from middle C,” Page said. “I knew about it intrinsically from the moment I heard it and needed to learn how to deal with that, how to put that together. There’s no doubt that it had something to do with (Asperger’s) because I was extraordinarily sensitive to music from the time I was two or three. After that, I just inhaled it.”
Paired with a knack for writing, Page’s passion paved a path to success. It’s this kind of success that Farmer said can offer real inspiration to people whose lives are affected by autism spectrum disorders.
“It’s an important message about how you shouldn’t make assumptions about an individual that are negative,” Farmer said. “They may be able to find a perfect match and be very successful in life.”
Professional success aside, Page is straightforward about the obstacles he’s faced on a more personal level, citing two marriages that ended in divorce.
“Would I give up my Pulitzer for a really, really ecstatic and happy marriage?” Page said. “Yeah, I probably would, but maybe I don’t have to choose one or the other.”
Though he’s frank about its challenges, Page said Asperger’s shouldn’t be looked at as “some sort of horrible emotional death sentence.” With three sons and many friends he cherishes, Page maintains a relatively positive outlook on life.
“I’ve had a lot of the blessings that life has,” Page said. “It’s just a little complicated. Everybody’s life has some rain in it.”
John Schneider promotes Asperger's Syndrome awareness
By John Morgan, Spotlight Health, with medical adviser Stephen A. Shoop, M.D.
On Smallville, John Schneider plays the father of teenager Clark Kent. In real life, Schneider is dad to his 11-year-old son, Chasen, who also has incredible abilities.
"My son has Asperger's Syndrome, which is part of the autism spectrum," says Schneider, who is best known for starring on the Dukes of Hazzard. "It's likely Albert Einstein had Asperger's, and so did Thomas Jefferson. Bill Gates I'm certain has it. With many highly motivated successful people that have done something in an obscure area, you're going to find an 'odd bird' now and then."
"Ask Chasen just about anything about baseball, and he can rattle off names, dates, statistics, you name it," Schneider explains. "He just consumes everything he can about baseball. It's his thing."
Asperger's Syndrome (AS) occupies the higher functioning end of the autism spectrum. Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects early brain development, often causing communication difficulties and problems with social interactions.
Despite its identification in 1944 by Austrian physician, Hans Asperger, the syndrome was not recognized as a unique disorder until 1994. As such, the exact number afflicted is unknown. But the National Institutes of Health (NIH) estimates that 400,000 people have autism, making it the third most common developmental disability.
But a report by the California Department of Developmental Services estimates that the number with autism may be as high as 1.5 million. The prevalence of the autism is likely as high as 10 to 12 people per 10,000, the study shows.
The challenges faced by people with autism and Asperger's come from the same place," says Stephen Shore, a doctoral candidate in special education, concentrating on the autism spectrum at Boston University. "They just express themselves differently. For example, we see significant delays in communication for autism. There is no significant delay in verbal ability for Asperger's."
Other characteristics of Asperger's include:
* Deficiencies in social skills
* Difficulties with transitions or changes, preference for sameness
* Obsessive routines
* Repetitive motions
* Restricted interests
* Difficulty reading nonverbal cues (body language)
* Sensory issues
* Difficulty determining proper body space boundaries
By definition, people with AS have a normal to above average IQs. But while many Asperger's kids possess advanced vocabularies – often sounding like "little professors" — they can be extremely literal and have difficulty using language in a social context.
'Autism bomb'
"Chasen was formally diagnosed a couple of years ago with what they termed a form of autism," Schneider says. "Then it was refined to Asperger's. When I was a kid, we called it the 'hyperactive kid in class' – you know, the one who was the brain and had little or no social skills whatsoever. Everyone seems to need a label. My son I guess could be considered an 'odd bird.'"
So was Shore, the doctoral student.
"I was hit with what I call the 'autism bomb' and lost language skills but then started getting it back at 4 years of age," Shore says. "In 1964 I was diagnosed with strong autistic tendencies. If I were to have been diagnosed at age 12, it would have been Asperger's."
"So what happened with me is what happens with most people on the autism spectrum — I moved from a more severe end to a lighter end," Shore adds. "The challenge is to move children as far to the lighter end as possible."
The cause of autism and Asperger's remains a mystery.
"We think there's a genetic basis that is exacerbated by something in the environment," Shore says. "The question is – is the catalyst a vaccination, a virus, or something else?"
'But what we do know there is definitely something in the environment that is causing it," Shore states. "Thimerisol is being strongly scrutinized, perhaps in part due to the overlap in symptomology between mercury poisoning and autism being about 80-90%. But we're not sure."
Autism expert Bernard Rimland says he is sure.
"I've been studying this for over 40 years," says Rimland, who founded the Autism Society of America and now serves as its director. "In my opinion there is very little doubt that the increased rate of vaccinations is responsible for the increase in autism. Not only the number of vaccines but also the amount of mercury has increased. Mercury is extraordinarily toxic in small amounts, but some people are amazingly susceptible to minute amounts of mercury."
"There is a huge epidemic of autism," says Rimland, who consulted on the movie Rain Man. "A recent report examined the hypotheses as to why there is such a large increase. Migration to California does not explain the increase. The report rejected the hypothesis that there was a change in diagnostic standards. Another theory was kids were reclassified from mentally retarded to autistic. But this was not the case either. It is the vaccinations."
To support his case, Rimland says that the symptoms of mercury poisoning are "amazingly like the symptoms of autism." Boys are four times more susceptible to mercury toxicity than girls. Autism is four times as common in boys as girls.
Mercury rising
When interviewed by the ASA, Rick Rollens, who has helped with the California studies, acknowledged the possibility exists that vaccinations could be responsible. "…Since mercury containing vaccines are still in use today, including the most recent recommended addition to the childhood immunization schedule ... (of) two shots of flu vaccine for babies, it will take a few years to start seeing the effect of the phasing out of the mercury containing preservative thimerisol from childhood vaccines on the autism epidemic."
"The experts have been wrong before and the experts are wrong this time too," Rimland states. "When we were children we had three vaccinations before the age of 6. Now the kids get 22 before the age of 2. It's a little like saying if a kid can safely carry three books in his backpack, then 22 is also safe."
"The good thing from all this is they've taken the mercury out of the vaccines," adds Shore, who authored Beyond the Wall: Personal Experiences with Autism and Asperger's Syndrome. "Because you shouldn't be injecting mercury into anyone."
But Rimland urges extra caution because many old vaccinations are still being used that still contain mercury.
"The FDA has not recalled the vaccinations so the advice we give parents is if you have an autistic child in your family insist on seeing the package insert – don't take their word for it," Rimland cautions. "Read it yourself. If it says thimerisol, don't let them use it."
Schneider has his own advice.
"If your child is going along just fine and developing skills when they should and then you notice all of the sudden that his forward progression stops and begins to reverse, you need to take your child in and find out what is going on," Schneider says.
Among the treatments that can help children with autism and Asperger's:
* Behavior modification
* Special education
* Medications – though not specifically for Asperger's, anti-anxiety drugs and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors can be helpful for symptoms.
Schneider says his son has benefited greatly from social skills training as well as having used a "shadow" in school to encourage him to interact more with his peers.
"Fortunately, Asperger's is not like some of the terrible diseases we are fighting to cure through the Children's Miracle Network. It's not going to kill Chasen," says Schneider, who helped found CMN which has raised more than $ 2.5 billion for children's hospitals. "It doesn't mean it's easy for Chasen, but he's an amazing kid, and I am so proud of him."
On Smallville, John Schneider plays the father of teenager Clark Kent. In real life, Schneider is dad to his 11-year-old son, Chasen, who also has incredible abilities.
"My son has Asperger's Syndrome, which is part of the autism spectrum," says Schneider, who is best known for starring on the Dukes of Hazzard. "It's likely Albert Einstein had Asperger's, and so did Thomas Jefferson. Bill Gates I'm certain has it. With many highly motivated successful people that have done something in an obscure area, you're going to find an 'odd bird' now and then."
"Ask Chasen just about anything about baseball, and he can rattle off names, dates, statistics, you name it," Schneider explains. "He just consumes everything he can about baseball. It's his thing."
Asperger's Syndrome (AS) occupies the higher functioning end of the autism spectrum. Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects early brain development, often causing communication difficulties and problems with social interactions.
Despite its identification in 1944 by Austrian physician, Hans Asperger, the syndrome was not recognized as a unique disorder until 1994. As such, the exact number afflicted is unknown. But the National Institutes of Health (NIH) estimates that 400,000 people have autism, making it the third most common developmental disability.
But a report by the California Department of Developmental Services estimates that the number with autism may be as high as 1.5 million. The prevalence of the autism is likely as high as 10 to 12 people per 10,000, the study shows.
