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.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
'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.
Friday, April 18, 2008
A genius explains
Daniel Tammet is an autistic savant. He can perform mind-boggling mathematical calculations at breakneck speeds. But unlike other savants, who can perform similar feats, Tammet can describe how he does it. He speaks seven languages and is even devising his own language. Now scientists are asking whether his exceptional abilities are the key to unlock the secrets of autism. Interview by Richard Johnson
Daniel Tammet is talking. As he talks, he studies my shirt and counts the stitches. Ever since the age of three, when he suffered an epileptic fit, Tammet has been obsessed with counting. Now he is 26, and a mathematical genius who can figure out cube roots quicker than a calculator and recall pi to 22,514 decimal places. He also happens to be autistic, which is why he can't drive a car, wire a plug, or tell right from left. He lives with extraordinary ability and disability.
Tammet is calculating 377 multiplied by 795. Actually, he isn't "calculating": there is nothing conscious about what he is doing. He arrives at the answer instantly. Since his epileptic fit, he has been able to see numbers as shapes, colours and textures. The number two, for instance, is a motion, and five is a clap of thunder. "When I multiply numbers together, I see two shapes. The image starts to change and evolve, and a third shape emerges. That's the answer. It's mental imagery. It's like maths without having to think."
Tammet is a "savant", an individual with an astonishing, extraordinary mental ability. An estimated 10% of the autistic population - and an estimated 1% of the non-autistic population - have savant abilities, but no one knows exactly why. A number of scientists now hope that Tammet might help us to understand better. Professor Allan Snyder, from the Centre for the Mind at the Australian National University in Canberra, explains why Tammet is of particular, and international, scientific interest. "Savants can't usually tell us how they do what they do," says Snyder. "It just comes to them. Daniel can. He describes what he sees in his head. That's why he's exciting. He could be the Rosetta Stone."
There are many theories about savants. Snyder, for instance, believes that we all possess the savant's extraordinary abilities - it is just a question of us learning how to access them. "Savants have usually had some kind of brain damage. Whether it's an onset of dementia later in life, a blow to the head or, in the case of Daniel, an epileptic fit. And it's that brain damage which creates the savant. I think that it's possible for a perfectly normal person to have access to these abilities, so working with Daniel could be very instructive."
Scans of the brains of autistic savants suggest that the right hemisphere might be compensating for damage in the left hemisphere. While many savants struggle with language and comprehension (skills associated primarily with the left hemisphere), they often have amazing skills in mathematics and memory (primarily right hemisphere skills). Typically, savants have a limited vocabulary, but there is nothing limited about Tammet's vocabulary.
Tammet is creating his own language, strongly influenced by the vowel and image-rich languages of northern Europe. (He already speaks French, German, Spanish, Lithuanian, Icelandic and Esperanto.) The vocabulary of his language - "Mänti", meaning a type of tree - reflects the relationships between different things. The word "ema", for instance, translates as "mother", and "ela" is what a mother creates: "life". "Päike" is "sun", and "päive" is what the sun creates: "day". Tammet hopes to launch Mänti in academic circles later this year, his own personal exploration of the power of words and their inter-relationship.
Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, director of the Autism Research Centre (ARC) at Cambridge University, is interested in what Mänti might teach us about savant ability. "I know of other savants who also speak a lot of languages," says Baron-Cohen. "But it's rare for them to be able to reflect on how they do it - let alone create a language of their own." The ARC team has started scanning Tammet's brain to find out if there are modules (for number, for example, or for colour, or for texture) that are connected in a way that is different from most of us. "It's too early to tell, but we hope it might throw some light on why we don't all have savant abilities."
Last year Tammet broke the European record for recalling pi, the mathematical constant, to the furthest decimal point. He found it easy, he says, because he didn't even have to "think". To him, pi isn't an abstract set of digits; it's a visual story, a film projected in front of his eyes. He learnt the number forwards and backwards and, last year, spent five hours recalling it in front of an adjudicator. He wanted to prove a point. "I memorised pi to 22,514 decimal places, and I am technically disabled. I just wanted to show people that disability needn't get in the way."
Tammet is softly spoken, and shy about making eye contact, which makes him seem younger than he is. He lives on the Kent coast, but never goes near the beach - there are too many pebbles to count. The thought of a mathematical problem with no solution makes him feel uncomfortable. Trips to the supermarket are always a chore. "There's too much mental stimulus. I have to look at every shape and texture. Every price, and every arrangement of fruit and vegetables. So instead of thinking,'What cheese do I want this week?', I'm just really uncomfortable."
Tammet has never been able to work 9 to 5. It would be too difficult to fit around his daily routine. For instance, he has to drink his cups of tea at exactly the same time every day. Things have to happen in the same order: he always brushes his teeth before he has his shower. "I have tried to be more flexible, but I always end up feeling more uncomfortable. Retaining a sense of control is really important. I like to do things in my own time, and in my own style, so an office with targets and bureaucracy just wouldn't work."
Instead, he has set up a business on his own, at home, writing email courses in language learning, numeracy and literacy for private clients. It has had the fringe benefit of keeping human interaction to a minimum. It also gives him time to work on the verb structures of Mänti.
Few people on the streets have recognised Tammet since his pi record attempt. But, when a documentary about his life is broadcast on Channel 5 later this year, all that will change. "The highlight of filming was to meet Kim Peek, the real-life character who inspired the film Rain Man. Before I watched Rain Man, I was frightened. As a nine-year-old schoolboy, you don't want people to point at the screen and say, 'That's you.' But I watched it, and felt a real connection. Getting to meet the real-life Rain Man was inspirational."
