Please watch this video. It's been around the 'net for a while. It's the story of a man named Daniel Tammet, who can do calculations to 100 decimal places in his head. He has been diagnosed with a form of autism, but one with a relatively mild affect on the way he handles social interaction. Typically autistics have trouble relating to other people and things in their environment, but can demonstrate an ability to focus on single tasks. This rarely manifests itself as true savant-like abilities, but for a while now I have started to wonder whether the escalation in autism diagnoses over the past 30 years is a result of environmental effects on children, or whether this is nature experimenting with us to take us to the next stage of evolution.
This is in no way intended to make light of the effect that autism can have on people and their families. In fact, there is great debate within the culture of autism -- the medical professionals, the families, and the autistics themselves -- whether autism is a condition rather than a disorder.
The pathology of the brains of autistics shows clusters of excess neural connections in localized parts of their brains. This causes a lot of what appears to be the compulsive behaviors of autistics, the repetitive and ritualistic tendencies, and what can appear to be a detachment with normal life and social interaction.
But occassionally, these clusters can bestow amazing gifts. There are autistics who can draw landscapes in three dimensions having seen only pictures of the subject, showing an ability to imagine and extrapolate an environment based on pure instinct. And Daniel Tammet, the subject of the video embedded above, learned one of the world's most difficult languages in a week.
So I feel the need to wonder, is nature experimenting with us? Will there be a point in the future where we will all have savant-like abilities, with godlike levels of focus and ability? Or is autism really just some kind of disorder where brain development has gone wrong or misfired somehow?
Kimberly Parrish said:
I've seen the Daniel story on television and Kim Peak's story (Rainman). My son is 27 and is diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. He's great with computers and some electronics; not a savant. I took him to early intervention (berfore school) ... 9 pages I filled said there was something wrong. Five 'professionals' said he was fine. He was diagnosed with many disabilities including Soto's Syndrome, ADHD, Bipolar (lithum and the whole bit). I FINALLY found the diagnosis and took him to an expert in the fienld of Aspergers at the age of about 17. The Dr. confirmed the dx. Now my son will not seek any help or therapy. He is extremely difficult to live with at times. Thank goodness for the parents of today who have professionals much more aware of the condition. A movie with Josh Harnet is coming out soon in which he plays a person with Aspergers. Public awareness is great but I'm afraid that too many people are going to be dxd with this syndrome. Oh how I wish he would accept help.
MediaMisfit said:
This is quality if I do say so myself. I was totally trying to go to bed at a decent hour. Thanks for screwing that up. lol
J.J said:
The Human Mind is so powerful that i think maybe Autism triggers some parts of the mind that the rest of people don't use. I met a guy with Autism on a Internet game and i understood they really focus on one thing, maybe that and the fact that some parts of their brains are triggered by the biochemistry going in their minds makes them able to do this. I really think that if we are using only 5% of our brain capacity we can really start evolving into that. I think medical research will tell what the reasons are. And i agree this can be some characteristic that we will have with evolution (the ability to learn faster). In fact, thanks to the internet we are learning to learn faster than we used to do.
Spytap said:
"Will there be a point in the future where we will all have savant-like abilities, with godlike levels of focus and ability? Or is autism really just some kind of disorder where brain development has gone wrong or misfired somehow?"
I don't believe that these two statements are necessarily mutually exclusive.
Michael Motta said:
I tend to agree with the basic flavor of what Spytap says.
Evolution doesn't necessarily mean better, rather, it means that organisms ill-suited to a particular environment are weeded out. So if, for instance, the social environments we're producing in modernity/postmodernity are unfavorable to generalists, to non-specialists, and more favorable to the narrow of focus, to the specialists, then mental make-ups in the broad range of autism could prove more viable relative to the non-autistic than in the past. This wouldn't mean that autism is a superior mental condition, it would just mean that given an environment of specialization and less importance placed upon each and everyone's being able to communicate well (or "play well with others"), autism would have its relative advantages.
However, my hunch is that as with many medical issues, especially psychological ones, the autistuc spectrum is being diagnosed at a greater rate now but this doesn't mean that it exists at a greater rate than before. An analogy would be that women are traditionally more likely to diagnosed with depression than are men, but some say this doesn't mean depression is less common in men, it may just be that men are less likely to put themselves in positions of being diagnosed with it. Or, we've also seen "fad" disorders. ADD/ADHD and bipolar disorder seem to have become fads. Maybe the same amount of people always have had those disorders, but they're being diagnosed now instead of ignored (PTSD may also fall into this camp), or maybe there's some overdiagnosis due to whatever reasons - the pharmaceutical industry pushing it, graduate or professional schools pushing it, etc.
Also, one really has to wonder how well autism could really do in terms of evolution, since by its very nature, autism would seem to lessen one's procreative tendencies. Heritability works best when actualized!
Andrew Lehman said:
Please consider visiting http://www.neoteny.org/?cat=7 to review a unique and unorthodox theory for the cause of autism. It is based on an alternative theory of evolution concentrating on Darwin's other two theories, sexual selection and Lamarckian selective processes.
Thank you,
Andrew Lehman