The challenges faced by people with autism and Asperger's come from the same place," says Stephen Shore, a doctoral candidate in special education, concentrating on the autism spectrum at Boston University. "They just express themselves differently. For example, we see significant delays in communication for autism. There is no significant delay in verbal ability for Asperger's."
Other characteristics of Asperger's include:
* Deficiencies in social skills
* Difficulties with transitions or changes, preference for sameness
* Obsessive routines
* Repetitive motions
* Restricted interests
* Difficulty reading nonverbal cues (body language)
* Sensory issues
* Difficulty determining proper body space boundaries
By definition, people with AS have a normal to above average IQs. But while many Asperger's kids possess advanced vocabularies – often sounding like "little professors" — they can be extremely literal and have difficulty using language in a social context.
'Autism bomb'
"Chasen was formally diagnosed a couple of years ago with what they termed a form of autism," Schneider says. "Then it was refined to Asperger's. When I was a kid, we called it the 'hyperactive kid in class' – you know, the one who was the brain and had little or no social skills whatsoever. Everyone seems to need a label. My son I guess could be considered an 'odd bird.'"
So was Shore, the doctoral student.
"I was hit with what I call the 'autism bomb' and lost language skills but then started getting it back at 4 years of age," Shore says. "In 1964 I was diagnosed with strong autistic tendencies. If I were to have been diagnosed at age 12, it would have been Asperger's."
"So what happened with me is what happens with most people on the autism spectrum — I moved from a more severe end to a lighter end," Shore adds. "The challenge is to move children as far to the lighter end as possible."
The cause of autism and Asperger's remains a mystery.
"We think there's a genetic basis that is exacerbated by something in the environment," Shore says. "The question is – is the catalyst a vaccination, a virus, or something else?"
'But what we do know there is definitely something in the environment that is causing it," Shore states. "Thimerisol is being strongly scrutinized, perhaps in part due to the overlap in symptomology between mercury poisoning and autism being about 80-90%. But we're not sure."
Autism expert Bernard Rimland says he is sure.
"I've been studying this for over 40 years," says Rimland, who founded the Autism Society of America and now serves as its director. "In my opinion there is very little doubt that the increased rate of vaccinations is responsible for the increase in autism. Not only the number of vaccines but also the amount of mercury has increased. Mercury is extraordinarily toxic in small amounts, but some people are amazingly susceptible to minute amounts of mercury."
"There is a huge epidemic of autism," says Rimland, who consulted on the movie Rain Man. "A recent report examined the hypotheses as to why there is such a large increase. Migration to California does not explain the increase. The report rejected the hypothesis that there was a change in diagnostic standards. Another theory was kids were reclassified from mentally retarded to autistic. But this was not the case either. It is the vaccinations."
To support his case, Rimland says that the symptoms of mercury poisoning are "amazingly like the symptoms of autism." Boys are four times more susceptible to mercury toxicity than girls. Autism is four times as common in boys as girls.
Mercury rising
When interviewed by the ASA, Rick Rollens, who has helped with the California studies, acknowledged the possibility exists that vaccinations could be responsible. "…Since mercury containing vaccines are still in use today, including the most recent recommended addition to the childhood immunization schedule ... (of) two shots of flu vaccine for babies, it will take a few years to start seeing the effect of the phasing out of the mercury containing preservative thimerisol from childhood vaccines on the autism epidemic."
"The experts have been wrong before and the experts are wrong this time too," Rimland states. "When we were children we had three vaccinations before the age of 6. Now the kids get 22 before the age of 2. It's a little like saying if a kid can safely carry three books in his backpack, then 22 is also safe."
"The good thing from all this is they've taken the mercury out of the vaccines," adds Shore, who authored Beyond the Wall: Personal Experiences with Autism and Asperger's Syndrome. "Because you shouldn't be injecting mercury into anyone."
But Rimland urges extra caution because many old vaccinations are still being used that still contain mercury.
"The FDA has not recalled the vaccinations so the advice we give parents is if you have an autistic child in your family insist on seeing the package insert – don't take their word for it," Rimland cautions. "Read it yourself. If it says thimerisol, don't let them use it."
Schneider has his own advice.
"If your child is going along just fine and developing skills when they should and then you notice all of the sudden that his forward progression stops and begins to reverse, you need to take your child in and find out what is going on," Schneider says.
Among the treatments that can help children with autism and Asperger's:
* Behavior modification
* Special education
* Medications – though not specifically for Asperger's, anti-anxiety drugs and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors can be helpful for symptoms.
Schneider says his son has benefited greatly from social skills training as well as having used a "shadow" in school to encourage him to interact more with his peers.
"Fortunately, Asperger's is not like some of the terrible diseases we are fighting to cure through the Children's Miracle Network. It's not going to kill Chasen," says Schneider, who helped found CMN which has raised more than $ 2.5 billion for children's hospitals. "It doesn't mean it's easy for Chasen, but he's an amazing kid, and I am so proud of him."
iReport: 'Naughty Auties' battle autism with virtual interaction
By Nicole Saidi
CNN
(CNN) -- Walk into Naughty Auties, a virtual resource center for those with autism, and you'll find palm trees swaying against a striking ocean sunset. Were it not for the pixelated graphics on the computer screen in front of you, you would swear you were looking at a tropical hideaway.
David Savill, 22, lives in Gloucester, England, in real life and created this spot within the virtual world of Second Life. Residents of this digital realm can represent themselves with 3-D images called avatars and connect with each other over the Internet.
Savill has Asperger's syndrome and said he wanted Naughty Auties to serve those with autism spectrum disorders and their friends and family.
Savill, who represents himself in the virtual world using an avatar named Dave Sparrow, said one benefit is that visitors can practice social interaction and find information about the condition. The graphical representations of real people create a "comfort zone" that can coax users out of their shells and get them communicating with others, he said.
"You're on your own computer, in your own room,your own space," Savill said.
"So you're not going out into the real world meeting people, you're going meeting people online and in your own home, so you're perfectly relaxed. It's just a fantastic tool to use to bring people together."
Autism, more precisely the autism spectrum, is a range of brain disorders that can cause difficulties in social interaction, communication and behavior. Asperger's syndrome is at the milder end of this spectrum. People with Asperger's are often high-achieving but can have difficulty in social situations.
CNN learned about Savill's Second Life place from an iReporter in England who has named herself Janey Bracken in Second Life. Bracken, who prefers not to share her real name, submitted stories to iReport.com describing Savill's resource center and providing information about other places where those with the condition can turn.
"[Savill] said that his life changed when his family decided to get the Internet," Bracken wrote. "He was able to use chat rooms and soon realized that people used symbols to express themselves: the smiley signs, the angry signs, hug signs, etc., to enhance the text. He went on to say that subconsciously his brain was learning about communication from these sessions of chat."
Second Life has its own economy and social scene, and Bracken and Savill hope it could become a haven for those seeking help for autism.
While many think such computer interactions could eventually be helpful in treating autism, scientists say more information is needed to truly assess their value. Dr. Fred Volkmar, a professor in Yale University's Child Study Center, said he would want more concrete studies done before he could be sure.
"Although not much research is yet available, there is clearly considerable potential in use of new technologies for fostering social skills," Volkmar said.
To answer this need, scientists are beginning to explore the possibilities in Second Life. One such researcher is Simon Bignell, a lecturer in psychology at the University of Derby in Derby, England, who is running a project that is evaluating teaching and research in Second Life.
Bignell, known in-world as Milton Broome, said Second Life is an uncharted but promising area for new applied psychological research. Virtual reality can be used to simulate new environments for people on the autistic spectrum, he said.
"For people with autism, we've found it's a very nice way of setting up situations they might come across in their everyday lives," Bignell said. "For people who have social, emotional, communicational problems ... we can get them familiar with an environment before they actually try it out in real life."
He started the "Autism Research" discussion group within Second Life to serve as an information-sharing tool for interested parties. He also has an office within Second Life and can sometimes be found working in SL-Labs, the university's in-world psychology lab space. The lab areas contain meeting spots, informational kiosks and games. A portion of these areas contain information about autism and Asperger's.
Savill said Second Life excels at minimizing geographical separations between people and bringing people from all over the world to meet together quickly and easily.
He added that he wanted to emphasize that virtual worlds are an emerging and important tool not just for autistic people, but for the people who know them.
"It's not just to help people with autism, it's to help people whose lives have been affected by autism, be they family or friends or employees of people who have autism," Savill said. "Naughty Auties is a fantastic meeting place for people."