Peek was shy and introspective, but he sat and held Tammet's hand for hours. "We shared so much - our love of key dates from history, for instance. And our love of books. As a child, I regularly took over a room in the house and started my own lending library. I would separate out fiction and non-fiction, and then alphabetise them all. I even introduced a ticketing system. I love books so much. I've read more books than anyone else I know. So I was delighted when Kim wanted to meet in a library." Peek can read two pages simultaneously, one with each eye. He can also recall, in exact detail, the 7,600 books he has read. When he is at home in Utah, he spends afternoons at the Salt Lake City public library, memorising phone books and address directories."He is such a lovely man," says Tammet. "Kim says, 'You don't have to be handicapped to be different - everybody's different'. And he's right."
Like Peek, Tammet will read anything and everything, but his favourite book is a good dictionary, or the works of GK Chesterton. "With all those aphorisms," he says, "Chesterton was the Groucho Marx of his day." Tammet is also a Christian, and likes the fact that Chesterton addressed some complex religious ideas. "The other thing I like is that, judging by the descriptions of his home life, I reckon Chesterton was a savant. He couldn't dress himself, and would always forget where he was going. His poor wife."
Autistic savants have displayed a wide range of talents, from reciting all nine volumes of Grove's Dictionary Of Music to measuring exact distances with the naked eye. The blind American savant Leslie Lemke played Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No1, after he heard it for the first time, and he never had so much as a piano lesson. And the British savant Stephen Wiltshire was able to draw a highly accurate map of the London skyline from memory after a single helicopter trip over the city. Even so, Tammet could still turn out to be the more significant.
He was born on January 31 1979. He smiles as he points out that 31, 19, 79 and 1979 are all prime numbers - it's a kind of sign. He was actually born with another surname, which he prefers to keep private, but decided to change it by deed poll. It didn't fit with the way he saw himself. "I first saw 'Tammet' online. It means oak tree in Estonian, and I liked that association. Besides, I've always had a love of Estonian. Such a vowel rich language."
As a baby, he banged his head against the wall and cried constantly. Nobody knew what was wrong. His mother was anxious, and would swing him to sleep in a blanket. She breastfed him for two years. The only thing the doctors could say was that perhaps he was understimulated. Then, one afternoon when he was playing with his brother in the living room, he had an epileptic fit.
"I was given medication - round blue tablets - to control my seizures, and told not to go out in direct sunlight. I had to visit the hospital every month for regular blood tests. I hated those tests, but I knew they were necessary. To make up for it, my father would always buy me a cup of squash to drink while we sat in the waiting room. It was a worrying time because my Dad's father had epilepsy, and actually died of it, in the end. They were thinking, 'This is the end of Daniel's life'."
Tammet's mother was a secretarial assistant, and his father a steelplate worker. "They both left school without qualifications, but they made us feel special - all nine of us. As the oldest of nine, I suppose it's fair to say I've always felt special." Even if his younger brothers and sisters could throw and catch better than him, swim better, kick a ball better, Daniel was always the oldest. "They loved me because I was their big brother and I could read them stories."
He remembers being given a Ladybird book called Counting when he was four. "When I looked at the numbers I 'saw' images. It felt like a place I could go where I really belonged. That was great. I went to this other country whenever I could. I would sit on the floor in my bedroom and just count. I didn't notice that time was passing. It was only when my Mum shouted up for dinner, or someone knocked at my door, that I would snap out of it."
One day his brother asked him a sum. "He asked me to multiply something in my head - like 'What is 82 x 82 x 82 x 82?' I just looked at the floor and closed my eyes. My back went very straight and I made my hands into fists. But after five or 10 seconds, the answer just flowed out of my mouth. He asked me several others, and I got every one right. My parents didn't seem surprised. And they never put pressure on me to perform for the neighbours. They knew I was different, but wanted me to have a normal life as far as possible."
Tammet could see the car park of his infant school from his bedroom window, which made him feel safe. "I loved assembly because we got to sing hymns. The notes formed a pattern in my head, just like the numbers did." The other children didn't know what to make of him, and would tease him. The minute the bell went for playtime he would rush off. "I went to the playground, but not to play. The place was surrounded by trees. While the other children were playing football, I would just stand and count the leaves."
As Tammet grew older, he developed an obsessive need to collect - everything from conkers to newspapers. "I remember seeing a ladybird for the first time," he says. "I loved it so much, I went round searching every hedge and every leaf for more. I collected hundreds, and took them to show the teacher. He was amazed, and asked me to get on with some assignment. While I was busy he instructed a classmate to take the tub outside and let the ladybirds go. I was so upset that I cried when I found out. He didn't understand my world."
Tammet may have been teased at school, but his teachers were always protective. "I think my parents must have had a word with them, so I was pretty much left alone." He found it hard to socialise with anyone outside the family, and, with the advent of adolesence, his shyness got worse.
After leaving school with three A-levels (History, French and German, all grade Bs), he decided he wanted to teach - only not the predictable, learn-by-rote type of teaching. For a start, he went to teach in Lithuania, and he worked as a volunteer. "Because I was there of my own free will, I was given a lot of leeway. The times of the classes weren't set in stone, and the structures were all of my own making. It was also the first time I was introduced as 'Daniel' rather than 'the guy who can do weird stuff in his head'. It was such a pleasant relief." Later, he returned home to live with his parents, and found work as a maths tutor.
He met the great love of his life, a software engineer called Neil, online. It began, as these things do, with emailed pictures, but ended up with a face-to-face meeting. "Because I can't drive, Neil offered to pick me up at my parents' house, and drive me back to his house in Kent. He was silent all the way back. I thought, 'Oh dear, this isn't going well'. Just before we got to his house, he stopped the car. He reached over and pulled out a bouquet of flowers. I only found out later that he was quiet because he likes to concentrate when he's driving."
