Neurodiversity and social change
Posted in The Unconscious, featured
I am fascinated by the relationship the autistic have with music and rhythm. There is evidence that when language is tied to melody, it is easier for many with autism to absorb the words. The autistic have been observed to retain perfect pitch in higher percentages than the nonautistic. Several of those with autism that I have known personally felt a close affinity to music and dance. One autistic boy I worked with almost never spoke, yet occasionally he would break out into dance. In a subtle and interesting way, performance may be tied to the autistic experience. There are rhythmic features to chimpanzee displays, particularly with the aggressive repetition of loud noise. Perhaps the obsessive repetition associated with physical and aural exclamations in autism…
...[Read More]Andrew Lehman on 03/10/10 | No Comments | Read More
I’d been studying Asperger’s and autism in connection to human evolution for maybe ten years before it dawned on me, after reading Michael Fitzgerald’s Autism and Creativity, that Asperger’s w...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 03/8/10 | 4 Comments | Read More
Sometimes I ask for feedback on pieces I’ve written before I post them, and sometimes I’m lucky enough to get a reply that’s in itself more compelling than what I’d intended to post in the fir...[Read More]
Mark Stairwalt on 03/5/10 | 2 Comments | Read More
Diversity and Inclusion: How Society Fails Us All, How We Fail Ourselves
Leave aside for the moment your immediate foray into divisions, into the ideas of a neurodiversity movement. Leave aside for a moment the split into camps of curing and not curing, the false dichotom...[Read More]
KWombles on 03/3/10 | 2 Comments | Read More
How far would you be willing to go for a more attractive and socially pleasing look? Would you choose to sacrifice part of your cognitive functioning, leaving your brain less able to process verbal a...[Read More]
Gwen McKay on 03/1/10 | No Comments | Read More
Fellow contributor Clay is happily bemused this week over at Comet’s Corner, reflecting on his recent release from some of the lifelong difficulties that finally led to his late-life diagnosis of au...[Read More]
Mark Stairwalt on 02/26/10 | 5 Comments | Read More
We all do it, to some extent anyway. Whether we’re neurotypical or neurodiverse, we find it easier to say things that we’ve already said. When President Obama gives a speech, I’m s...[Read More]
Clay on 02/25/10 | No Comments | Read More
Light moves at a speed of 186,000 miles per second. Speed as a concept is also integral to biology. I hypothesize that the speed with which information passes between the two cerebral hemispheres im...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 02/24/10 | 3 Comments | Read More
There is this thesis that I’ve been playing with. Like the experience physics theorists have described, it seems too beautiful to not be true. Nevertheless, Stephen J. Gould has described the trap...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 02/22/10 | No Comments | Read More
Covert Ops in Autistic Self-Advocacy
Pandemic autism that’s hidden in plain sight, an autistic spectrum populated overwhelmingly by undiagnosed fellow travelers and autistics-in-hiding—if this is an accurate description of autism’s...[Read More]
Mark Stairwalt on 02/19/10 | 4 Comments | Read More
Autism, Diet and Sexual Hormones
I’m still trying to grasp the concept that testosterone and estrogen and their associated hormones are together managing ontological, social and biological evolution by adjusting to changes in the e...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 02/18/10 | No Comments | Read More
Autism and Societal Individualism
There is a paradox I’m trying to tease out here having to do with raising a child when we as a species were still largely lodged in primary process, the way an unconscious or dream self thinks, ...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 02/17/10 | No Comments | Read More
Here’s a link to an excellent PBS Nova show I saw the other night. It’s nearly 2 hours long, 1 hr 51 min, but I hope those who are interested will find time today or over the long weekend...[Read More]
Clay on 02/15/10 | No Comments | Read More
I’ve never been able to take in the big picture at family reunions. Between the carnival of overstimulation that comes with all that social interaction, and being the odd neurology out as an adopte...[Read More]
Mark Stairwalt on 02/12/10 | 1 Comment | Read More
Creoles, Aboriginal Identity and Autism
… I might suggest that particularly ancient aboriginal societies, matrifocal cultures, for example, might display earlier stages of biological/neurological/hormonal evolution. If those particul...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 02/11/10 | No Comments | Read More