CNN
(CNN) -- Walk into Naughty Auties, a virtual resource center for those with autism, and you'll find palm trees swaying against a striking ocean sunset. Were it not for the pixelated graphics on the computer screen in front of you, you would swear you were looking at a tropical hideaway.
David Savill, 22, lives in Gloucester, England, in real life and created this spot within the virtual world of Second Life. Residents of this digital realm can represent themselves with 3-D images called avatars and connect with each other over the Internet.
Savill has Asperger's syndrome and said he wanted Naughty Auties to serve those with autism spectrum disorders and their friends and family.
Savill, who represents himself in the virtual world using an avatar named Dave Sparrow, said one benefit is that visitors can practice social interaction and find information about the condition. The graphical representations of real people create a "comfort zone" that can coax users out of their shells and get them communicating with others, he said.
"You're on your own computer, in your own room,your own space," Savill said.
"So you're not going out into the real world meeting people, you're going meeting people online and in your own home, so you're perfectly relaxed. It's just a fantastic tool to use to bring people together."
Autism, more precisely the autism spectrum, is a range of brain disorders that can cause difficulties in social interaction, communication and behavior. Asperger's syndrome is at the milder end of this spectrum. People with Asperger's are often high-achieving but can have difficulty in social situations.
CNN learned about Savill's Second Life place from an iReporter in England who has named herself Janey Bracken in Second Life. Bracken, who prefers not to share her real name, submitted stories to iReport.com describing Savill's resource center and providing information about other places where those with the condition can turn.
"[Savill] said that his life changed when his family decided to get the Internet," Bracken wrote. "He was able to use chat rooms and soon realized that people used symbols to express themselves: the smiley signs, the angry signs, hug signs, etc., to enhance the text. He went on to say that subconsciously his brain was learning about communication from these sessions of chat."
Second Life has its own economy and social scene, and Bracken and Savill hope it could become a haven for those seeking help for autism.
While many think such computer interactions could eventually be helpful in treating autism, scientists say more information is needed to truly assess their value. Dr. Fred Volkmar, a professor in Yale University's Child Study Center, said he would want more concrete studies done before he could be sure.
"Although not much research is yet available, there is clearly considerable potential in use of new technologies for fostering social skills," Volkmar said.
To answer this need, scientists are beginning to explore the possibilities in Second Life. One such researcher is Simon Bignell, a lecturer in psychology at the University of Derby in Derby, England, who is running a project that is evaluating teaching and research in Second Life.
Bignell, known in-world as Milton Broome, said Second Life is an uncharted but promising area for new applied psychological research. Virtual reality can be used to simulate new environments for people on the autistic spectrum, he said.
"For people with autism, we've found it's a very nice way of setting up situations they might come across in their everyday lives," Bignell said. "For people who have social, emotional, communicational problems ... we can get them familiar with an environment before they actually try it out in real life."
He started the "Autism Research" discussion group within Second Life to serve as an information-sharing tool for interested parties. He also has an office within Second Life and can sometimes be found working in SL-Labs, the university's in-world psychology lab space. The lab areas contain meeting spots, informational kiosks and games. A portion of these areas contain information about autism and Asperger's.
Savill said Second Life excels at minimizing geographical separations between people and bringing people from all over the world to meet together quickly and easily.
He added that he wanted to emphasize that virtual worlds are an emerging and important tool not just for autistic people, but for the people who know them.
"It's not just to help people with autism, it's to help people whose lives have been affected by autism, be they family or friends or employees of people who have autism," Savill said. "Naughty Auties is a fantastic meeting place for people."
Friday, May 9, 2008
Autistic boy creates art with paper and scissors
NANCY BARTLEY
The Seattle Times
SEATTLE — In Wil Kerner's world, happiness and grief and all the feelings that come between are puzzle pieces as alien as the curious construction-paper characters in the art he assembles on his grandmother's living-room carpet.
What the autistic 12-year-old can't express verbally or in social interaction he can show through his carefully cut out geometric shapes assembled into characters in a paper collage, a talent the staff at Seattle's Harborview Medical Center calls a rare artistic gift. Large red circles become heads, delicate strips of fringed white paper become hair, and finely cut arches are shaped into eyebrows.
The art and the artist intrigues those who study autism. Dr. Stephen Dager, interim director of the University of Washington's Autism Center, who has been studying brain anatomy and chemistry in autism, is mystified by Wil's artistic talents. Autistic people generally pay little attention to eyes during social interaction, studies show, and usually are unaware of others' emotions. Yet, Wil has the ability to mimic human emotion through his art.
Wil doesn't understand numbers, has limited speech ability and very limited social skills. He has a brief attention span, tends to be compulsive and doesn't like his routine interrupted, and while he seems oblivious to others' subtle facial expressions, he manages not only to reproduce them but to do so by cutting them out of paper.
Those who study autism wonder if Wil's remarkable gift is a means of compensation for other deficits or a matter of serendipity.
In the past, Wil would have been called a "savant," a term now considered insensitive. Dager calls him extraordinarily talented.
Last week, Wil was honored at a reception in the Harborview cafeteria, where his art is on display through the month. He fidgeted at a table in the corner with a pile of colored paper in front of him, as dozens of people milled through the exhibit, challenging Wil's need for a calm environment.
Guest of honor or not, he finally had enough and shouted. He left for a quiet place as guests continued to admire his work.
The hospital has an art program and features artists year-round. When art director Peggy Weise saw Wil's work, she was intrigued.
"It's full of symbolism. Once you spend time with it, it's actually quite sophisticated. You can appreciate it first on the cursory level, and then you can appreciate its more sophisticated qualities," Weise said.
Wil, who was diagnosed with autism when he was 2, went to special classes in the Issaquah School District until two years ago but failed to thrive and began having panic attacks, said his grandmother, Susan Mooring. He was allowed to be tutored privately at Mooring's home just outside Renton.
With the help of his teacher, Leroy Maxwell, Wil, at 10, slowly began to learn to speak, something he seldom had done, and to read.
Then one day his father took him to a warehouse store and granted his wish for colorful construction paper, letting him buy an entire cartload. Wil's first collages circle-headed people with one eye each, a boy and girl holding hands, a blue baby with a shy smile, began to take shape. Mooring glanced at what he was doing and was stunned.
"There was really something going on there," she said of her grandson's art.
Although she had no formal art training, she believed Wil's creations were more than haphazard assemblages. To capture a design before Wil could destroy it, Mooring photographed each one and collected all the pieces. Later, she reassembled each collage on a large piece of artboard and hired a photographer to take digital photographs. Now hundreds of collages later, they're selling sometimes for as much as $1,000 each in the case of three sold at a charity auction to benefit autism.
One collage, of a pig with a downcast look and raised shoulder, gives a strong sense of isolation and sadness, Mooring said. While Wil names most of his work simply "Blue Baby" and "Pals," for instance Mooring named the pig collage "Exclusion." It was something Wil experienced, she said.
Another one of his creations is a collage of rectangles with a large figure, vaguely resembling Donald Trump, seemingly overlooking buildings. "He calls this one 'Rat,'" Mooring said.
That he can create facial expressions so well is particularly amazing, Dager said, because autistic people tend not to maintain eye contact or study facial expressions.
"Is it that their brains are wired differently? That's part of what we're studying," Dager said.
As for Wil, time for his art is a reward for doing schoolwork, Maxwell said. And when Wil begins to cut, the paper flies, the shapes emerge, the floor is littered with scraps of color and Maxwell and Mooring wait and watch for the magic.
The Seattle Times
SEATTLE — In Wil Kerner's world, happiness and grief and all the feelings that come between are puzzle pieces as alien as the curious construction-paper characters in the art he assembles on his grandmother's living-room carpet.
What the autistic 12-year-old can't express verbally or in social interaction he can show through his carefully cut out geometric shapes assembled into characters in a paper collage, a talent the staff at Seattle's Harborview Medical Center calls a rare artistic gift. Large red circles become heads, delicate strips of fringed white paper become hair, and finely cut arches are shaped into eyebrows.
The art and the artist intrigues those who study autism. Dr. Stephen Dager, interim director of the University of Washington's Autism Center, who has been studying brain anatomy and chemistry in autism, is mystified by Wil's artistic talents. Autistic people generally pay little attention to eyes during social interaction, studies show, and usually are unaware of others' emotions. Yet, Wil has the ability to mimic human emotion through his art.
Wil doesn't understand numbers, has limited speech ability and very limited social skills. He has a brief attention span, tends to be compulsive and doesn't like his routine interrupted, and while he seems oblivious to others' subtle facial expressions, he manages not only to reproduce them but to do so by cutting them out of paper.
Those who study autism wonder if Wil's remarkable gift is a means of compensation for other deficits or a matter of serendipity.
