Experience and The Autistic Mind
View PDF | Print View
by: rdepaolo
Total views: 2143
Word Count: 4448
Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2009 Time: 5:40 PM
0 comments
Experience and the Autistic Mind
Robert DePaolo
In a prior essay, I discussed autism in terms of a brain wave computation process - a neuro-functional “maestro” that normally orchestrates a fluid shift between excitation and inhibition. I thought it might be interesting to extrapolate from that and speculate on the actual experiences of an autistic individual.
This article might not pertain to some adults and children on the spectrum because as an increasing number of people are being diagnosed with autism, the clinical criteria have become broader than ever and functional levels on the spectrum have risen higher. Here I’d like to focus on lower functioning and/or non verbal autistic persons who once comprised roughly ninety percent of all autistic diagnoses, and whose difficulty with communication adds to their frustration and duress.
First, a theoretical point. While much research is being conducted on the etiology of autism, the assumption here is that regardless of what specific gene complex, brain location, and/or neurohumoral factors might be involved, autism entails what could be called a “vertical mind.” What is a vertical mind? Perhaps the best way to describe it is through a brief discussion on infant brain development.
The neuro-developmental sequence beginning in utero and extending into early childhood generally proceeds from brain stem, to mid-brain, to cortex in a vertical arrangement. Neurons and fibers connect in north-south fashion during the first year. Much of the brain remains that way throughout life, and for good reason. The lower vegetative hind brain must have some way to communicate with emotion and motivation circuits situated above it in the midbrain or “limbic system” regarding the need for nutrition, oxygen, the securing of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Since the hindbrain is essentially an internal gauge with no mechanism for acting on the external environment it must connect with, and rely on, an externally-functional, higher order brain circuit (the limbic brain) to ensure survival.
While perfectly capable of resolving basic survival problems through flight, fight and other survival behaviors, the limbic-generated behaviors are global and rigid. In order to be refined, the limbic brain must in turn communicate with the cerebral cortex via ascending pathways, so that cognition can be recruited to resolve complex social and survival conflicts. That consultative or “triune model” (which might aptly be called a vertical-triune model) of the brain has been discussed by McClean (1990) and Patton (2008) and it is generally accepted as one process by which the human brain operates.
However, when it comes to the traditional panorama of human experience, vertical pathways are not enough. That’s why a second neuro-developmental phase occurs around the second year. This phase features the formation of cross grid horizontal connections that grow over and intersect with the vertical pathways. Whereas during the first year the brain looks like a kind of north-south, vertical highway, by age two it increasingly takes on the appearance of a grid, with neuronal pathway enrichment in every direction typified by up, down and cross configurations. In effect, it represents a shift from a two dimension to a four dimensional brain.
The developmental byproducts of the second phase are clear. Where simple associations can be formed during the vertical developmental phase, the second phase integrates brain systems, not just in terms of vegetative, emotional and cognitive functions but also in terms of creating associative cross references within all brain systems into a functional, whole system, capable of extracting rules, concepts, grammatical language and figure-ground perception. This second phase provides, metaphorically speaking, a capacity to see both the forest and the trees.
There is some evidence to suggest that the second phase is interrupted or suppressed in the development of autistic children (Kwasnicki & Scherer, 20004) . One possible cause of this disruption is dysplasia - a condition in which brain cells do not mature to full length, and therefore cannot “reach” across columns to make horizontal connections. In the previous article, I suggested that a dysfunctional neural orchestration process derived from brain wave function that prompts and modulates the cross connections between vertical, horizontal inhibitory and excitatory neuronal networks might be involved as well.
Whether due to dysplasia or faulty wave-governing functions the evidence seems to suggest that the behavioral features seen in autism might be the result of a vertical mind superimposed on an integrative world. If so, then to gain a more complete understanding of the autistic experience would require some discussion on how a vertical mind would respond in cognitive social and emotional circumstances.
