Extreme male brain
Not that long ago, there was a British researcher on the media circuit talking about autism and how he (not just him, really) theorizes that autism is essentially a case of extreme male brain. One main difference between male brains and female brains is that the bit (fancy name: corpus callosum) that connects the two lobes (the thinking half and the feeling half, to be heart-rendingly reductionist) is far more active in women than in men. Basically (again, generalizing with a sledgehammer and a wedge of lime) women are fairly constantly tuned into both lobes: they know both how they’re feeling (and how everyone else is feeling) at any given moment as well as what they’re thinking. Men, in contrast, remain in the thinking half and then have to travel over to the feeling half when called upon to do so, for example, by someone asking how they’re feeling.
Apparently, the connecting bit is even less active in autistic brains. It’s as if someone with autism can’t cross the bridge to the emotional side because the bridge is so wobbly, so weak. So they just stay in the sorting, organizing and ordering side of their brains, no matter how touchy-feely the situation they’re in.
One of the things that is interesting about this idea is that it makes autism less of a disease or a freakish condition than another sliding scale that all human beings are on. We are all on the autism scale with some of us blessed by strong and sparkling corpus callosums and some of us resistant to crossing the frayed rope bridge over to the other side of the ridge. We are none of us wholly male or female. We are none of us wholly extrovert or introvert. We are none of us wholly anything. We are all on a teeter-totter with some fictional average at the fulcrum and we slide up and down, all inhabiting positions that only can be defined in relation to the people around us.
The other thing that is interesting about this is how it helps me think about Daniel. My son is not autistic, not really, although I think his teacher would be really relieved if someone diagnosed him as Asperger’s. He can be really autistic-esque some days. He gets completely fixated on topics (currently stars, although when he was two and three it was flags and he knew every flag in the world and would race up and down Ben Franklin Parkway shouting the names of countries as he passed). On the other hand, he is clearly connected and loving to his family and sometimes, to the world at large. Some days he explodes into conversation with strangers passing on the street. Yesterday he was knocking on the neighbors’ doors, asking them to call him Encyclopedia and wondering if they could help him solve the mystery of the FILA label he’d found on the sidewalk. On other days, he can’t hear you when you speak to him because he’s organizing magnetic letters by color and number and if you touch him, he collapses and screams, can’t make eye contact and thumps himself on the head in frustration.
It’s been a bit of a ride some days, learning how to talk so he can hear us. Learning to handle his rage, to help him handle it. Coping with how terribly stressful he finds the world, trying to help him cope. And yet, he’s clearly not autistic. And yet, he clearly pretends he is sometimes.
The point is that he’s on the sliding scale, same as the rest of us. So he’s probably a little closer to the skulking-in-the-left-brain side than the other. He’s probably not so far on the male brain side of the see-saw that he won’t be able to learn to function; on the other hand, he’s clearly going to have to learn certain social graces completely by rote. He will always be happier when things are clear, ordered, calm and predictable. But he might just let himself dance at parties when he gets to college.
No labels. Not one thing or the other. Just being human. Just being himself.
I’m a part of SP6, reading participant’s blogs and found this post so interesting. My brother (age 6) has Asperger’s and since his diagnosis last winter, our ability to understand him and work with him has increased 500%. We’re all happier because we know what is going on in his head and can communicate in a way that makes sense to him. If you’d be interested, I could email some websites to you that we found particularly helpful.
Brianne