In the past, Wil would have been called a "savant," a term now considered insensitive. Dager calls him extraordinarily talented.
Last week, Wil was honored at a reception in the Harborview cafeteria, where his art is on display through the month. He fidgeted at a table in the corner with a pile of colored paper in front of him, as dozens of people milled through the exhibit, challenging Wil's need for a calm environment.
Guest of honor or not, he finally had enough and shouted. He left for a quiet place as guests continued to admire his work.
The hospital has an art program and features artists year-round. When art director Peggy Weise saw Wil's work, she was intrigued.
"It's full of symbolism. Once you spend time with it, it's actually quite sophisticated. You can appreciate it first on the cursory level, and then you can appreciate its more sophisticated qualities," Weise said.
Wil, who was diagnosed with autism when he was 2, went to special classes in the Issaquah School District until two years ago but failed to thrive and began having panic attacks, said his grandmother, Susan Mooring. He was allowed to be tutored privately at Mooring's home just outside Renton.
With the help of his teacher, Leroy Maxwell, Wil, at 10, slowly began to learn to speak, something he seldom had done, and to read.
Then one day his father took him to a warehouse store and granted his wish for colorful construction paper, letting him buy an entire cartload. Wil's first collages circle-headed people with one eye each, a boy and girl holding hands, a blue baby with a shy smile, began to take shape. Mooring glanced at what he was doing and was stunned.
"There was really something going on there," she said of her grandson's art.
Although she had no formal art training, she believed Wil's creations were more than haphazard assemblages. To capture a design before Wil could destroy it, Mooring photographed each one and collected all the pieces. Later, she reassembled each collage on a large piece of artboard and hired a photographer to take digital photographs. Now hundreds of collages later, they're selling sometimes for as much as $1,000 each in the case of three sold at a charity auction to benefit autism.
One collage, of a pig with a downcast look and raised shoulder, gives a strong sense of isolation and sadness, Mooring said. While Wil names most of his work simply "Blue Baby" and "Pals," for instance Mooring named the pig collage "Exclusion." It was something Wil experienced, she said.
Another one of his creations is a collage of rectangles with a large figure, vaguely resembling Donald Trump, seemingly overlooking buildings. "He calls this one 'Rat,'" Mooring said.
That he can create facial expressions so well is particularly amazing, Dager said, because autistic people tend not to maintain eye contact or study facial expressions.
"Is it that their brains are wired differently? That's part of what we're studying," Dager said.
As for Wil, time for his art is a reward for doing schoolwork, Maxwell said. And when Wil begins to cut, the paper flies, the shapes emerge, the floor is littered with scraps of color and Maxwell and Mooring wait and watch for the magic.
Monday, May 5, 2008
My Mind is a Web Browser: How People with Autism Think
by Temple Grandin
The struggle that made possible Temple Grandin's early development, graduate education, and notable career as a professor of animal behavior, designer of animal facilities worldwide, and celebrated writer, speaker, and researcher on autism, is told in her books, Emergence: Labeled Autistic (1986) and Thinking in Pictures and Other Reports From My Life With Autism* (Vintage Books) 1996.
*Voted a Cerebrum "Great Brain Book," Spring 1999.
Since writing Thinking in Pictures, which described my visual way of thinking, I have gained further insights into how my thought processes are different when compared to those of people who think in language. At autism meetings, I am often asked, "How can you be effective at public speaking when you think in pictures that are like video tapes in your imagination?" It is almost as though I have two levels of consciousness that operate separately. Only by interviewing people did I learn that many of them think primarily in words, and that their thoughts are linked to emotion. In my brain, words act as a narrator for the visual images in my imagination. I can see the pictures in my memory files.
To use a computer analogy: The language part of my brain is the computer operator, and the rest of my brain is the computer. In most people, the brain's computer operator and the computer are merged into one seamless consciousness; but in me they are separate. I hypothesize that the frontal cortex of my brain is the operator and the rest of my brain is the computer.
When I lecture, the language itself is mostly "downloaded" out of memory from files that are like tape recordings. I use slides or notes to trigger opening the different files. When I am talking about something for the first time, I look at the visual images on the "computer monitor" in my imagination, then the language part of me describes those images. After I have given the lecture several times, the new material in language is switched over into "audio tape-recording files." When I was in high school, other kids called me "tape recorder."
A Web browser finds specific words; by analogy, my mind looks for picture memories that are associated with a word. It can also go off on a tangent in the same way as a Web browser.
Non-autistic people seem to have a whole upper layer of verbal thinking that is merged with their emotions. By contrast, unless I panic, I use logic to make all decisions; my thinking can be done independently of emotion. In fact, I seem to lack a higher consciousness composed of abstract verbal thoughts that are merged with emotion. Researchers have learned that people with autism have a decreased metabolism in the area in the frontal cortex that connects the brain's emotional centers with higher thinking (the anterior cingulate).1 The frontal cortex is the brain's senior executive like the CEO of a corporation. Brain scans indicate that people with autism use problem-solving circuits in social situations. Unlike non-autistic people, the emotion center in their amygdala is not activated, for example, when they judge expressions in another person's eyes.
My mind is a Web browser
Now let me explain how the language part of my brain and the "thinking in pictures" part of my brain seem to interact. My mind works just like an Internet Web browser. A Web browser finds specific words; by analogy, my mind looks for picture memories that are associated with a word. It can also go off on a tangent in the same way as a Web browser, because visual thinking is non-linear, associative thinking.
To demonstrate how my mind works, at an autism meeting I asked a member of the audience to name a thing for me to invent. I wanted to show how the visual part of my brain and the language part worked separately. Somebody said, "invent a better paper clip." The language part of my brain said, "I can do that," and pictures immediately started flashing into my imagination of all kinds of paper clips I have seen. My "Web browser" searched the picture memory files; many paper clip pictures flashed through my imagination like slides. I could stop on any one picture and study it. I saw an odd, plastic paper clip that was on a scientific paper from Europe. At this point, I got off the subject and saw pictures of the first scientific meeting I had attended in Spain. The language voice inside me said, "Get back on the subject of paper clips." The language part of me is a manager who uses simple non-descriptive language to tell the rest of my brain what to do.
Often, the best ideas for inventing things come just as I am drifting off to sleep. The pictures are clearer then. It is as though I can access the most concrete, vivid memory files with the most detailed images. The language part of my brain is completely shut off at night.
To get ideas for new paper clip designs, I can pull up pictures of clothes pins and other clip-like things, such as mouse traps and C clamps used in woodworking. I start thinking that inventing a better clip for holding a thick pile of papers together might be more marketable than a new paper clip design. Existing spring binder clips tend to rip envelopes when papers are mailed, because the clips have protruding edges. When I think about this, I see ripped envelopes. The language part of my mind says, "Design a flat binder clip for thick documents." When I say this, I see a mailed document in an undamaged envelope. My visual imagination then sees a large plastic clip that I saw in Japan. Japanese apartment dwellers who do not have clothes dryers use large, plastic clips to hold blankets and other laundry on balcony railings. A small version of the Japanese balcony clip may make a better paper clip for holding many pages.
When I was responding to the paper clip inquiry, I knew that I could visually associate all day about paper clips. The language part of my mind then said, "That is enough," and I resumed my lecture. But as I corrected the first draft of this article, I saw a one-piece molded plastic binder clip that would lay flat on a thick bunch of papers.
I do have the ability to control the rate at which pictures come onto the "computer screen" in my imagination. Some people with autism are not able to do this. One person with autism told me that images explode into a web of a pictures that are interrelated. The decision-making process can become "locked up" and over-loaded with pictures coming in all at once.
Unmasking Talent
I have been fascinated with research indicating that the detailed, realistic pictures that autistic savants -- autistic individuals with extraordinary talent in a specific area -- make may be created by directly accessing primary memory areas deep in the brain. Researchers in Australia hypothesize that autistic savants may have privileged access to lower levels of information.3 A study with a non-autistic "human calculator," who could solve multiplication problems twice as quickly as a normal person, indicated that his brain had enhanced low-level processing.4 EEG recordings of his brain waves showed that brain activity was greatest, as compared with a normal person, when the multiplication problem was first flashed on the screen.
I hypothesize that I am able to access primary visual files in my brain. When designing livestock equipment in my business, I can do three-dimensional, full motion videos of equipment and can test-run the equipment in my imagination. I can walk around it or fly over it. My ability to rotate the image is slow. I move my mind's eye around or over the image.
