Of course, with mice, it’s hard to say exactly what the changes are (mice aren’t going to get at those subtle details). So that makes it hard to say.

I’d also like to know how they knew it was “exactly the same condition” as typical autism seen in humans. In other words, how much are we looking at a subset of autism or not? Do we know what the outcomes of this group are when provided specific education for autism (ABA is one, though I’m not limiting it to that) versus the rest of the autism population? I can’t say I know enough to say if tuberous sclerosis autism would resemble the autism that myself or Charlie would have.

In my experience, with the “overfocusing/underfocusing” thing, it largely seems that it’s a matter of social communication and isn’t actually all that innate as to the “important details”. Indeed, I see such things missed by non-autistics once the category gets out of the “commonly socially communicated” category (say, take an English speaker learning a foreign language. Until there is more training as to where to focus, the focus is dictated by previous experience with language, not with the meaning).

So… lots of questions, before a more solid opinion.

Cliff

Memory is as much about discarding trivial details as it is about storing useful information,’ said Silva, a member of the UCLA Department of Psychology and UCLA Brain Research Institute. ‘Our findings suggest that mice with the mutation cannot distinguish between important and unimportant data. We suspect that their brains are filled with meaningless noise that interferes with learning.’

So would an increase in “intelligence” be a lessening of this “meaningless noise”? This makes me think of Charlie’s propensity to hyperfocus on somethings and struggle to direct his attention to others: He’ll get stuck on the shapes of the letters and then struggle to understand the sounds and phonics.

—thanks for posting the abstract from Nature Medicine

Reversal of learning deficits in a Tsc2+/- mouse model of tuberous sclerosis
Dan Ehninger, Sangyeul Han, Carrie Shilyansky, Yu Zhou, Weidong Li, David J Kwiatkowski, Vijaya Ramesh & Alcino J Silva
Published online: 22 June 2008; | doi:10.1038/nm1788

Roberts likes to overtalk guests and interrupt to steer the dialogue his way. This is his manner and it’s a grating thing for the guests and callers.
That’s probably why he’s on the fifth-ranked radio station in the late morning.

The station, CFRB, once was a very influential station and had high esteem with the listening public. Today, it’s a cadaver filled with talk radio and no-talents to make it happen.

If there were no cell phones and if Toronto’s traffic wasn’t as bad as it is, then CFRB would have to come up with quality programming.

It’s a pity you didn’t get interviewed by the CBC.
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is streets ahead of all the other stations for asking meaningful questions and getting substantive interviews.

Here’s hoping that the next time will be with a worthy broadcaster and radio station.

Yes, the task is difficult. But in so far as a “magic teaching method” (read: a more intense version of any kind of learning whatsoever), it is far and away well possible for her to continue to learn certain skills and abilities. As you basically noted. But, yes, it is a more difficult task, to be sure.

Cliff