Neurotypical
Last week, I received my free copy of Wired’s 16.03 edition and I read the entire thing, largely because it was free. It was free, because you could sign up to have a free copy sent to you, tying in with Chris Anderson’s article, Free! Why $0.00 Is The Future of Business. Anderson’s article is interesting, although it never really escapes the “nothing is ever really free” mantra, since giving away free things in business serves a marketing purpose and is a means to making more money for other things or services. Giving me a free copy of this one edition of the magazine gets all the advertisements in that magazine in front of my eyes and hopefully serves as an advertisement for the magazine itself, which will (again hopefully) result in me either reading Wired.com more often (and thereby seeing more of their ads) or result in me subscribing to the magazine or picking up future copies from the newsstand. It’s an interesting article, you should read.
However, what I really enjoyed most about this free magazine was this article: The Truth About Autism: Scientists Reconsider What They Think They Know by David Wolman. It’s an interesting look at autism and what we think we know, and how a lot of people with autism are unfairly judged as being low-functioning simply because they don’t communicate in the same ways that we do and we haven’t bothered to learn to hear what they’re saying. Read the article and watch this video made by silentmiaow aka Amanda Baggs to understand this more:
In one section of the article, while discussing the findings of psychiatrist Laurent Mottron who specializes in autism, Wolman describes something Mottron found when studying an autistic man who could do spectacular 3-D drawings, called E.C.:
After two years of working with E.C., Mottron made his second breakthrough — not about autistics this time but about the rest of us: People with standard-issue brains — so-called neurotypicals — don’t have the perceptual abilities to do what E.C. could do. “It’s just inconsistent with how our brains work,” Mottron says.
That word neurotypical jumped out of the page at me when I was reading this. I wanted to register Neurotypical.com, but some domain squatter currently has it and then I decided to just create a neurotypical category on my current blog of which this post is the inaugural post. I’m neurotypical. My entire life I’ve thought quite a bit about thinking. I’ve thought about the ways that I think. Sometimes I think I think differently than a lot of people, depending upon what I’m thinking about. Sometimes I don’t. I tend to “overthink” things. I don’t always think in words (I think visually a lot) which is not to say that I escape language. As Baggs clearly illustrates in her video, she’s participating in language(s) that are outside of words and which most of us don’t bother to learn. It doesn’t change the fact that there is a language there that she is participating in and which she understands. That’s very interesting in and of itself.
We are all limited by the languages which we know. Trapped by familiar phrases and vocabulary.
In any case, I wanted to start blogging about what I’m thinking about thought, and I like the thought of examining myself as a neurotypical person and I’d love to hear what everyone else — neurotypical and autistic — thinks about thinking and what I’m thinking about it. The process of thought. The only way I know to communicate thinking about thought is via words, which is limiting, but hopefully between my words and your words and some pictures and videos, we’ll strike some spark.
April 12th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
I read this article too and thought it was great. I’ve often wondered how does someone think who hasn’t learnt speech (say, a tarzan or mowgli). What is different about the way they process their decisions compared to a speaker? How does logic work in that context and how do they prioritise their actions?
April 13th, 2008 at 11:08 am
I always start thinking about people who are colorblind. Then I start wondering if the green that I see looks the same to me as the green that you see. What if someone saw everything in exact reverse, a negative print, all day long? Wouldn’t they, because we name everything with words, think it was all perfectly normal and not notice any difference when discussing it with us? Would any of us ever know?
April 17th, 2008 at 10:33 am
Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! I’m a neurotypical too!
This video floored me. Fo’rizzle.
I am constantly thinking about thinking (big surprise). I have this feeling in my gut that WE are the ones (neurotypicals, that is) who have some learning to do and this video supports that. I feel justified. So you know where I’m coming from - - for the last two years or so I’ve been mildly obsessed with the workings of the mind (and space and quantum physics) and have been learning about neural networks and thought processes in general essentially being electrical impulses set into motion by emotion and intention. And throw in the fact that at the subatomic level everything is nothing, well, immaterial anyways, and you begin to realize that we truly are just a bunch of energy patterns moving around in networks of energy patterns. Truly fascinating to me. Somewhat indirectly related - I’ve been reading Fritjof Capra (Hidden Connections, Web of Life, there’s more) who is trying to define a necessary paradigm shift away from Descarte’s mechanistic understanding of the world (which has been the source of most, if not all, of our fucked-up-ed-ness) and toward a systemic perspective of everything. He set up a center for EcoLiteracy in CA (see, CA’s not THAT BAD). I also think he’s advocates the Gaia Hypothesis, but I don’t really know anything about that and I can’t confirm this). Funny thing is - this can also be applied to how we understand the mind. It almost seems silly because shifting to a systemic understanding of the world/universe/self brings us back to some pretty basic concepts. And this video made me think of savants who think in colors, or shapes, or sounds. I’m beginning to think that they are “energy patterns” who may be more directly connected with our surrounding energy networks and we are too de-sensitized to understand it or even experience it. Maybe we should try to teach ourselves…Okay, I ramble. I’ll stop now.