On page 575 of the May 1 issue of Science there is an article, “Africans’ Deep Genetic roots Reveal Their Evolutionary Story.” Examining the blood of 3,194 Africans from 113 populations, researc...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 02/9/10 | 1 Comment | Read More
Open Letter to Joel Johnson (Gizmodo)
Hi Joel – I’ve waited twelve years now to see the word “autistic” begin to come out of the closet in the tech world, but your otherwise dead-on post the other day about “iPad Snivelers” wa...[Read More]
Mark Stairwalt on 02/6/10 | No Comments | Read More
Rich Shull: HBO Temple Grandin Special
Rich Shull writes with an intensity that befits a man struggling to whittle a rapid-fire slide show of thousand-word pictures down to a sentence or two at a time. Mr. Shull is a part of a longstanding...[Read More]
Mark Stairwalt on 02/5/10 | 3 Comments | Read More
Corpus Callosums, Autism & Aboriginals
Regarding autism, I’ve hypothesized that the autistic brain is an ancient brain primed for aesthetic manipulation/appreciation with a larger brain size and larger hemispheric bridge having evolved a...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 02/3/10 | No Comments | Read More
Autism, Asperger’s, and Chicken Broth
Anyone who has been in the online “autism community” for any length of time, whether they’re autistics or parents, knows that there is a sort of person who trolls autistic advocates&...[Read More]
Clay on 02/2/10 | No Comments | Read More
Emergence of a Universal Language
There is a phenomenon in linguistics where language complexity is directly related to how isolated a particular language is from its neighbors. A new language is difficult to learn for adults. When ...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 02/1/10 | 1 Comment | Read More
Mashup: Time, Death, and Ballastexistenz
There have been two significant deaths to me recently. My grandfather died just before Christmas. And Judi Chamberlin … died this weekend. And yet again I am coming up against my instinctive respo...[Read More]
Mark Stairwalt on 01/29/10 | 2 Comments | Read More
The other day, on “Cat in a Dog’s World”, Sarah takes to task the originator of “The Neanderthal Theory”, Leif Ekblad. His theory is the result of his desire to justify ...[Read More]
Clay on 01/27/10 | 6 Comments | Read More
The Native American tribes of the Northern Plains, forced onto reservations and near starving in 1890, were drawn in large numbers to a new religion called the Ghost Dance. Led by the shaman Wovoka, t...[Read More]
Guest on 01/25/10 | No Comments | Read More
Autism and the Hacker Manifesto
Late last year I posted an entry which included a quick list of people and ideas my wife and I found heartening or helpful back before we fell out of active involvement with autism as a topic of publi...[Read More]
Mark Stairwalt on 01/22/10 | 2 Comments | Read More
Autism, Mysticism, and the Natural Self
There is a common phrase that “there is a fine line between genius and insanity.” I think that line is just the lines imposed by the extreme sensitivity of unorthodox people. Specifically, I am ...[Read More]
Social Media and Environmental Integration
I saw this piece appear in March: Too Much Facebook could cause Autism in Children. A doctor in the UK suggested that social networking applications were encouraging dissociation, making it more dif...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 01/19/10 | No Comments | Read More
Consider that those female children with low estrogen levels as they cross over into their teens may find themselves experiencing delayed puberty. This may manifest delayed testosterone surges prunin...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 01/18/10 | 3 Comments | Read More
“Good manners applied without regard for differences are in fact bad manners.” Those words, wherever it was I found them maybe two decades ago, struck me as so apt, so applicable to what I had lon...[Read More]
Mark Stairwalt on 01/15/10 | 1 Comment | Read More
Ouroboros, Autism and Future Past
I’m starting to consider that the highly ritualized environment of aboriginal matrifocal societies, along with the ways children are raised and what they are fed, are preventing the further leftward...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 01/14/10 | No Comments | Read More
Left Brain / Right Brain Neurodiversity.com Ballastexistenz Asperger Square 8 Aspie Rhetor Whose Planet Is It Anyway? Action for Autism Autism Science Foundation Aspie Family Prism*Song Natural Variation Cat in a Dog’s World Aspitude! Comet’s Corner NTs Are Weird Existence is Wonderful Incorrect Pleasures Neurodiversity – The Book