Neil is shy, like Tammet. They live, happily, on a quiet cul-de-sac. The only aspect of Tammet's autism that causes them problems is his lack of empathy. "There's a saying in Judaism, if somebody has a relative who has hanged themselves, don't ask them where you should hang your coat. I need to remember that. Like the time I kept quizzing a friend of Neil's who had just lost her mother. I was asking her all these questions about faith and death. But that's down to my condition - no taboos."
When he isn't working, Tammet likes to hang out with his friends on the church quiz team. His knowledge of popular culture lets him down, but he's a shoo-in when it comes to the maths questions. "I do love numbers," he says. "It isn't only an intellectual or aloof thing that I do. I really feel that there is an emotional attachment, a caring for numbers. I think this is a human thing - in the same way that a poet humanises a river or a tree through metaphor, my world gives me a sense of numbers as personal. It sounds silly, but numbers are my friends."
Daniel Tammet is talking. As he talks, he studies my shirt and counts the stitches. Ever since the age of three, when he suffered an epileptic fit, Tammet has been obsessed with counting. Now he is 26, and a mathematical genius who can figure out cube roots quicker than a calculator and recall pi to 22,514 decimal places. He also happens to be autistic, which is why he can't drive a car, wire a plug, or tell right from left. He lives with extraordinary ability and disability.
Tammet is calculating 377 multiplied by 795. Actually, he isn't "calculating": there is nothing conscious about what he is doing. He arrives at the answer instantly. Since his epileptic fit, he has been able to see numbers as shapes, colours and textures. The number two, for instance, is a motion, and five is a clap of thunder. "When I multiply numbers together, I see two shapes. The image starts to change and evolve, and a third shape emerges. That's the answer. It's mental imagery. It's like maths without having to think."
Tammet is a "savant", an individual with an astonishing, extraordinary mental ability. An estimated 10% of the autistic population - and an estimated 1% of the non-autistic population - have savant abilities, but no one knows exactly why. A number of scientists now hope that Tammet might help us to understand better. Professor Allan Snyder, from the Centre for the Mind at the Australian National University in Canberra, explains why Tammet is of particular, and international, scientific interest. "Savants can't usually tell us how they do what they do," says Snyder. "It just comes to them. Daniel can. He describes what he sees in his head. That's why he's exciting. He could be the Rosetta Stone."
There are many theories about savants. Snyder, for instance, believes that we all possess the savant's extraordinary abilities - it is just a question of us learning how to access them. "Savants have usually had some kind of brain damage. Whether it's an onset of dementia later in life, a blow to the head or, in the case of Daniel, an epileptic fit. And it's that brain damage which creates the savant. I think that it's possible for a perfectly normal person to have access to these abilities, so working with Daniel could be very instructive."
Scans of the brains of autistic savants suggest that the right hemisphere might be compensating for damage in the left hemisphere. While many savants struggle with language and comprehension (skills associated primarily with the left hemisphere), they often have amazing skills in mathematics and memory (primarily right hemisphere skills). Typically, savants have a limited vocabulary, but there is nothing limited about Tammet's vocabulary.
Tammet is creating his own language, strongly influenced by the vowel and image-rich languages of northern Europe. (He already speaks French, German, Spanish, Lithuanian, Icelandic and Esperanto.) The vocabulary of his language - "Mänti", meaning a type of tree - reflects the relationships between different things. The word "ema", for instance, translates as "mother", and "ela" is what a mother creates: "life". "Päike" is "sun", and "päive" is what the sun creates: "day". Tammet hopes to launch Mänti in academic circles later this year, his own personal exploration of the power of words and their inter-relationship.
Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, director of the Autism Research Centre (ARC) at Cambridge University, is interested in what Mänti might teach us about savant ability. "I know of other savants who also speak a lot of languages," says Baron-Cohen. "But it's rare for them to be able to reflect on how they do it - let alone create a language of their own." The ARC team has started scanning Tammet's brain to find out if there are modules (for number, for example, or for colour, or for texture) that are connected in a way that is different from most of us. "It's too early to tell, but we hope it might throw some light on why we don't all have savant abilities."
Last year Tammet broke the European record for recalling pi, the mathematical constant, to the furthest decimal point. He found it easy, he says, because he didn't even have to "think". To him, pi isn't an abstract set of digits; it's a visual story, a film projected in front of his eyes. He learnt the number forwards and backwards and, last year, spent five hours recalling it in front of an adjudicator. He wanted to prove a point. "I memorised pi to 22,514 decimal places, and I am technically disabled. I just wanted to show people that disability needn't get in the way."
Tammet is softly spoken, and shy about making eye contact, which makes him seem younger than he is. He lives on the Kent coast, but never goes near the beach - there are too many pebbles to count. The thought of a mathematical problem with no solution makes him feel uncomfortable. Trips to the supermarket are always a chore. "There's too much mental stimulus. I have to look at every shape and texture. Every price, and every arrangement of fruit and vegetables. So instead of thinking,'What cheese do I want this week?', I'm just really uncomfortable."
Tammet has never been able to work 9 to 5. It would be too difficult to fit around his daily routine. For instance, he has to drink his cups of tea at exactly the same time every day. Things have to happen in the same order: he always brushes his teeth before he has his shower. "I have tried to be more flexible, but I always end up feeling more uncomfortable. Retaining a sense of control is really important. I like to do things in my own time, and in my own style, so an office with targets and bureaucracy just wouldn't work."
Instead, he has set up a business on his own, at home, writing email courses in language learning, numeracy and literacy for private clients. It has had the fringe benefit of keeping human interaction to a minimum. It also gives him time to work on the verb structures of Mänti.