General Assumptions
With regard to the "vertical brain experience" an initial hypothesis would be that a mind dominated by vertical connections would likely display unique tendencies with respect to movement, thought and expression. Features such as echolalia, integration deficits, perseveratory behaviors and emotions, inability to cope with change and even rigid body posture and gait would be predicted by products of a vertical template and of course, these features have long been considered signature diagnostic components (Rudy 2008).
In terms of actual experience there are other ways in which this might play out, particularly in the domain of motivation.
As Yerkes and Dodson (1908) demonstrated, motivation involves among other things, a capacity to summon an adequate arousal level to meet the demands of any given task. At face value that might seem to be a simple process. Most people can prime themselves for an important event. Indeed to some extent we have no choice in the matter. For example anxiety automatically, and often intrusively, kicks in before giving a public speech or participating in a big game.
With respect to autism the process seems to be more complicated. For example, prior recognition (anticipation) of an event or task enables us to set a gauge and pre-elevate our arousal levels, so that when faced with the task arousal won’t mount too rapidly. If we had to suddenly shift from a low arousal state to a high arousal state with each impactful experience, we would soon develop an aversion to impactful experiences - perhaps all experiences. Yet preparation and anticipation operate on several levels which requires an integrative brain structure. For instance preparation requires at the very least, attention to what is happening now and what is expected to happen in the near future.
A vertical nervous system disallows such comparisons, thus prohibiting, to a large extent, the integrative capacities that faciltiate anticipation and preparation.
Most clinicians and teachers working with autistic individuals realize this implicitly, and incorporate both prompts and closure cues into their teaching strategies. If presented deftly, cues will work, but this method comes with a caveat. Once cued to task, the autistic person will remain in a vertical mode and will tend to remain aroused. There is a reason for that. Without the regulatory bridge that comes with a vertical-horizontal neural meshing he will be essentially relegated to a single (monophasic) mental state in the course of any experience requiring effort. That neuro-cognitive disposition creates fixations in perception, behaviors, emotions and physiological arousal. Mores simply put, a vertical brain lacks fluid intregrative access, not just to the conceptual rules that come from perceptual and asociative comparisons but also to arousal dampening mechanisms arising from contributing inhibitory circuits around the brain.
Because the autistic person cannot shift fluidly his arousal levels, he will either tend to seem lethargic and depressed, or hyperactive and manic. If he could verbalize as to why, he might simply tell us that he is monophasic. He might also inform us that medications designed to either calm or arouse him miss the point, and that dyspraxic arousal-shifting, not the sheer level of agitation or lethargy is what constitutes the main problem.
The vertical mind would also create other propensities. Without integrative networking, inputs can only be dispersed along narrow (vertical) pathways. That means that as soon as a stimulus “grabs hold” of a pathway it will tend to remain confined to that pathway. Since, as discussed above, that would prevent access to other parts of the brain, it could lead to fragmented memories and a rather naked perceptual experience un-dampened and unmodulated by language, prior experience, psychological defenses or other stress-saving mechanisms that come with neural dispersion., ie. an integrative...or.. north-south-east-west brain topography.
Another possible trait has to do with the question of whether the lack of language is responsible for the lack of integration (on the assumption that labels and verbal concepts provide links between experience) or whether the vertical column arrangement of brain networks is responsible for both the linear experience and language deficits seen in autism. Rutter (2006) has suggested it might be the latter, but since this problem has not been well researched, the question remains moot.
Another possible facet of the autistic experience lies in the motor domain. If autism entails a highly vertical brain that cannot process or regulate diverse movements fluidly. one might expect movement to be “centered,” as a means of funneling movement into a singular style of locomotion. In fact “singularization” (which I will refer to here as an autistic self regulatory adaptation, mechanism rather than just a pathognomc indicator) might comprise not only the core learning style, but also the life’s quest for an autistic individual. His perceptions, behaviors and thoughts would all focus on compressing his world into a single or narrow response mode. In the context of movement, that might produce a crouched, less left-right, less sequentially fluid, and more "funneled" manner of walking as well as a rigid, centered body posture, head sensory placement/orientation and movement of limbs.
