Journal 10: Summary 5:
I for one have always been a fan of Time Magazine. No matter what the subject the writers at Time have always had a way of drawing me in and fixing my mind to whatever it is the article is about. This article “Inside the Autistic Mind” by Claudia Wallis is no different. Although the article disagrees with much of what I have been researching I feel that it is necessary to include this point of view in my sources and in my paper. The article begins with a short introduction to a young girl named Hannah. Hannah has a relatively strong case of autism and for the first thirteen years of her life was unable to speak beyond a few repeated phrases. Wallis describes in beautiful detail the groundbreaking moment that Hannah made contact with her outside world for the
first time. Using a method called facilitated communication, a system using a keyboard and a facilitator to help controll the communication, Hannah was able to tell her mother that she loves her. Facilitated communication has been the subject of some controversy. Those who appose this method say that the person helping to control the communication is really the one creating the communication, but with Hannah at the keyboard it is clear that her life has been changed. Shortly after this first emotional outreach, Hannah is now learning algebra, biology, and history. Hannah, now nearly 15, is dealing with being autistic in a way that many cannot. With her keyboard she is able to communicate her feelings about being autistic and the nearly 13 years of her life she spent in silence. She writes “Reality hurts.” Although the emotions are difficult for her to handle, Hannah is able to explain her actions and abilities and offer insight into the autistic disorder. For example Hannah explains why she does not look at things directly but rather she uses her peripheral vision to see because her sight is overly sensitive to light.She also has a hypersensitive sense of hearing, being able to hear things at one end of their home that is happening on the other side. Also it has been discovered that Hannah has some very unique gifts. Upon being given a list of 30 math questions Hannah immediately typed the answers to all 30. Hannah has a photographic memory.
Wallis continues on to explain “Autism is almost certainly, like cancer, many diseases with many distinct causes. It's well known that there's a wide range in the severity of symptoms--from profound disability to milder forms like Asperger syndrome, in which intellectual ability is generally high but social awareness is low. Indeed, doctors now prefer the term Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD). But scientists suspect there are also distinct subtypes, including an early-onset type and a regressive type that can strike as late as age 2.” She describes that many problems in the brain are found in autistic individuals; problems with neurons (like mirror neurons), oversized areas, disconnections between lobes, and many other irregularities, but it is difficult to pinpoint weather these abnormalities came about because of the autistic disorder or if they are what caused it. Furthermore other symptoms are beginning to be dispelled, like inability to love or lack of emotional connections thanks to cases like Hannah’s. Also symptoms like spinning, head banging, and repetition appear to be more a way of coping then just a physical symptom. A quote used later in the article brings some insight into the reason for these actions “Chandima Rajapatirana, an autistic writer from Potomac, Md., offers this account: ‘Helplessly I sit while Mom calls me to come. I know what I must do, but often I can't get up until she says, 'Stand up,'. [The] knack of knowing where my body is does not come easy for me. Interestingly I do not know if I am sitting or standing. I am not aware of my body unless it is touching something ... Your hand on mine lets me know where my hand is. Jarring my legs by walking tells me I am alive.’”
Further more, other possible causes for autism have been discussed, like high levels of mercury in the body, but no one cause can be singled out. Researchers believe that there is a combination of genetic and environmental factors implicated in the cause of autism. Genetic factors have been long studied and Wallis explains “An identical twin of a child with autism has a 60% to 90% chance of also being affected. And there's little doubt that a vulnerability to ASD runs in some families: the sibling of a child with autism has about a 10% chance of having ASD”. There have been abnormalities found on chromosomes 2, 5, 7, 11 and 17 and as David Amaral, research director of the MIND (Medical Investigation of Neurodevelopmental Disorders) Institute, says “We think there are a number of different autisms, each of which could have a different cause and different genes involved,". Regardless of the causes, over 300,000 school age children suffer from the effects of this disorder all in their own ways. The most upsetting cases are those like Hannah’s. Those who “have a lively intelligence trapped in a body that makes it difficult for others to see that the lights are on.” Or a boy stricken with a very severe case of autism; nable to speak or sustain his attention from one moment to the next, yet this boy is tragically aware of his situation. As Wallis writes “How many other autistic kids, Merzenich wonders, ‘are living in a well where no one can hear them’?” For some like Hannah, who is now preparing for college, life after so many years of silence can become a cacophony of happiness. But still some remain in silence waiting for us to breakthrough that two-way mirror. We have come so far in scientific breakthroughs and perhaps the answers are right around the corner, but for now we will continue doing everything in our power for those suffering from autism.
Works cited:
Wallis, Claudia . “Inside the Autistic Mind”. Time 7 May 2006. 1 Mar. 2007
She discusses a study done by Marco Iacoboni in which mirror neurons were shown to be used in determining intention. In the study, the participants were shown a video of a woman at a tea party picking up her cup. Then they were shown a video of the same tea party with crumbs and dishes scattered on the table indicating it was over. The same woman was shown picking up her cup in this context as well. Finally the cup was shown alone in no context. The EEG results showed much more activity in the mirror neuron area during the videos of the tea party than when the cup was removed from context. This shows that the brain was working more to recognize that in the first video the woman was lifting the cup to drink from it and in the second video she was lifting it to clean it. Less brain stimulation occurred during the video of the cup out of any context. The brain worked less to recognize a simple picture on a screen than it did when processing intention and context. "This suggests that the neurons are important for understanding intentions as well as actions," Iacoboni says. Vittorio Gallese, MD, PhD, at the University of Parma is very experienced with mirror neurons and has this to say about their importance in society “This neural mechanism is involuntary and automatic, with it we don't have to think about what other people are doing or feeling, we simply know. It seems we're wired to see other people as similar to us, rather than different. At the root, as humans we identify the person we're facing as someone like ourselves."