Few people on the streets have recognised Tammet since his pi record attempt. But, when a documentary about his life is broadcast on Channel 5 later this year, all that will change. "The highlight of filming was to meet Kim Peek, the real-life character who inspired the film Rain Man. Before I watched Rain Man, I was frightened. As a nine-year-old schoolboy, you don't want people to point at the screen and say, 'That's you.' But I watched it, and felt a real connection. Getting to meet the real-life Rain Man was inspirational."
Peek was shy and introspective, but he sat and held Tammet's hand for hours. "We shared so much - our love of key dates from history, for instance. And our love of books. As a child, I regularly took over a room in the house and started my own lending library. I would separate out fiction and non-fiction, and then alphabetise them all. I even introduced a ticketing system. I love books so much. I've read more books than anyone else I know. So I was delighted when Kim wanted to meet in a library." Peek can read two pages simultaneously, one with each eye. He can also recall, in exact detail, the 7,600 books he has read. When he is at home in Utah, he spends afternoons at the Salt Lake City public library, memorising phone books and address directories."He is such a lovely man," says Tammet. "Kim says, 'You don't have to be handicapped to be different - everybody's different'. And he's right."
Like Peek, Tammet will read anything and everything, but his favourite book is a good dictionary, or the works of GK Chesterton. "With all those aphorisms," he says, "Chesterton was the Groucho Marx of his day." Tammet is also a Christian, and likes the fact that Chesterton addressed some complex religious ideas. "The other thing I like is that, judging by the descriptions of his home life, I reckon Chesterton was a savant. He couldn't dress himself, and would always forget where he was going. His poor wife."
Autistic savants have displayed a wide range of talents, from reciting all nine volumes of Grove's Dictionary Of Music to measuring exact distances with the naked eye. The blind American savant Leslie Lemke played Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No1, after he heard it for the first time, and he never had so much as a piano lesson. And the British savant Stephen Wiltshire was able to draw a highly accurate map of the London skyline from memory after a single helicopter trip over the city. Even so, Tammet could still turn out to be the more significant.
He was born on January 31 1979. He smiles as he points out that 31, 19, 79 and 1979 are all prime numbers - it's a kind of sign. He was actually born with another surname, which he prefers to keep private, but decided to change it by deed poll. It didn't fit with the way he saw himself. "I first saw 'Tammet' online. It means oak tree in Estonian, and I liked that association. Besides, I've always had a love of Estonian. Such a vowel rich language."
As a baby, he banged his head against the wall and cried constantly. Nobody knew what was wrong. His mother was anxious, and would swing him to sleep in a blanket. She breastfed him for two years. The only thing the doctors could say was that perhaps he was understimulated. Then, one afternoon when he was playing with his brother in the living room, he had an epileptic fit.
"I was given medication - round blue tablets - to control my seizures, and told not to go out in direct sunlight. I had to visit the hospital every month for regular blood tests. I hated those tests, but I knew they were necessary. To make up for it, my father would always buy me a cup of squash to drink while we sat in the waiting room. It was a worrying time because my Dad's father had epilepsy, and actually died of it, in the end. They were thinking, 'This is the end of Daniel's life'."
Tammet's mother was a secretarial assistant, and his father a steelplate worker. "They both left school without qualifications, but they made us feel special - all nine of us. As the oldest of nine, I suppose it's fair to say I've always felt special." Even if his younger brothers and sisters could throw and catch better than him, swim better, kick a ball better, Daniel was always the oldest. "They loved me because I was their big brother and I could read them stories."
He remembers being given a Ladybird book called Counting when he was four. "When I looked at the numbers I 'saw' images. It felt like a place I could go where I really belonged. That was great. I went to this other country whenever I could. I would sit on the floor in my bedroom and just count. I didn't notice that time was passing. It was only when my Mum shouted up for dinner, or someone knocked at my door, that I would snap out of it."
One day his brother asked him a sum. "He asked me to multiply something in my head - like 'What is 82 x 82 x 82 x 82?' I just looked at the floor and closed my eyes. My back went very straight and I made my hands into fists. But after five or 10 seconds, the answer just flowed out of my mouth. He asked me several others, and I got every one right. My parents didn't seem surprised. And they never put pressure on me to perform for the neighbours. They knew I was different, but wanted me to have a normal life as far as possible."
Tammet could see the car park of his infant school from his bedroom window, which made him feel safe. "I loved assembly because we got to sing hymns. The notes formed a pattern in my head, just like the numbers did." The other children didn't know what to make of him, and would tease him. The minute the bell went for playtime he would rush off. "I went to the playground, but not to play. The place was surrounded by trees. While the other children were playing football, I would just stand and count the leaves."
As Tammet grew older, he developed an obsessive need to collect - everything from conkers to newspapers. "I remember seeing a ladybird for the first time," he says. "I loved it so much, I went round searching every hedge and every leaf for more. I collected hundreds, and took them to show the teacher. He was amazed, and asked me to get on with some assignment. While I was busy he instructed a classmate to take the tub outside and let the ladybirds go. I was so upset that I cried when I found out. He didn't understand my world."
Tammet may have been teased at school, but his teachers were always protective. "I think my parents must have had a word with them, so I was pretty much left alone." He found it hard to socialise with anyone outside the family, and, with the advent of adolesence, his shyness got worse.
After leaving school with three A-levels (History, French and German, all grade Bs), he decided he wanted to teach - only not the predictable, learn-by-rote type of teaching. For a start, he went to teach in Lithuania, and he worked as a volunteer. "Because I was there of my own free will, I was given a lot of leeway. The times of the classes weren't set in stone, and the structures were all of my own making. It was also the first time I was introduced as 'Daniel' rather than 'the guy who can do weird stuff in his head'. It was such a pleasant relief." Later, he returned home to live with his parents, and found work as a maths tutor.
