Right Peeps, this squirrel is shagged! So off to bed to read some more on ASD .
Shout out to @VulcanTourist , you can come out now , peace brother! 🫶
Shout out to the overnight peeps too, have a great day you lot 😁
#GoodNight, sleep tight & remember bedbugs love a cuddle at night 😜
😊🫶🐿️🖖
@dramypsyd
Have you heard of this excellent theory/paper?
"The Intense World Theory – a unifying theory of the
neurobiology of autism
Kamila Markram* and Henry Markram
Laboratory of Neural Microcircuits, Brain Mind Institute, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland"
(2010).
I got this recommended by a researcher in Scotland who has several family members with ADHD or autism.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2010.00224/full
Autism covers a wide spectrum of disorders for which there are many views, hypotheses and theories. Here we propose a unifying theory of autism, the Intense World Theory. The proposed neuropathology is hyper-functioning of local neural microcircuits, best characterized by hyper-reactivity and hyper-plasticity. Such hyper-functional microcircuits are speculated to become autonomous and memory trapped leading to the core cognitive consequences of hyper-perception, hyper-attention, hyper-memory and hyper-emotionality. The theory is centered on the neocortex and the amygdala, but could potentially be applied to all brain regions. The severity on each axis depends on the severity of the molecular syndrome expressed in different brain regions, which could uniquely shape the repertoire of symptoms of an autistic child. The progression of the disorder is proposed to be driven by overly strong reactions to experiences that drive the brain to a hyper-preference and overly selective state, which becomes more extreme with each new experience and may be particularly accelerated by emotionally charged experiences and trauma. This may lead to obsessively detailed information processing of fragments of the world and an involuntarily and systematic decoupling of the autist from what becomes a painfully intense world. The autistic is proposed to become trapped in a limited, but highly secure internal world with minimal extremes and surprises. We present the key studies that support this the...
https://www.spectrumnews.org/opinion/viewpoint/intense-world-theory-raises-intense-worries/
Read about just exactly how they reached those conclusions. TL;DR: it's a stretch, to say the least. It confirms biases for a lot of people, though, which is why it's so appealing.
I had been looking for more recent research on the #IntenseWorldTheory, so thank you.
As your linked article states, autism research is progressing quickly. 2014 is not all that recent either.
Is anyone aware of scientifically solid new research from the last 5 years?
Well @HistoPol, I've been trying to nudge my friend for several days into sharing some information with you, but he has unexpectedly been more reluctant than I anticipated and seems very unlikely to be creating a Mastodon account to facilitate it.
The best I could get out of him was specific mention of Peter Vermeulen and one or more of his books. The originals may not be in English, so you might have to wait for translations. Searching for those might be a next step.
(1/2)
I really appreciate you doing so. Tim @MaJ1 is not the only one among my contacts who has been late diagnosed with #ASD/#autism or some other #neurodivergence within my contacts or their relatives here during the last year. In fact, my not small "sample" of contacts is so skewed towards neurodivergence that I have begun to wonder whether there might be so many more instances in ral life where people simply don't know of or share their condition.
(And Tim didn't know...
(2/2)
...of his divergence, so it can't be due to some "snowball"/network effect either.)
I do know, however, that a higher percentage of neurodivergent people seem to like #Mastodon than would be the population average--with a known diagnosis.)
//
I did find #PeterVerheulen's website:
I find his slogan intriguing:
"#AUTISM in CONTEXT
from #neurodiversity to #neuroharmony#
(1/n)
The fascinating article on #autism and #MachineLearning/#AI by
#PeterVerheulen, "Does [Dr. ]Temple Grandin’s* brain work like a computer or a human?" compares the learning process of current #AI technology (#LLMs) to the learning and sensory processing of #autistic people:
Dr. #Grandin "...compared her own learning processes with that of #Artificialintelligence “My brain works like an AI program of machine learning“...
https://petervermeulen.be/2022/10/24/does-temple-grandins-brain-work-like-a-computer-or-a-human/
(2/n)
...
people need a great deal more of
primary data to arrive at the same conclusion/perception non-#neurodivergent people do "automatically" (i.e. subconsciously):
"It is precisely because people with autism (have to) learn more consciously that we have to slow down in the learning processes we devise for them and offer them more learning experiences than we do for people without autism..." is the way author and speaker...
In spite of their fame and success, I think I still have license to disagree with Grandin or Vermeulen. My life experience has been that it's trivially easy for me to learn new things, apparently much easier than for neurotypical people. I'm a so-called "quick study".
I didn't exploit that in life, no more than I succeeded in exploiting any of my other strengths, but it's nevertheless true for me and contrary to what Grandin says of herself. Not a good generalization.
My current and inadequate understanding of #autism is that it is sort of an "umbrella" term covering Differenz kinds of neurodivergent conditions.
You having divergent (pun intended 😉) experience from theirs would completely underpin that definition.
That said, I'd be curious to find out to which kinds of situations your "quick study" condition applies.
A memory like Sheldon's in #BigBangTheory, perhaps?
"Immediate" holistic understanding of concepts?
(If you don't...
It applies best to pragmatic things and visual and spatial challenges, perhaps. I don't know that it has any specific limits. It's reined-in somewhat by a diagnosed memory deficit that ultimately doomed me to being a jack-of-all-trades because I can't rote-memorize well enough to specialize... in ANYTHING.
"It applies best to pragmatic things and visual and spatial challenges, perhaps."
As in, how many chewing gums are in a big glass jar or how wide is a river at a crossing?
#RoteMemorization has very limited uses, if you aren't an actor, which is why I probably always hated it. I would even argue that it inhibits Amy deep learning, as could be somewhat inferred from this article: ...
perhaps.https://www.verywellmind.com/rote-memorization-8350717
(2/2)
...
However, this only as a side note, as I can infer from your comments that you've reflected a lot on the subject and know your abilities (or lack thereof) well.
//
I suspect that I might have developed 98th-percentile fluid IQ rather than being born with it, as a result and remediation of that memory deficit, which did come factory-installed.
You discount the value of rote memorization. It's the ONLY thing that allows people of average intelligence to function as specialists in any role, and that specialization is generally essential to occupational success in this age. Had I been born in 1501, I'd have been highly valued.
"98th-percentile fluid IQ" - I am not familiar with that terminology. Care to explain a bit?
"average intelligence" - please define this term.
IMO, if someone needed to extensively learn things by heart for his/her day-to-day tasks on the job, he'd be below average intelligence from my point of view, even though knowing things by heart might be handy at times.*
I agree that specialization is needed for success for most people, as knowledge has become to extensive.
* OFC, this doesn't include occupations like being an actor, where #RoteMemorization is a core compentency.
I'm a Mensa member, n'est-ce pas? I've been "diagnosed" to have a fluid IQ that exceeds that of 98% or more of the population. The last time I was tested (WAIS-III), it was explained to me that my memory deficit affected the result and that, in the absence of that memory issue, the result would likely have been higher, so my true IQ might be greater than 98th percentile. Remember, I said that I suspect that my IQ was a *compensation* for poor memory, but it's affected by it.
MaJ1 OLD
HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴
VulcanTourist [MOVED]