In terms of language (to whatever extent the autistic individual can speak) a vertical mind would also tend to singularize - not just regarding oral motor responses, but also phonics, sound blends, semantics, vocabulary and sentence structure. The end result might be echolalia, super-sound blends that make for poor articulation, whisper-talking (whereby oral motor responses are isolated from auditory components, ie. pronunciation at the expense of tone) and other features.
Singularity of the Senses
One of the mysteries of autism pertains to stereotyped movement and sensory behaviors, for example hand flapping, sound making and rocking. Anyone who has worked with autistic students will recognize that these behaviors can be means of expression, signifying anger, tension or joy. However, since they also occur when no apparent stressor or pleasurable event has occurred, the question could be posed as to whether these behaviors are random discharges - akin to tics, as seen in Tourette's syndrome - or whether they serve regulatory or communicative functions. The answer might be both. Once aroused (by either negative or positive occurrences) the autistic person will still have to center his reactions. By way of analogy, the vertical mind operates like a solar system with a very small sun and a weak gravitational pull. In such circumstances each planet would be best served by staying as close to the sun as possible – thus creating a very compressed solar system.
Some, if not most autistic individuals probably understand that they have what amounts to relatively weak “neural gravity” and that veering too far from the center could lead to unpleasant outcomes.
Autism and Consciousness
Another very important question has to do with the level of consciousness of the non- verbal autistic individual, who can seem at times hyper-vigilant and at times oblivious. A
related question is whether echolalia is a meaningless repetition of words, signifying an inability to grasp the essence of language, or a compressed version of what the autistic person does understand but can only communicate in funnel fashion through a vertical mind.
If the vertical mind hypothesis is correct, then in some circumstances the autistic person’s consciousness would be higher than that of the average person because he would tend to be more aroused, more vigilant, more able to predict events, more sensitive to other’s behaviors and subtle gestures (though that might seem ironic).
But his hypersensitivity would be in a narrow context and primarily at the level of small details. In other words, a vertical mind would enable him to have a special focus that is mostly un-affected by surrounding stimuli, yet also be un-modulated by surrounding stimuli. In a world consisting of details and fragments, ie. a super-empirical world, he might be considered “normal” and we “disabled.” Our world is of course conceptual – at least in a cultural and social sense. That's where the phrase "poor adaptation" comes into play.
With regard to personality types (a topic seldom discussed with regard to autistic individuals) a vertical mind might correlate with a resolute, seemingly arrogant personality, and perhaps feature a gentle “know-it-all” demeanor. With limited figure-ground cognition, the autistic individual’s one track mindedness would create a black and white, right and wrong picture of the world, which would make him extraordinarily, perhaps inexorably firm in his habits and behaviors. In effect, he would act in accord with what he knows to be the right course.
Since this implies there is a cognitive foundation in autism - in other words, that they have attitudes, a world view and a specific intelligence that underlies their behavior, it might be assumed that modifying their behavior might be rather difficult, not because the autistic person doesn’t “get it” but because his vertical mind invariably yields a certain logic; specifically that there is only one way to do things, that some objects, people, actions and experiences belong here but not there, and that some don’t belong at all. It would amount to a quasi-moral code, leading to the conclusion that anyone who contradicts that code is wrong and needs to have their behavior modified. The power struggle inherent in that dynamic would be substantial.
Still another question has to do with what we refer to as a “language deficit.” To wit, might this be , in some instances, something more accurately referred to as a “logical speech negating process.”