He met the great love of his life, a software engineer called Neil, online. It began, as these things do, with emailed pictures, but ended up with a face-to-face meeting. "Because I can't drive, Neil offered to pick me up at my parents' house, and drive me back to his house in Kent. He was silent all the way back. I thought, 'Oh dear, this isn't going well'. Just before we got to his house, he stopped the car. He reached over and pulled out a bouquet of flowers. I only found out later that he was quiet because he likes to concentrate when he's driving."
Neil is shy, like Tammet. They live, happily, on a quiet cul-de-sac. The only aspect of Tammet's autism that causes them problems is his lack of empathy. "There's a saying in Judaism, if somebody has a relative who has hanged themselves, don't ask them where you should hang your coat. I need to remember that. Like the time I kept quizzing a friend of Neil's who had just lost her mother. I was asking her all these questions about faith and death. But that's down to my condition - no taboos."
When he isn't working, Tammet likes to hang out with his friends on the church quiz team. His knowledge of popular culture lets him down, but he's a shoo-in when it comes to the maths questions. "I do love numbers," he says. "It isn't only an intellectual or aloof thing that I do. I really feel that there is an emotional attachment, a caring for numbers. I think this is a human thing - in the same way that a poet humanises a river or a tree through metaphor, my world gives me a sense of numbers as personal. It sounds silly, but numbers are my friends."
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Stephen Wiltshire The Human Camera;Autistic Savant
Stephen Wiltshire was born in London to West Indian parents on 24th April, 1974. His mother, Geneva Wiltshire had come from St Lucia and his father, Colvin, from Barbados. Colvin was killed in a motorcycle accident when Stephen was three years of age. His sister, Annette, is two years older than her brother. He lives with his mother in West London.
As a child, Stephen was mute and did not relate to other human beings. Aged three, he was diagnosed as autistic. He had no language, uncontrolled tantrums and lived entirely in his own world.
At the age of five, Stephen was sent to Queensmill School in London, a school for children with special needs, where it was noticed that the only pastime he enjoyed was drawing. It soon became apparent he communicated with the world through the language of drawing; first animals, then London buses, and finally buildings. These drawings show a masterful perspective, a whimsical line and reveal a natural innate artistry.
Aged eight, Stephen started drawing cityscapes after the effects of an earthquake (all imaginary) as a result of being shown photographs of earthquakes in a book at school. He also became obsessed with cars and illustrations of cars at this time (his knowledge of them is encyclopaedic) and he drew most of the major London landmarks.
The teachers at Queensmill School encouraged him to speak by temporarily taking away his art supplies so that he would be forced to ask for them. Stephen responded by making sounds and eventually uttered his first word - "paper." He learned to speak fully at the age of nine.
In 1987, the BBC QED programme, 'The Foolish Wise Ones', featured Stephen's astounding talent. The programme was devoted to three autistic savants: musical, mathematical and artistic. Stephen was introduced by Sir Hugh Casson (past president of the Royal Academy), who described him as "the best child artist in Britain". Stephen's work has since been the subject of numerous television programmes around the world, and the writer and psychologist, Oliver Sacks, has devoted an essay to Stephen in his book An Anthropologist On Mars (Picador 1995). Stephen is the only artistic autistic savant in the world whose work has been recorded and published since his childhood. His third book - Floating Cities (Michael Joseph, 1991) - was number one on the Sunday Times bestseller list.
Meanwhile, Stephen's artworks were being exhibited frequently in venues all over the world. In 2001 he appeared in another BBC documentary, Fragments of Genius, for which he was filmed flying over London aboard a helicopter and subsequently completing a detailed and perfectly scaled aerial illustration of a four-square-mile area within three hours; his drawing included 12 historic landmarks and 200 other structures.
In October and November 2003, thousands flocked to the Orleans House gallery in Twickenham near London, England, to see the first major retrospective of Stephen's work. The exhibition covered the 20-year period, from 1983 to 2003, and comprised 150 examples of Stephen's drawings, paintings and prints.
In May 2005 following a short helicopter ride over Tokyo he drew a stunningly detailed panoramic view of the city on a 10-meter-long canvas. Since then he has drawn Rome, Hong Kong, Frankfurt, Madrid and London on giant canvasses.
In January 2006 it was announced that Stephen was being named by Queen Elizabeth II as a Member of the Order of the British Empire, in recognition of his services to the art world. (No specific mention of his disability was made in the citation) Later that year he opened his permanent gallery at the Royal Opera Arcade, London.
This is Stephen Wiltshire's website..http://www.stephenwiltshire.co.uk/drawings.aspx
Autistic Artist Quickly Creates Perfect Replications of Panoramic Landscapes
Person of the Week: Stephen Wiltshire
By NICK WATT ABC NEWS
People tell artist Stephen Wiltshire that his work is brilliant. Today, he is drawing a panoramic view of Madrid in painstaking detail, penned entirely from memory after a 30-minute helicopter ride across the city.
Memorizing minute details is easy for him. Verbal communication is not. Wiltshire is autistic, and his first words came when he was 5 years old. "I said, I want paper," he recalled. "Please, can I have a paper, please, to draw?"
ABC News visited the London gallery where Wiltshire's cityscapes sell for thousands of dollars.
He drew St. Mark's Square, in Venice, and Los Angeles from memory. He also recreated four square miles of London — that's 200 buildings. The scale and perspective of his work is perfect.
"I think it's easy," he said. "My favorite is that New York subway passing ... from the New York skyline."
Wiltshire has only visited New York City three times, yet remembers it vividly. The buildings, the cabs and the lights on Broadway.
"New York is my favorite city," Wiltshire said.
At age 12, he was featured in a BBC documentary "Fragments of Genius," in which he drew an ornate London train station from memory. Fame followed, as did trips overseas, adulation and disbelief.