When I read an article in Neurology about frontal temporal lobe dementia, I became extremely excited. It provided a scientific foundation for the idea of hidden visual thinking under a layer of verbal thinking. Research on frontal temporal lobe dementia, an Alzheimer's-like condition that destroys language and social areas in the brain, demonstrated that, as the condition progressed, visual skills in art emerged in people who had no interest in art. The increase in creativity was always visual, never verbal. Brain scans found the highest activity in the visual cortex. As the patient's cognitive abilities deteriorated, the art became more photo realistic. Artwork published with the journal article looks like the art of autistic savants.
I see the decision process
I see the decision-making process in my mind in a way most people do not. When I tried to explain this to a person who thinks in language, he just didn't get it. How my decision-making works is most clearly seen in an emergency.
On a bright, sunny day, I was driving to the airport when an elk ran into the highway just ahead of my car. I had only three or four seconds to react. During those few seconds, I saw images of my choices. The first image was of a car rear ending me. This is what would have happened if I had made the instinctive panic response and slammed on the brakes. The second image was of an elk smashing through my windshield. This is what would have happened if I had swerved. The last image showed the elk passing by in front of my car. The last choice was the one I could make if I inhibited the panic response and braked just a little to slow the car. I mentally "clicked" on slowing down and avoided an accident. It was like clicking a computer mouse on the desired picture.
Animal decision making
I speculate that the decision-making process I used to avoid the accident may be similar to the process animals use. From my work with animals, I've come to believe that consciousness originally arose from the orienting response. When a deer sees a person, it will often freeze and look at him. This is the deer's orienting response. During this time, it decides either to run away or to keep grazing. It does not act as a programmed robot, governed by instinct or reflexes; it has the flexibility to make a decision. One of the things that has helped me to understand animals is that, more than most people, I think and feel like one. The more "animal" parts of the normal human brain may be covered by layers of language-based thinking.
Thinking in audio tapes
In connection with my lectures, I have talked with autistic people who are not visual thinkers. They seem to think in audio tape clips. Audio tape thinking does not have to involve language; instead of using visual images to form memories, these people store very specific audio clips. I suspect that, for them, hearing is easier than seeing. Dr. John Stein and his colleagues at Oxford University have discovered that some people have difficulty seeing rapidly changing visual scenes. They find reading is difficult because the print appears jumbled.6 This results from defects in brain circuits that process motion.7 The eye is fine; the circuits between brain and eyes malfunction.
One person I know who is expert at training animals told me that she hears the animal's behavior instead of seeing it. She has audio tapes in her memory with little sound details. For example, she knows that the animal is relaxed or agitated by listening to its breathing or footsteps. She reads audio signals instead of body posture.
Piecing the details together
People with autism, and animals as well, pay more attention to details. As I described in Thinking in Pictures, all my thinking goes from the specific to the general. I look at lots of little details and piece them together to make a concept. The first step in forming an idea is to make categories. For example, the most primary level is sorting objects by color or shape. The next step is sorting things by less obvious features, as when we categorize cats and dogs. When I was five years old, I figured out that a miniature dachshund was not a cat because it had a dog's nose; all dogs had certain features that were visually recognizable.
My mind seeks these categories amidst an array of little details. In problem solving, my thinking process is like that of an epidemiologist tracking down a disease. The epidemiologist collects lots of little pieces of information and finally figures out the common factor that caused certain people to fall ill. For example, they may all have eaten strawberries from a certain place.
Also, I understand concepts visually. For example, all objects classified as keys will open locks. I realize that the word "key" can also be used metaphorically, when we say, "the key to success is positive thinking." When I think about that phrase, I see Norman Vincent Peale's book, The Power of Positive Thinking, and I see myself back at my aunt's ranch reading it. I then see a stage where a person is getting an award and I see a large cardboard key. Even in this situation, the key still unlocks the door to success. The ability to form categories is the beginning of the ability to form concepts. Keys in their physical form open physical locks but abstract keys can open many things, such as a scientific discovery or career success.
In teaching people to understand animal behavior, I have to help them to learn how to observe details that seem insignificant. Animals notice details in their environment that most people do not see, such as a branch that moves slightly or a shadow. In my work with livestock facilities, I try to get the language-based thinkers of the crowd to be more observant of little details that spook cattle. A cow may balk at entering a vaccination chute because it sees a piece of jiggling chain that most people ignore, but which is significant in the cow's environment.
That little chain attracts the cow's attention because it moves quickly. Rapid movement activates the amygdala, the brain's emotion center. In a prey species such as cattle, rapid movement elevates fear because, in the wild, things that move rapidly are often dangerous. Something moving quickly in the bushes may be a lion. On the other hand, a predatory animal such as a dog, is attracted to rapid movement. This may explain why some dogs attack joggers. Rapid movement triggers chasing and attacking in a predatory animal, but it triggers flight in a prey species such as deer or cattle.
Objects that move rapidly also attract the attention of people with autism. When I was younger, I liked to play with automatic doors at supermarkets. I enjoyed watching the rapid opening movement. Elevator doors were not interesting; they did not move fast enough to be pleasurable to watch. Tests of my visual tracking indicate that I have a slight abnormality in my eye's ability to track a moving object. Children and adults with autism who never learn to speak have graver defects in their nervous system. The automatic doors that I liked to watch cause many nonverbal autistics to put their hands over their eyes. The rapid movement of the doors hurts their eyes. Possibly, a small defect in eye tracking makes rapidly moving things attractive to me, while a more serious neurological defect makes them unpleasant to other autistics. As a child, my favorite things all made rapid movements. I liked flapping flags, kites, and model airplanes that flew.
Disturbing sounds
I have always felt that my senses were more like those of an animal. Does my brain have deeper access to the ancient anti-predator circuits that humans share with animals? At night, I cannot get to sleep if I hear high-pitched, intermittent noise such as a backup alarm on a truck or children yelling in the next hotel room; they make my heart race. Thunder or airport noise does not bother me, but the little high-pitched noises cannot be shut out. Recent research with pigs has confirmed that intermittent sounds are more disturbing to them than steady sounds.9
Why are high-pitched sounds disturbing to animals (and to me), while airport noises and thunder are not? I speculate that in nature the rumble of thunder is not dangerous but a high-pitched noise would be an animal's distress call. Beeping backup alarms and car alarms are electronic distress calls, which activate my nervous system even though I know they are harmless. It is almost as though these animal circuits in my brain have been laid bare.
Proportional thinking
A recent report in Science indicated that activities involving numbers are processed in at least two different parts of the brain.10 Precise calculations are dependent on language and are processed in the frontal areas; proportional figuring is processed in visual areas. Proportional thinking is figuring out if one object is less or more than another. For example, three marbles are more than one marble. Animals can do proportional thinking. They can easily determine that 10 pieces of food are more than two. It is likely that proportional thinking is the kind of number processing that humans share with animals.
In school, math was a tough subject for me. Finding the precisely correct answer is difficult because I mix up numbers. On the other hand, I am very good at proportional thinking, coming up with an accurate approximate answer. In my scientific work, I often convert numerical differences between my control and experimental groups to percentage differences. Percentage differences can be visualized on a pie chart. When I present data, I like to use charts and graphs so I can see the proportional differences between different sets of data.
When I did cost estimating for cattle industry construction projects, I never tried to calculate projects to the penny. Instead, I estimated the cost of a new job by figuring out its proportional cost in relation to other finished projects. This was mainly a visual process. I would look at the drawing and build the entire project in my imagination. I then would put it up on the video screen in my imagination and compare it in size to other completed projects that had complete cost figures. In my mind, I could compare four or five completed projects with the drawing I was estimating. The project being estimated might be equal to two-thirds of a cattle-handling facility that I designed at Red River Feedlot and about 25 percent bigger than a corral I designed for Lone Mountain Ranch.
For money to have meaning to me, it must be related to something I can buy with it, otherwise it is too abstract. For example, $3 is equal to lunch at McDonald's, $20 is a tank of gas, and $1000 can buy a computer. Big tables full of figures make little sense to me. Some more severely autistic people do not understand money at all. For me to understand a billion dollars, I have to have a picture in my mind of something that cost a billion dollars. One billion is one quarter of the cost of the new Denver Airport. When President Clinton announced part way through the war in Kosovo that it had cost $2 billion, I figured that half a Denver Airport worth of money had been spent. Different amounts of money have different visual values. It is interesting that proportional thinking for numbers is in the visual parts of the brain.
In proportional thinking, as in creating something new, making a decision, and forming concepts, my thinking relies on more direct access to the primary visual memory areas in my brain. There is a whole higher level of abstract thinking seamlessly linked to emotion that I do not have.
Friday, May 2, 2008
Thristan Tum Tum Mendoza
World Autism Awareness Day (WAAD) Concert 1
Tum Tum is the only Filipino listed in Wisconsins Savant Autism Site.
