Comments on: The Supercharged Brain

By: Paula

Paula — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 00:27:12 +0000

I am just now reading this.

I had a regular hearing test done when I was 36. My actual *hearing* (not processing ability) was about 7-10% above normal.

My eye doctor told me that the *worst* my vision ever could have been when I was a child was 20/10, which means I could see things at 20 feet away as though they were only 10 feet away. I remember being fascinated by looking into flowers and seeing the pollen, though I don’t know that I was seeing individual grains. Now that I am super far-sighted, I have to make do with numerous pairs of glasses that let me see what I used to see, only magnified so that they don’t really look “right” to me.

By: Brett

Brett — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 17:51:05 +0000

The "supercharged brain" study came to mind when I saw the post The Eyes Have It, which includes a table that shows the actual bandwidth of the five senses, compared to the bandwidth we are consciously aware of. There is a drastic difference in all the senses, but as Dave hints at in the post title, the sense of vision has the most drastic difference: An actual bandwidth of 10,000,000 bits/second compared to a conscious bandwidth of 50 bits/second. Five orders of magnitude!! Could it be that autism results in (from?) a higher conscious bandwidth for the senses? This would definitely account for the sensory overload. The table comes from a study that address the 1/2 second delay between the time we perform and action and the time we are aware of our decision to act. Maybe this increased conscious awareness has an impact on this delay (one way or the other) that contributes to the sensory overload?

By: What Do You Look At In a Crowded Room?

What Do You Look At In a Crowded Room? — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 16:30:33 +0000

[...] not being as good at “understand gaze cues and exressions,” they are focusing (even hyper-focusing) on different sorts of objects and information; that maybe the eyes don’t have [...]

By: My Autism Insights

My Autism Insights — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 12:22:23 +0000

Funny, I was just talking to my son’s counselor last night about the notion that “they were without emotions and the capacity to feel…” and how he’s just the opposite. I think this theory is reasonable and would be interested to see more work in this direction.

By: Kristina Chew, PhD

Kristina Chew, PhD — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 05:44:23 +0000

Born with a big head (that’s the first thing my grandfather, Yeh Yeh, said about me).

I perform pretty low on the AQ.

By: Emily

Emily — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:20:48 +0000

Aw, I consistently score a 35 or 36 on that AQ test. Doesn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know, though.

By: Justthisguy

Justthisguy — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 02:51:57 +0000

Hmm, I have a very large hat size. I mind Major Donovan, at http://www.thedonovan.com

I sometimes tease him about having both neurotypical and autistic co-processors in that huge head. (His head is so big he had to have a prescription helmet in the Army.)

I got him to take all of the online “AQ” tests and his results were “just barely normal.” I love him, not least for all of the shiny weapons exactly lined up in rows in his basement.

He has the best Gun Pr0n on the internet, srsly!

By: Kristina Chew, PhD

Kristina Chew, PhD — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:59:07 +0000

Karin wrote, “it has led me to believe that ASD and probably ADHD are both responses to too much information flooding in ….” —- just wanted to highlight this as my husband has ADHD (severe at times)—-he is constantly always taking in information but not always what’s in front of him, or or he’ll already be talking about 2 new ideas when one is processing the 1st or a few back. Charlie seems rather to take more time to figure things out, to process it all.

By: Regan

Regan — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 23:50:32 +0000

I think that I need to look at this more closely esp. since this is posited as a unifying theory to see what limits they might be posing to the model. Scanning–it’s a long paper and they seem to try and document pretty thoroughly the proposal.

Eleanor at this time tends to be attracted to hurly burly, bright lights–many of the things that are commonly overwhelming to many people, and that we might have anticipated to be so for her–so I see a paradox if I am understanding what they are forwarding (Granted that I might not be). I also would like to see where/how/if some of the documented language difficulties and comprehension of social rules fit into the model. But, as said, I haven’t really read the paper, so this is just talking through my hat.

By: Regan

Regan — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 23:37:10 +0000

If someone would like to read the full text of the paper in the original to examine more closely the data and premises that formulate the hypothesis –

Markram, H., Rinaldi, T., Markram, K. (2007). The intense world syndrome – an alternative hypothesis for autism. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 1, 77-96.

I think that this will get you to the full text of the paper–or at least it did so for me.