ABC News gave Wiltshire a relatively easy task: 10 minutes at Piccadilly Circus. Then, he was asked to draw it from memory. It took him just a little over an hour.
"There we have it," he said. "It's done now."
The result? Practically perfect.
By NICK WATT ABC NEWS
People tell artist Stephen Wiltshire that his work is brilliant. Today, he is drawing a panoramic view of Madrid in painstaking detail, penned entirely from memory after a 30-minute helicopter ride across the city.
Memorizing minute details is easy for him. Verbal communication is not. Wiltshire is autistic, and his first words came when he was 5 years old. "I said, I want paper," he recalled. "Please, can I have a paper, please, to draw?"
ABC News visited the London gallery where Wiltshire's cityscapes sell for thousands of dollars.
He drew St. Mark's Square, in Venice, and Los Angeles from memory. He also recreated four square miles of London — that's 200 buildings. The scale and perspective of his work is perfect.
"I think it's easy," he said. "My favorite is that New York subway passing ... from the New York skyline."
Wiltshire has only visited New York City three times, yet remembers it vividly. The buildings, the cabs and the lights on Broadway.
"New York is my favorite city," Wiltshire said.
At age 12, he was featured in a BBC documentary "Fragments of Genius," in which he drew an ornate London train station from memory. Fame followed, as did trips overseas, adulation and disbelief.
ABC News gave Wiltshire a relatively easy task: 10 minutes at Piccadilly Circus. Then, he was asked to draw it from memory. It took him just a little over an hour.
"There we have it," he said. "It's done now."
The result? Practically perfect.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Derek Paravicini - A Talent and Love for Music
Derek, now in his early twenties, was born premature, at 25 weeks, and weighing just over half a kilogram. As a result of the oxygen therapy required to save his life, Derek lost his sight, and his development was affected too. It later became apparent that he had severe learning difficulties. However, he soon acquired a fascination for music and sound, and, by the age of four, had taught himself to play a large number of pieces on the piano, of some melodic and harmonic complexity (such as 'Smoke Gets in your Eyes'). Almost inevitably, with no visual models to guide him, his technique was chaotic, and he his elbows would frequently be pressed into service, as he strove to reach intervals beyond the span of his tiny hands!
At this time, his enormous potential was recognised by Adam Ockelford, then music teacher at Linden Lodge School for the Blind in London. In due course, weekly and then daily lessons were arranged, in an extensive programme of tuition that was to last for several years. Painstakingly (though physical demonstration and imitation) Derek acquired the foundations of technique that were necessary for him to move forward. His natural affinity for jazz, pop and light music soon became evident; together with his improvisatory talents, ability to play in any key, and flair for performing in public!
Derek's first major concert was at the Barbican Halls in London, when he was just 9 (in 1989). He played jazz with the Royal Philharmonic Pops Orchestra. Numerous national and regional television appearances followed, in the UK and overseas. His increasing maturity both as a person and performer enabled him to give concerts in venues across England and in Europe; among them, Ronnie Scott's renowned jazz club in London.
Today, Derek is a student at Redhill College in Surrey, England, run by the Royal National Institute of the Blind. He attends courses at 'SoundScape' — a unique performing arts centre for young adults with learning difficulties and exceptional musical abilities or needs. His talent, love of music, and — above all — the ability to communicate through sound means he will continue to thrill audiences for years to come in the UK and abroad. Doctor Ockelford can be reached at Adam.
Derek Paravicini now has his own Web site. The site gives more biographical information about Derek along with a summary of his recent concert appearances and media productions about him. Both a CD of his works and a book about him will be released later this year.
His Web site is www.derekparavicini.net
At this time, his enormous potential was recognised by Adam Ockelford, then music teacher at Linden Lodge School for the Blind in London. In due course, weekly and then daily lessons were arranged, in an extensive programme of tuition that was to last for several years. Painstakingly (though physical demonstration and imitation) Derek acquired the foundations of technique that were necessary for him to move forward. His natural affinity for jazz, pop and light music soon became evident; together with his improvisatory talents, ability to play in any key, and flair for performing in public!
Derek's first major concert was at the Barbican Halls in London, when he was just 9 (in 1989). He played jazz with the Royal Philharmonic Pops Orchestra. Numerous national and regional television appearances followed, in the UK and overseas. His increasing maturity both as a person and performer enabled him to give concerts in venues across England and in Europe; among them, Ronnie Scott's renowned jazz club in London.
Today, Derek is a student at Redhill College in Surrey, England, run by the Royal National Institute of the Blind. He attends courses at 'SoundScape' — a unique performing arts centre for young adults with learning difficulties and exceptional musical abilities or needs. His talent, love of music, and — above all — the ability to communicate through sound means he will continue to thrill audiences for years to come in the UK and abroad. Doctor Ockelford can be reached at Adam.
Derek Paravicini now has his own Web site. The site gives more biographical information about Derek along with a summary of his recent concert appearances and media productions about him. Both a CD of his works and a book about him will be released later this year.
His Web site is www.derekparavicini.net
Autistic Children Show Outstanding Musical Skills
Specialist individual music lessons could hugely benefit children with autism, according to researchers Dr Pamela Heaton and Dr Francesca Happe at the University of London.
The study, which was funded by ESRC, suggests that many children with this disorder have outstanding abilities in tone recognition. "A lot of work has been done on musical savants with exceptional musical memory and rarely found absolute pitch ability" says Dr Pamela Heaton who led the research. "But our research shows that even children without these special talents and no musical training can have highly developed musical 'splinter skills'. If we could develop effective non-verbal music teaching methods, we might be able to understand more about the way these children learn and process other information." A series of music workshops in which children with autism will be taught to read musical notation are currently being planned.
