IMAGINE a world where every sound jars like a jackhammer, every light is a blinding strobe, clothes feel like sandpaper and even your own mother’s face appears as a jumble of frightening and disconnected pieces. This, say neuroscientists Kamila and Henry Markram of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, is how it feels to be autistic.
According to their “intense world” hypothesis, all of autism’s baffling and sometimes incongruous features – social problems, language impairment and obsessive behaviour, sometimes allied to dazzling savant abilities – can be explained by a single neurological defect: a hyperactive brain that makes ordinary, everyday sensory experiences utterly overwhelming.
Do supercharged brains give rise to autism? – 19 September 2008 – New Scientist
– fuck New Scientist’s pay-wall.. yet I know I’ll start subscribing to it soon.
and yeah, this is fascinating.. how many other problems are there that we just need to step back from, look with different eyes, stop trying to force into the ‘normal’ category.. and just understand first
also, i can haz a pill for this? switch on brain supercharge plz!
The Committee to Nuke Elysium 