Such a windy phrase requires clarification, so here goes. In a vertical mind, what is - is. Such ultra-categorical thinking virtually precludes the need or desire to communicate – certainly with regard to communication that is social but not necessarily functional. As Chatham (2007) and Berger (1979) have demonstrated, human language is, among other things, an uncertainty reducer, and as such, is highly geared toward conflict resolution. While the conflict might be as subtle as…I need to make contact with someone and am not doing so at the moment… speech is usually propelled by some sort of experiential mismatch. Piaget (1990) noted that a child talks to resolve what he called disequilibrium, which occurs when there is a disagreement between internal schemes and new inputs. Adult language has a similar topography.
Yet a vertical mind would only operate in one dimension at a time, thus would not be able to accommodate multi-input comparisons, mismatches, questions, conflict or uncertainty. In other words being in what amounts to a permanent state of resolution would obviate the need for resolution. That would remove one primary impetus for language development.
In that context, the question becomes, why would that type of brain see the point in talking at all? It is a potentially fascinating area of inquiry, since it implies that one aspect of an autistic person’s language deficit is that he views speech as somewhat illogical. That doesn’t mean he would never try to speak but it does suggest that the neuro-developmental commitment to language that characterizes the integrative mind might be not only hampered but rendered absurd in a vertical mind
The vertical mind hypothesis also has implications regarding the presumption of pathology in autism. On one hand a vertical mind would invariably lead to various language, motor and social deficiencies. On the other hand, it would mean the autistic person is not just less competent than a normal person but in many ways quite different from other people – almost an apples-oranges proposition. While we immerse ourselves in a multi-faceted world, they live in a world of singular or narrow dimensions. In that context, autism could be viewed as both a disability and a distinctly different take on life.
Next, what about body awareness, spatial orientation, posture, sense of self, height, weight and appearance per se? What about feeling good and bad, ill or well? How might such phenomena play out in a vertical mind?
One could speculate that given the singular and concomitantly intense arousal produced by a vertical brain, pain might be felt more intently – depending on circumstances. If the vertical mind happens to be focused on a part of the body that incurs injury, the pain might be more intense than for a non autistic person. On the other hand if the autistic person’s focus is somewhere else, the vertical neural arrangement might override the perception of pain for lack of a neural bridge between the pain site and the alternate prior focus.
Even if he can’t always tell us when he feels sick, uncomfortable or angry, the autistic person could conceivably ameliorate these discomforts through self regulation –which might seem ironic in light of studies pointing to a self regulatory deficit in autism (Loveland 2005).
For example, in a vertical mind, pain might be controlled by shifting to another vertical pathway. This has its benefits. For example the “blend of influence” in an integrative mind that enables the average person to modulate emotions, pain and discomfort by faculty-transfer (for example converting sadness over the death of a loved one into a cognitive-language format, eg….”Oh well, he had a great life and was loved by his family and friends”) makes it possible to both ameliorate or exacerbate pain and suffering. In other words, an integrative mind not only helps salve our wounds but can also dispose us to make mountains out of molehills,
Conversely, while the vertical mind cannot utilize multi-access or faculty transfer as a buffer, it might not add to its problems either. If its focus is.at any given moment, on another track, the immersion is so complete that other experiences will tend to be suppressed. Knowing this, the autistic individual just might employ such a mechanism adaptively; for example by engaging in self abuse to shift from the overwhelming scope of pan-arousal to singular pain pathways. He might do so through body movement, sound making and sensory behaviors. If so, we might have to revise our thinking about autistic people; ie. from individuals supposedly incapable of self regulation, to people so consumed by the need to self regulate that it dominates virtually every waking moment of their lives.