The research compared the skills of six to 19 year old individuals with autism, and a control group with matching age, IQ and level of musical background, on a series of tasks into tone memory and discrimination. Using a touch-screen laptop computer, they were asked to identify musical notes by moving the image of a boy up and down a flight of stairs.
Although the children with autism had the communication difficulties associated with this disorder, a sub-group of them produced exceptional results. In one of the tests four children from the autism group achieved a score of 89 per cent compared to an average score of 30 per cent. "These findings were surprising, especially given that two of these children had intellectual impairment and none had experienced musical training. Autistic children can be highly analytical listeners and are able to access musical details more readily than typically developing children," says Pamela Heaton, who worked as a musician before gaining a doctorate in psychology".
The study, which was funded by ESRC, suggests that many children with this disorder have outstanding abilities in tone recognition. "A lot of work has been done on musical savants with exceptional musical memory and rarely found absolute pitch ability" says Dr Pamela Heaton who led the research. "But our research shows that even children without these special talents and no musical training can have highly developed musical 'splinter skills'. If we could develop effective non-verbal music teaching methods, we might be able to understand more about the way these children learn and process other information." A series of music workshops in which children with autism will be taught to read musical notation are currently being planned.
The research compared the skills of six to 19 year old individuals with autism, and a control group with matching age, IQ and level of musical background, on a series of tasks into tone memory and discrimination. Using a touch-screen laptop computer, they were asked to identify musical notes by moving the image of a boy up and down a flight of stairs.
Although the children with autism had the communication difficulties associated with this disorder, a sub-group of them produced exceptional results. In one of the tests four children from the autism group achieved a score of 89 per cent compared to an average score of 30 per cent. "These findings were surprising, especially given that two of these children had intellectual impairment and none had experienced musical training. Autistic children can be highly analytical listeners and are able to access musical details more readily than typically developing children," says Pamela Heaton, who worked as a musician before gaining a doctorate in psychology".
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Tito Writings
"One day I dream that we can grow in a matured society where nobody would be 'normal or abnormal' but just human beings, accepting any other human being- ready to grow together."
- Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay, in The Mind Tree, Arcade Publishing, 2003© National Autistic Society
Once in a great while, a special person emerges in the history of science and medicine whose unique set of characteristics sheds light on an entire disorder and sometimes even on the mysteries of the human brain. Tito is such a person. Although he has severe autism and is nearly nonverbal, his ability to communicate through his extraordinary writing is astonishing.
Tito communicates eloquently through his writing and he has gained national recognition for his poetry. He has published his book of memoirs and poems, and plans to pursue a career as a professional writer.
Early Writings
The Mind Tree
(from the Mind Tree, Arcade Publishing, 2003, National Autistic Society)
Maybe it is night
Maybe it is day
I can?t be sure
Because I?m not yet feeling the heat of the sun
I am the mind tree
When I had been gifted this mind of mine
I recall his voice very clearly
To you I have given this mind
And you shall be the only kind
No one ever will like you be
And I name you the mind tree
I can?t see or talk
Yet I can imagine
I can hope and I can expect
I am able to feel pain but I cannot cry
So I just be and wait for the pain to subside
I can do nothing but wait
My concerns and worries
Are trapped within me somewhere in my depths
Maybe in my roots
Maybe in my bark
When he comes next who gifted me my mind
I shall ask him for the gift of sight
I doubt his return and
Yet hope for it
Maybe he will
Maybe he will not
Poem 1 listen to this poem
(from "Tito's Story", a video documentary by the BBC, April 2000)
Men and women are puzzled by everything I do
Doctors use different terminologies to describe me
I just wonder
The thoughts are bigger than I can express
Every move that I make shows how trapped I feel
Under the continuous flow of happenings
The effect of a cause becomes the cause of another effect
And I wonder
I think about the times when I change the environment around me
With the help of my imagination
I can go places that do not exist
And they are like beautiful dreams.
But it is a world full of improbabilities
Racing toward uncertainty
Poem 4 listen to this poem
(from "Tito's Story", a video documentary by the BBC, April 2000)
When you are trying to think blue
And end up thinking black
You can be sure to be frustrated
Time and again it happens to me
And I get quite helpless
Otherwise why should I get up and spin myself
Spinning my body
Brings some sort of harmony to my thoughts
So that I can centrifuge away all of the black thoughts
I realise that the faster I spin
The faster I drive away the black
When I am sure that even the last speck of black
Has gone away from me
Then I spin back in the opposite direction
And pull the blue thoughts into myself
It depends on how much blue I want
If I want more blue I have to spin faster
Otherwise not so fast
It's just like being a fan
The trouble is when I stop spinning
My body scatters
And it's so difficult to collect it together again
Recent writings
The Door Hinge
I was playing with the door hinge since early noon today. I knew nothing could stop me from playing.
They had all given up trying. They had requested me at first and then they had tried to pull me out.
Nothing stopped me.
Not even the two pm strike of the clock.
Not even the rain.
It had started raining since noon. The window brought in all that cool air that had been waiting to come in, and all the damp smell of wet earth inside the room. I am sure the hinge on the door with which I was playing could smell it too.
It never tells me anything. But I somehow know that it can sense every thing I sense.
It sensed the orange colour spreading with the two pm strike of clock as it filled up the room.
Every time the clock strikes two, both of us get prepared.
We get prepared for the orange light to come to us from the clock. The orange light joins us in our secret game.
The door hinge senses the gradual spreading of the orange colour through the mirror till every thing in the room is coloured with orange.
The green frame of the mirror gets the orange colour before any thing else. After that, the white walls begin to turn orange. Only then can the window and everything outside the window get to colour themselves with orange. Every one needs to wait for our turns to be coloured with orange light.
