the autistic brain thinking across the spectrum

[...]... at the brain and work your way out.” The parts of the brain we share with other mammals evolved first the primal emotional areas that tell us when to fight and when to flee They’re at the base of the brain, where it connects with the spinal cord The areas that perform the functions that make us human evolved most recently —language, long-range planning, awareness of self They’re at the front of the brain. .. and language Below the VPs are the workers in these various divisions the geeks, as I like to call them They’re the areas of the brain that contribute to specialized functions, like math, art, music, and language In the basement of the building are the manual laborers They’re the ones dealing with the lifesupport systems, like breathing and nervous system arousal Of course, all these departments and... one another So they have desktop computers, telephones, tablets, smartphones, and so on When some folks want to talk to others face to face, they take the elevator or the stairs All these means of access, connecting the workers in the various parts of the building in every way imaginable, are the white matter Whereas the gray matter is the thin covering that controls discrete areas of the brain, the white... of the brain is a vast thicket of wiring that makes sure all the areas are communicating In the autistic brain, however, an elevator might not stop at the seventh floor The phones in the accounting department might not work The wireless signal in the lobby might be weak Before the invention of neuroimaging, researchers had to rely on postmortem examinations of the brain Figuring out the anatomy of the. .. not to say that the structures of the brains in her study, or autistic brains in general, don’t vary from one brain to the next They do But that’s true of normal brains too It’s just that the variations among the autistic brains predominantly fall within the range of what’s normal Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, told USA Today in 2012, shortly after the Centers for... kids sitting on the floor in a gymnasium They weren’t fidgeting much, so they were probably on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum But you never know They looked to me just like the kids I had seen several months earlier at the Minnesota State Science Fair Did the kids at the autism school get the diagnosis just so they could go to a school where they’d be left alone to do what they did best—science,... closer together than others Some departments are more active than others, depending on what the task at hand is But at the end of the day, they come together to produce a single product: a thought, an action, a response At the top of the building sits the CEO, the prefrontal cortex—prefrontal because it resides in front of the frontal lobe, and cortex because it’s part of the cerebral cortex, the several... make up the outer surface of the brain The prefrontal cortex coordinates the information from the other parts of the cortex so that they can work together and perform executive functions: multitasking, strategizing, inhibiting impulses, considering multiple sources of information, consolidating several options into one solution Occupying the floors just below the CEO are the other sections of the cerebral... back then knew that one ventricle in my brain was 7,093 millimeters long while the other was 3,868 millimeters long, I guarantee it would have given them pause How did the two lateral ventricles become so different? One hypothesis is that when damage occurs early in the brain s development, other areas of the brain try to compensate In my case, the damage would have occurred in the white matter in the. .. voluntary muscle movements The parietal cortex VP is responsible for the parietal lobe the part of the brain that receives and processes sensory information and manipulates numbers The occipital cortex VP is responsible for the occipital lobe the part of the brain that processes visual information The temporal cortex VP is responsible for the temporal lobe the auditory part of the brain that keeps track . Contents Copyright Prologue Part I: The Autistic Brain The Meanings of Autism Lighting Up the Autistic Brain Sequencing the Autistic Brain Hiding and Seeking Part II: Rethinking the Autistic Brain Looking Past the Labels Knowing. Okay, they’re sort of like me—on the spectrum but at the high-functioning end. Would their parents have thought to have them tested for autism in the 1980s? Probably not. And then there are the. couple of bonus questions: How does the autistic brain look different from the normal brain? and What does the autistic brain do differently than the normal brain? Already autism researchers have