Tum Tum is the only Filipino listed in Wisconsins Savant Autism Site.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
James Cucek is a musical savant and his Mom is a mother on a mission.
James lives in British Columbia. He is 21 years old now and plays the piano brilliantly, as well as the accordion and harmonica. He composes his own songs, although he has never had music lesson in his life. He belongs to Socan, which is a Society of composers, authors and music publishers of Canada. He carries a diagnosis of high functioning Asperger's Disorder. Who better to give the background on James than his own mother in her own words:
"When James was only two years old he would listen to songs on television and then hum the words back. He started becoming interested in playing piano when he was four years old. My husband Stan and I bought him a small toy piano for Christmas. After that he would listen to music on the radio or television, and play it back. He found the piano playing to be very therapeutic.
When James turned 13 he told us the piano didn't have enough keys. He wanted 88 keys like a real pianos had. Since we couldn't afford such a piano at that time I decided to write a letter to "Let's Make a Wish" television show for people who were very gifted musically but couldn't afford a piano. I recruited three professional people that knew James to write a letter on how gifted a savant he was and how a piano would really improve his quality of life. About a week before Christmas James was watching the "Let's Make a Wish" program and they read my letter and mentioned that James would receive a beautiful Clarinova Piano for Christmas. Our whole family, including James, had tears of joy coming from our eyes. James shouted out "Mom, you got me the piano!"
Even since that time James has been playing his piano diligently and now is composing his own songs. He puts those songs on a disk and he has over 300 such songs that he has composed. He loves Yanni. He listens to Yanni's piano music and plays it back in tune with every note just as Janni plays it, as well as other piano songs he hears.
James sits for hours each day playing different songs on his 88 key piano that he will never forget his Mom got him that one very special Christmas Eve. James says he would like to be like Glenn Gould, a famous Canadian piano player. But to me, James is already famous. James is on some medication related to his Asperger's Disorder and sometimes that seems to interfere with his playing, much to his frustration.James rocks his head back and forth to music, even when singing in church. He was just born with this musical talent. He's like God's angel that came to earth to bring joy to people with his musical talent. He can also play the harmonica, accordion and organ. Before he got his piano he did play the organ but wasn't happy with that because it did not have all the keys a real piano has.
James has made me, as his mother, have a total new outlook on life-that nothing is impossible, even reaching the stars! James, in my mind, is a star. Because of him I have done things regarding advocacy for many Canadian children and adults so that they can receive Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) treatment and other appropriate therapies. I feel good about what I have accomplished. Being a United States Marine has helped mold me into a fighter, where nothing is impossible, to take on the task of providing James, and other persons with autism and Asperger's, better treatment opportunities with the goal of providing a better life overall. I have a deep respect for children and adults with disabilities, and their families, and that propels me along in this vital mission."
When Kim Peek and Fran Peek came to address an Autism Conference in Canada in 2002, James had a chance to meet Kim and they have been friends since that time, corresponding regularly. Also, Fran and Kim have become involved in the mother's advocacy efforts and Fran has written several letters of support which Mom has been able to share with officials and others interested in helping to provide more treatment resources in the province.
An article in a British Columbia newspaper in January, 2003 gives some additional background on both James, and the advocacy effort. It also reveals that a documentary about James is underway through combined efforts of a Canadian and U.S. film company. James plans to combine his music performance ability with electronic engineering which is a sizeable part of the musical scene everywhere these days.
"When James was only two years old he would listen to songs on television and then hum the words back. He started becoming interested in playing piano when he was four years old. My husband Stan and I bought him a small toy piano for Christmas. After that he would listen to music on the radio or television, and play it back. He found the piano playing to be very therapeutic.
When James turned 13 he told us the piano didn't have enough keys. He wanted 88 keys like a real pianos had. Since we couldn't afford such a piano at that time I decided to write a letter to "Let's Make a Wish" television show for people who were very gifted musically but couldn't afford a piano. I recruited three professional people that knew James to write a letter on how gifted a savant he was and how a piano would really improve his quality of life. About a week before Christmas James was watching the "Let's Make a Wish" program and they read my letter and mentioned that James would receive a beautiful Clarinova Piano for Christmas. Our whole family, including James, had tears of joy coming from our eyes. James shouted out "Mom, you got me the piano!"
Even since that time James has been playing his piano diligently and now is composing his own songs. He puts those songs on a disk and he has over 300 such songs that he has composed. He loves Yanni. He listens to Yanni's piano music and plays it back in tune with every note just as Janni plays it, as well as other piano songs he hears.
James sits for hours each day playing different songs on his 88 key piano that he will never forget his Mom got him that one very special Christmas Eve. James says he would like to be like Glenn Gould, a famous Canadian piano player. But to me, James is already famous. James is on some medication related to his Asperger's Disorder and sometimes that seems to interfere with his playing, much to his frustration.James rocks his head back and forth to music, even when singing in church. He was just born with this musical talent. He's like God's angel that came to earth to bring joy to people with his musical talent. He can also play the harmonica, accordion and organ. Before he got his piano he did play the organ but wasn't happy with that because it did not have all the keys a real piano has.
James has made me, as his mother, have a total new outlook on life-that nothing is impossible, even reaching the stars! James, in my mind, is a star. Because of him I have done things regarding advocacy for many Canadian children and adults so that they can receive Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) treatment and other appropriate therapies. I feel good about what I have accomplished. Being a United States Marine has helped mold me into a fighter, where nothing is impossible, to take on the task of providing James, and other persons with autism and Asperger's, better treatment opportunities with the goal of providing a better life overall. I have a deep respect for children and adults with disabilities, and their families, and that propels me along in this vital mission."
When Kim Peek and Fran Peek came to address an Autism Conference in Canada in 2002, James had a chance to meet Kim and they have been friends since that time, corresponding regularly. Also, Fran and Kim have become involved in the mother's advocacy efforts and Fran has written several letters of support which Mom has been able to share with officials and others interested in helping to provide more treatment resources in the province.
An article in a British Columbia newspaper in January, 2003 gives some additional background on both James, and the advocacy effort. It also reveals that a documentary about James is underway through combined efforts of a Canadian and U.S. film company. James plans to combine his music performance ability with electronic engineering which is a sizeable part of the musical scene everywhere these days.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Savants: Despite their amazing abilities, science has ignored these individuals.
Eye on Autism
By Dan Olmsted
Lately I’ve been trying to make sense of savants. What is the relationship between autism and the extraordinary abilities that, in a small percentage of cases, accompany it? Rain Man put both autism and savant skills on the map and may have created a bias toward believing that they go together a lot more often than they do.
Yet a number of important historical figures have been retrospectively “diagnosed” with both – principally Einstein, who indisputably had speech delay and an incredible visual imagination; and Newton, who shut himself up in his room for two years and emerged with the Principia, a feat of single-minded genius.
Today’s most astonishing autistic savant is Daniel Tammet, the Great Britain native who recited pi to 22,514 digits in just over five hours and taught himself Icelandic – one of the world’s toughest languages – in a week so he could speak it when he appeared on a talk show there. And there are many lesser-known people who nonetheless have amazing abilities – I met a man at an autism conference who was a taxi driver in New York when he went to see Rain Man. There’s a moment when Dustin Hoffman is asked to solve a complicated math problem, and this man astonished the audience by shouting out the answer before Hoffman did! He had no idea he was either autistic or a savant, but when he left the theater he touched the poster of Hoffman and said, “Finally I know – that’s who I am.”
Late 19th century England also seemed to produce plausibly autistic savants – for more on that, and the entire phenomenon of savants, see Dr. Darold Treffert’s fascinating site, http://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/savant_syndrome/ and the earliest cases series of autistic children reported in the United States, by Leo Kanner in 1943, began with Donald T., who could recite the Presbyterian catechism as a toddler and (his brother told me a couple of years ago) has perfect pitch.
I also put Jason “J-Mac” McElwain somewhere in this constellation. He’s the high school basketball team manager in Greece, N.Y., who got his big chance and sank six three-pointers. In his new book, The Game of My Life, he writes: “The big point I want to make in this chapter is it’s all about focus.” No doubt that’s true, but I could focus all I want and I would not sink six three-pointers the first time I got the chance. Whether or not he was “hot as a pistol,” as Jason says, I suspect some aspect of his autism was also at work.
Let’s assume for the moment that all the people I’ve described do fit somewhere on the spectrum, and that their extraordinary abilities are an aspect of that. Does that give us any clues to where this all came from?
I’ve written in Spectrum about my reporting that suggests the early cases of autism in this country can be connected to organic mercury – in fungicides and vaccines. Donald T., for example, lives in the aptly named Forest, Miss., in the middle of a national forest and not far from where mercury was first tested as a lumber preservative. (That may seem like a reach, but consider that Case 2 was the son of a forestry professor in the south, and Case 3 the son of a plant pathologist.)