The door hinge can understand everything.
But now the door hinge was sticky.
The door hinge becomes sort of sticky whenever it knows that it is raining. I doubt whether it really likes the rain. It is fond of the wind. I can just guess that.
I have seen it slamming with joy when there is wind.
I guess that the door hinge tried to gather the orange colour of the two pm afternoon although the damp air prevented the colour from diffusing it completely because the grey colour of the rain was too strong for the orange to spread evenly as it does every day.
I saw the colours trying to gain strength. Sometimes it seemed as though the grey would empower the orange.
The war grew in width and depth inside my room and outside the window. I felt my breaths inhaling and exhaling the colours and felt the battle within me.
I knew the door hinge was getting alarmed.
I heard it creek. It was trying to warn the clock about the colour battle.
I had banged the door hard for my part so that the out side grey of the rain could be warned. I wanted to shout. But I could only shout through the slam of the door.
The colours had understood the cause.
They stopped their little war.
I saw the rain drops getting coloured with orange.
The door hinge had stopped the creek.
- Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay, in The Mind Tree, Arcade Publishing, 2003© National Autistic Society
Once in a great while, a special person emerges in the history of science and medicine whose unique set of characteristics sheds light on an entire disorder and sometimes even on the mysteries of the human brain. Tito is such a person. Although he has severe autism and is nearly nonverbal, his ability to communicate through his extraordinary writing is astonishing.
Tito communicates eloquently through his writing and he has gained national recognition for his poetry. He has published his book of memoirs and poems, and plans to pursue a career as a professional writer.
Early Writings
The Mind Tree
(from the Mind Tree, Arcade Publishing, 2003, National Autistic Society)
Maybe it is night
Maybe it is day
I can?t be sure
Because I?m not yet feeling the heat of the sun
I am the mind tree
When I had been gifted this mind of mine
I recall his voice very clearly
To you I have given this mind
And you shall be the only kind
No one ever will like you be
And I name you the mind tree
I can?t see or talk
Yet I can imagine
I can hope and I can expect
I am able to feel pain but I cannot cry
So I just be and wait for the pain to subside
I can do nothing but wait
My concerns and worries
Are trapped within me somewhere in my depths
Maybe in my roots
Maybe in my bark
When he comes next who gifted me my mind
I shall ask him for the gift of sight
I doubt his return and
Yet hope for it
Maybe he will
Maybe he will not
Poem 1 listen to this poem
(from "Tito's Story", a video documentary by the BBC, April 2000)
Men and women are puzzled by everything I do
Doctors use different terminologies to describe me
I just wonder
The thoughts are bigger than I can express
Every move that I make shows how trapped I feel
Under the continuous flow of happenings
The effect of a cause becomes the cause of another effect
And I wonder
I think about the times when I change the environment around me
With the help of my imagination
I can go places that do not exist
And they are like beautiful dreams.
But it is a world full of improbabilities
Racing toward uncertainty
Poem 4 listen to this poem
(from "Tito's Story", a video documentary by the BBC, April 2000)
When you are trying to think blue
And end up thinking black
You can be sure to be frustrated
Time and again it happens to me
And I get quite helpless
Otherwise why should I get up and spin myself
Spinning my body
Brings some sort of harmony to my thoughts
So that I can centrifuge away all of the black thoughts
I realise that the faster I spin
The faster I drive away the black
When I am sure that even the last speck of black
Has gone away from me
Then I spin back in the opposite direction
And pull the blue thoughts into myself
It depends on how much blue I want
If I want more blue I have to spin faster
Otherwise not so fast
It's just like being a fan
The trouble is when I stop spinning
My body scatters
And it's so difficult to collect it together again
Recent writings
The Door Hinge
I was playing with the door hinge since early noon today. I knew nothing could stop me from playing.
They had all given up trying. They had requested me at first and then they had tried to pull me out.
Nothing stopped me.
Not even the two pm strike of the clock.
Not even the rain.
It had started raining since noon. The window brought in all that cool air that had been waiting to come in, and all the damp smell of wet earth inside the room. I am sure the hinge on the door with which I was playing could smell it too.
It never tells me anything. But I somehow know that it can sense every thing I sense.
It sensed the orange colour spreading with the two pm strike of clock as it filled up the room.
Every time the clock strikes two, both of us get prepared.
We get prepared for the orange light to come to us from the clock. The orange light joins us in our secret game.
The door hinge senses the gradual spreading of the orange colour through the mirror till every thing in the room is coloured with orange.
The green frame of the mirror gets the orange colour before any thing else. After that, the white walls begin to turn orange. Only then can the window and everything outside the window get to colour themselves with orange. Every one needs to wait for our turns to be coloured with orange light.
The door hinge can understand everything.
But now the door hinge was sticky.
The door hinge becomes sort of sticky whenever it knows that it is raining. I doubt whether it really likes the rain. It is fond of the wind. I can just guess that.
I have seen it slamming with joy when there is wind.
I guess that the door hinge tried to gather the orange colour of the two pm afternoon although the damp air prevented the colour from diffusing it completely because the grey colour of the rain was too strong for the orange to spread evenly as it does every day.
I saw the colours trying to gain strength. Sometimes it seemed as though the grey would empower the orange.
The war grew in width and depth inside my room and outside the window. I felt my breaths inhaling and exhaling the colours and felt the battle within me.
I knew the door hinge was getting alarmed.
I heard it creek. It was trying to warn the clock about the colour battle.
I had banged the door hard for my part so that the out side grey of the rain could be warned. I wanted to shout. But I could only shout through the slam of the door.
The colours had understood the cause.
They stopped their little war.
I saw the rain drops getting coloured with orange.
The door hinge had stopped the creek.
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