Finally, what about love? How would a significantly impaired autistic person bond, and what would comprise bonding in his eyes? We know from studies by Bowlby (2005) that under normal circumstances, bonding between child and parent usually occurs through a reciprocal interactive (empathic) process. In simple terms, the child essentially gives the mother an empathic IQ test, as if to determine whether she is worthy of the bond. For example, infant cries, mother picks him up. Infant coos, mother coos back. Middle school boy changes his hairstyle to some ungodly color, mother acknowledges his need for an identity (while gently encouraging him to try a more conventional hue next time). A wife comes home from work and complains about being criticized by her boss. Her husband realizes that her real concern has to do with a feeling of incompetence. He says, “Let’s put this into perspective. You have the respect of everyone with whom you work and have received two promotions. You’re good, so I don’t think you have to worry.” He has hit just the right note. He has a high empathic IQ. Husband and wife are congruent – their bond is strengthened.
Such reciprocity would be difficult in a vertical mind because empathy is an integrative experience, for example… What I feel…what the other person feels….how I respond to how I think they feel and how I think they will react to how I reacted to them …and so on. Such a socio-cognitive juggling act might be out of range for an involved autistic individual. However his social and emotional needs would still prevail, including the needs for love and attachment. It’s just that establishing ties might be bit more complicated – and a bit more vertical.
Two ways in they might attach are through repetitive interaction and autism sensitivity.
Repetition would simply be a function of doing the same things with the same person, who acts in the same way in the same set of circumstances. Thus omni-familiarity might serve as a bonding mechanism.
The second is more difficult – though hopefully this article will provide meaningful closure. Autistic people probably know their limitations, which is why they seem to engage in ongoing self regulation. To the extent that another person can defer to their tolerance levels and singular/vertical view of the world they might find reason to bond. The autistic person might put it thus... This person speaks softly because he knows I get easily aroused. He seems to know that I see the world in narrow terms and provides me with demands and experience accordingly. He knows I have difficulty integrating my senses and doesn’t ask me to give eye contact while he cues me. He knows that my brain is vertical and incendiary, that I must work hard and constantly to regulate arousal, that I fatigue easily and lose control. He therefore allows me to rest when I need it most. He understands me even without language”
The vertical mind theory is speculative of course, but it does allow for the possibility that the social-emotional experiences of a autistic individual are less vapid than is ordinarily assumed. Indeed, it also allows us to consider that in the final analysis, the entire world view of an autistic person might simply be a vertical version of our own.
REFERENCES
Berger, C.R. (1979) Beyond Initial Interaction: Uncertainty, Understanding and the
Development of Interpersonal Relationships. Language and Social Psychology. (Eds.)
H. Giles & R. St. Clair, Blackwell Oxford, 122-144
Bowlby, J. (2005) The Making and Breaking of Affectional Bonds. Routledge Classics
Chatham,C. (2007) Uncertainty Reduction, Ambiguity Resolution Mechanisms in
Language. Computational Modeling; Humanities and Social Science
Herschkowitz, N. (2000) Neurological bases of Behavioral Development in Infancy
Brain and Development. Vol. 22, 7 411-416
Kwasnicki, D. (2004) Study of the Association of Neurofibromatosis Type I and Autism.
Society of Ontario, Neurofibromatosis.
Loveland, KA, (2005) Social-emotional impairment and self regulation in Autism
Spectrum Disorders. Emotional Development, Recent Research Advances
MacLean, P. The Triune Brain in Evolution: Role in Paleo-cultural Functions, New York,
Plenum Press (1990)
Patton, P. (2008) One World, Many Minds. Intelligence in the Animal Kingdom, Scientific American.
Piaget, J. The Child’s Conception of the World, New York, Littlefield-Adams
(1990)
Rudy, L. (2008) Symptoms of Autism. About.Com. On line article sponsored by Medical Review Board
Rutter, M. (2006) Cognitive Deficits in the Pathogenesis of Autism. Journal of Child
Psychology and Psychiatry. Vol. 24, 4, 513-531
Yerkes, R.M. & Dodson, J.D. (1908) The Relation of Strength of Stimulus to Rapidity of
Habit Formation. Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology, 18, 459-482
About the Author
PLEASE USE PRIOR NOTES ON THIS FOR BOB DEPAOLO
Rating: Not yet rated