I can think of possible links to several other cases as well. Daniel Tammet writes in his autobiography, Born on a Blue Day, that his father came home from the sheet metal factory still covered in dust, which had to be mostly heavy metals. Newton was into alchemy as well as calculus – bridging, in effect, the superstition of the Middle Ages and the enlightenment of the Renaissance. And in alchemy, the king of metals was mercury.
Einstein’s mother’s father was a grain merchant. What kind of fungicides and other toxins might she (or Albert) have been exposed to? I don’t know much about J-Mac – he doesn’t say what his parents do – but I was struck by this comment by his mother in an afterward to the book: “In 1985, our family moved to a brand new development in the town of Greece, N.Y. Within three years we had both Josh and Jason.” I can’t tell you the number of families I’ve visited who will point out some sort of construction project or renovation or earth-moving that was going on when they were pregnant with their child. They all believed that exposure to chemicals and toxins in utero played a role.
None of this is to take away from Jason’s accomplishments or the general theory of relativity, obviously. But we need to look for clues to the causes and varieties of autism wherever we can find them. Maybe savants get such a truckload of certain toxins that the source is more evident in those cases.
Recently, a mom named Sonja Lopez posted a comment on my blog at AgeofAutism.com, that really blew me away. Here’s what she said:
“I wanted to let you in on a few interesting facts about Anna and her skills. We started losing her after her 12-month vaccines (although I did not make that connection yet). She was pulling away in terms of eye contact and responsiveness but what developed instead was an incredible interest in the written word. By 15 months she was a fluent reader (could pronounce words she had never seen before perfectly – they called it spontaneous phonetic encoding). By the age of two she could read or spell anything you asked of her but could not put two words together functionally. By age 3 she was a computer wiz able to navigate the internet and complete most children’s software. She also has a gift for music and perfect pitch … she could reproduce tunes on the piano by ear.
“As seemingly wonderful as her gifts appeared, they also hindered and restricted her ability to recover. Her mind was so far ahead of the normal and mundane aspects of everyday living. We could not compete with the amazing things in her head. By the age of 4 we started our bio-medical journey and as her underlying medical issues were addressed and her language, communication, and ability to play improved, her savant skills started to recede.
“She still has an amazing ability to learn languages, an incredible memory, can type 120 words per minute and has flawless grammar, punctuation, and spelling but what we have come to realize is that these skills not only can help her navigate the world but are also a hindrance to her recovery. As she improves, they play a smaller role in her life…it is like watching the brain shift its abilities into areas that were silent in the past. You can see her at www.turnautismaround.com.”
Does any of this mean we shouldn’t celebrate such extraordinary feats? No, not at all. The great Bernie Rimland – who believed vaccines triggered the huge rise in autism diagnoses and pioneered the biomedical approach to treating them – delighted in the artistic ability of his son, Mark, and sometimes had a savant perform amazing calendar and calculation feats at his presentations.
But here’s the point, and I’ll let Sonja Lopez make it. “You would think these amazing skills in kids so obviously disabled would spark the interest of someone in the medical community. What do they have in common? Does the biomedical path to recovery diminish these skills in all of these kids? This is amazing science. Why is it not studied?”
By Dan Olmsted
Lately I’ve been trying to make sense of savants. What is the relationship between autism and the extraordinary abilities that, in a small percentage of cases, accompany it? Rain Man put both autism and savant skills on the map and may have created a bias toward believing that they go together a lot more often than they do.
Yet a number of important historical figures have been retrospectively “diagnosed” with both – principally Einstein, who indisputably had speech delay and an incredible visual imagination; and Newton, who shut himself up in his room for two years and emerged with the Principia, a feat of single-minded genius.
Today’s most astonishing autistic savant is Daniel Tammet, the Great Britain native who recited pi to 22,514 digits in just over five hours and taught himself Icelandic – one of the world’s toughest languages – in a week so he could speak it when he appeared on a talk show there. And there are many lesser-known people who nonetheless have amazing abilities – I met a man at an autism conference who was a taxi driver in New York when he went to see Rain Man. There’s a moment when Dustin Hoffman is asked to solve a complicated math problem, and this man astonished the audience by shouting out the answer before Hoffman did! He had no idea he was either autistic or a savant, but when he left the theater he touched the poster of Hoffman and said, “Finally I know – that’s who I am.”
Late 19th century England also seemed to produce plausibly autistic savants – for more on that, and the entire phenomenon of savants, see Dr. Darold Treffert’s fascinating site, http://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/savant_syndrome/ and the earliest cases series of autistic children reported in the United States, by Leo Kanner in 1943, began with Donald T., who could recite the Presbyterian catechism as a toddler and (his brother told me a couple of years ago) has perfect pitch.
I also put Jason “J-Mac” McElwain somewhere in this constellation. He’s the high school basketball team manager in Greece, N.Y., who got his big chance and sank six three-pointers. In his new book, The Game of My Life, he writes: “The big point I want to make in this chapter is it’s all about focus.” No doubt that’s true, but I could focus all I want and I would not sink six three-pointers the first time I got the chance. Whether or not he was “hot as a pistol,” as Jason says, I suspect some aspect of his autism was also at work.
Let’s assume for the moment that all the people I’ve described do fit somewhere on the spectrum, and that their extraordinary abilities are an aspect of that. Does that give us any clues to where this all came from?
I’ve written in Spectrum about my reporting that suggests the early cases of autism in this country can be connected to organic mercury – in fungicides and vaccines. Donald T., for example, lives in the aptly named Forest, Miss., in the middle of a national forest and not far from where mercury was first tested as a lumber preservative. (That may seem like a reach, but consider that Case 2 was the son of a forestry professor in the south, and Case 3 the son of a plant pathologist.)
I can think of possible links to several other cases as well. Daniel Tammet writes in his autobiography, Born on a Blue Day, that his father came home from the sheet metal factory still covered in dust, which had to be mostly heavy metals. Newton was into alchemy as well as calculus – bridging, in effect, the superstition of the Middle Ages and the enlightenment of the Renaissance. And in alchemy, the king of metals was mercury.
Einstein’s mother’s father was a grain merchant. What kind of fungicides and other toxins might she (or Albert) have been exposed to? I don’t know much about J-Mac – he doesn’t say what his parents do – but I was struck by this comment by his mother in an afterward to the book: “In 1985, our family moved to a brand new development in the town of Greece, N.Y. Within three years we had both Josh and Jason.” I can’t tell you the number of families I’ve visited who will point out some sort of construction project or renovation or earth-moving that was going on when they were pregnant with their child. They all believed that exposure to chemicals and toxins in utero played a role.
None of this is to take away from Jason’s accomplishments or the general theory of relativity, obviously. But we need to look for clues to the causes and varieties of autism wherever we can find them. Maybe savants get such a truckload of certain toxins that the source is more evident in those cases.
Recently, a mom named Sonja Lopez posted a comment on my blog at AgeofAutism.com, that really blew me away. Here’s what she said:
“I wanted to let you in on a few interesting facts about Anna and her skills. We started losing her after her 12-month vaccines (although I did not make that connection yet). She was pulling away in terms of eye contact and responsiveness but what developed instead was an incredible interest in the written word. By 15 months she was a fluent reader (could pronounce words she had never seen before perfectly – they called it spontaneous phonetic encoding). By the age of two she could read or spell anything you asked of her but could not put two words together functionally. By age 3 she was a computer wiz able to navigate the internet and complete most children’s software. She also has a gift for music and perfect pitch … she could reproduce tunes on the piano by ear.
“As seemingly wonderful as her gifts appeared, they also hindered and restricted her ability to recover. Her mind was so far ahead of the normal and mundane aspects of everyday living. We could not compete with the amazing things in her head. By the age of 4 we started our bio-medical journey and as her underlying medical issues were addressed and her language, communication, and ability to play improved, her savant skills started to recede.
“She still has an amazing ability to learn languages, an incredible memory, can type 120 words per minute and has flawless grammar, punctuation, and spelling but what we have come to realize is that these skills not only can help her navigate the world but are also a hindrance to her recovery. As she improves, they play a smaller role in her life…it is like watching the brain shift its abilities into areas that were silent in the past. You can see her at www.turnautismaround.com.”
Does any of this mean we shouldn’t celebrate such extraordinary feats? No, not at all. The great Bernie Rimland – who believed vaccines triggered the huge rise in autism diagnoses and pioneered the biomedical approach to treating them – delighted in the artistic ability of his son, Mark, and sometimes had a savant perform amazing calendar and calculation feats at his presentations.
But here’s the point, and I’ll let Sonja Lopez make it. “You would think these amazing skills in kids so obviously disabled would spark the interest of someone in the medical community. What do they have in common? Does the biomedical path to recovery diminish these skills in all of these kids? This is amazing science. Why is it not studied?”
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Autistic savant
Autism is a puzzling disorder characterised by developmental delays. A person with autism often has problems understanding the meaning and purpose of body language and the spoken and written word. They find social interaction difficult, confusing and scary.
'Autistic savant' means a person with autism who has a special skill. 'Savant' comes from the French word for 'knowing' and means 'a learned person'. A person with this condition was once known as an 'idiot savant', since 'idiot' was an acceptable word for mental retardation in the late 19th century, when the phenomenon was first medically investigated. Around 10 per cent of people with autism show special or even remarkable skills. For example, a person with autism, who may be intellectually disabled in most ways, could have an exceptional memory for numbers.
Savant skills are occasionally found in people with other types of intellectual disability and in the non-disabled population, so most researchers use the term 'savant syndrome' instead of autistic savant.
A range of savant abilities
Around 10 per cent of people with autism show special or even remarkable skills. The skills range includes:
* Splinter skills - the most common type. The person, like an obsessive hobbyist, commits certain things to memory, such as sports trivia.
* Talented skills - the person has a more highly developed and specialised skill. For example, they may be artistic and paint beautiful pictures, or have a memory that allows them to work out difficult mathematical calculations in their head.
* Prodigious skills - the rarest type. It is thought that there are only about 25 autistic savants in the world who show prodigious skills. These skills could include, for example, the ability to play an entire concerto on the piano after hearing it only once.
Specialised skill
In all cases of savant syndrome, the skill is specific, limited and most often reliant on memory. Generally, savant skills include:
* Music - the piano is the most popular instrument. For example, the skill may be the ability to play the piano without being taught.
* Art - such as the ability to draw, paint or sculpt to high standards. For example, Richard Wawro is an autistic savant who is also blind, but his crayon drawings command up to $10,000 each.
* Mathematics - for example, the ability to work out complicated sums in their head, or to calendar calculate (for example, work out what day it was on 1 June1732).
* Language - in rare cases, the person may be unusually gifted in languages.
* Other skills - such as knowing the time without seeing a clock, untaught mechanical skills, having an unfailing sense of direction or the ability to commit maps to memory.
The brain's right hemisphere
Autistic savant behaviour is so far unexplained. However, researchers think it might have something to do with the right hemisphere of the brain.
The brain is divided into two hemispheres, left and right, bridged by a thick band of nerve fibres called the corpus callosum. While left hemisphere skills are involved with symbolism and interpretation (such as understanding words and body language), the skills of the right hemisphere are much more concrete and direct (such as memory).
CT and MRI scans of the brains of autistic savants suggest that the right hemisphere is compensating for damage in the left hemisphere. It seems that the right hemisphere of an autistic savant focuses its attention on one of the five senses - for example, if it concentrates on hearing, then the autistic savant may have a special skill in music. Research is ongoing.
Their skills may be reinforced
It is thought that habitual memory centres of the brain take over from higher memory centres, which helps to explain why some autistic savants are like obsessive hobbyists who do the same thing over and over. Apart from habitual memory, other factors that may help an autistic savant to hone their special skill could include:
* The ability to focus and concentrate
* The desire to practise endlessly
* Positive reinforcement by family, friends and caregivers.
Every brain may have untapped savant skills
San Franciscan neurologist Dr Bruce Miller recently discovered new savant skills in some of his patients who were undergoing a certain type of dementia. These patients had a type of dementia that affected the left temporal region of their brains (located over the left ear).
When the patients were given brain function tests, their results were similar to those of a young autistic savant. Researchers from the Flinders University in Adelaide were able to provoke new savant skills in volunteers by using transcranial magnetic stimulation to temporarily 'disable' the frontal temporal lobe. (Transcranial magnetic stimulation is a type of treatment for depression.) During the test, five of the 17 volunteers showed new and remarkable skills like calendar calculation. These studies suggest that amazing savant abilities may be lying dormant in all of us.
Where to get help
* Your doctor
* Austism Infoline Tel. 1300 308 699 or email info@autismvictoria.org.au
* Autism Victoria Tel. (03) 9885 0533
* The Centre for Developmental Disability Health Victoria (CDDHV) Tel. (03) 9564 7511
Things to remember
* Autistic savant means a person with autism who has a special skill.
* Around 10 per cent of people with autism show special or even remarkable skills.
* Savant skills can be occasionally found in people with other types of intellectual disability and in the non-disabled population.
'Autistic savant' means a person with autism who has a special skill. 'Savant' comes from the French word for 'knowing' and means 'a learned person'. A person with this condition was once known as an 'idiot savant', since 'idiot' was an acceptable word for mental retardation in the late 19th century, when the phenomenon was first medically investigated. Around 10 per cent of people with autism show special or even remarkable skills. For example, a person with autism, who may be intellectually disabled in most ways, could have an exceptional memory for numbers.
Savant skills are occasionally found in people with other types of intellectual disability and in the non-disabled population, so most researchers use the term 'savant syndrome' instead of autistic savant.
A range of savant abilities
Around 10 per cent of people with autism show special or even remarkable skills. The skills range includes:
* Splinter skills - the most common type. The person, like an obsessive hobbyist, commits certain things to memory, such as sports trivia.
* Talented skills - the person has a more highly developed and specialised skill. For example, they may be artistic and paint beautiful pictures, or have a memory that allows them to work out difficult mathematical calculations in their head.
* Prodigious skills - the rarest type. It is thought that there are only about 25 autistic savants in the world who show prodigious skills. These skills could include, for example, the ability to play an entire concerto on the piano after hearing it only once.
Specialised skill
In all cases of savant syndrome, the skill is specific, limited and most often reliant on memory. Generally, savant skills include:
* Music - the piano is the most popular instrument. For example, the skill may be the ability to play the piano without being taught.
* Art - such as the ability to draw, paint or sculpt to high standards. For example, Richard Wawro is an autistic savant who is also blind, but his crayon drawings command up to $10,000 each.
* Mathematics - for example, the ability to work out complicated sums in their head, or to calendar calculate (for example, work out what day it was on 1 June1732).
* Language - in rare cases, the person may be unusually gifted in languages.
* Other skills - such as knowing the time without seeing a clock, untaught mechanical skills, having an unfailing sense of direction or the ability to commit maps to memory.
The brain's right hemisphere
Autistic savant behaviour is so far unexplained. However, researchers think it might have something to do with the right hemisphere of the brain.
The brain is divided into two hemispheres, left and right, bridged by a thick band of nerve fibres called the corpus callosum. While left hemisphere skills are involved with symbolism and interpretation (such as understanding words and body language), the skills of the right hemisphere are much more concrete and direct (such as memory).
CT and MRI scans of the brains of autistic savants suggest that the right hemisphere is compensating for damage in the left hemisphere. It seems that the right hemisphere of an autistic savant focuses its attention on one of the five senses - for example, if it concentrates on hearing, then the autistic savant may have a special skill in music. Research is ongoing.
Their skills may be reinforced
It is thought that habitual memory centres of the brain take over from higher memory centres, which helps to explain why some autistic savants are like obsessive hobbyists who do the same thing over and over. Apart from habitual memory, other factors that may help an autistic savant to hone their special skill could include:
* The ability to focus and concentrate
* The desire to practise endlessly
* Positive reinforcement by family, friends and caregivers.
Every brain may have untapped savant skills
San Franciscan neurologist Dr Bruce Miller recently discovered new savant skills in some of his patients who were undergoing a certain type of dementia. These patients had a type of dementia that affected the left temporal region of their brains (located over the left ear).
When the patients were given brain function tests, their results were similar to those of a young autistic savant. Researchers from the Flinders University in Adelaide were able to provoke new savant skills in volunteers by using transcranial magnetic stimulation to temporarily 'disable' the frontal temporal lobe. (Transcranial magnetic stimulation is a type of treatment for depression.) During the test, five of the 17 volunteers showed new and remarkable skills like calendar calculation. These studies suggest that amazing savant abilities may be lying dormant in all of us.
Where to get help
* Your doctor
* Austism Infoline Tel. 1300 308 699 or email info@autismvictoria.org.au
* Autism Victoria Tel. (03) 9885 0533
* The Centre for Developmental Disability Health Victoria (CDDHV) Tel. (03) 9564 7511
Things to remember
* Autistic savant means a person with autism who has a special skill.
* Around 10 per cent of people with autism show special or even remarkable skills.
* Savant skills can be occasionally found in people with other types of intellectual disability and in the non-disabled population.
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