autism (Page 7)

Scientists who study idiot-savants, people who are autistic but geniuses in one particular area, think that brain damage in one part of the brain causes other parts to become much more developed than normal. Can a stroke affect the brain the same way?

Tommy McHugh suffered a stroke three years ago. Before then, he had no interest in art, but now he spends most of his time drawing, sculpting and writing poetry. After the stroke, Tommy says, “I didn’t know much about who I was and what I was. My brain wasn’t telling me I was hungry, I was talking in relentless rhymes. Everything was a rhyme?I started writing poetry in rhymes about what I was experiencing. The personalities I was living with at the time were revolving like a chamber in a gun.”
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A fierce fight has been going on for years between the parents of autistic kids and the government and pharmaceutical industry about whether or not the mercury used as a preservative in vaccines causes autism. Over the past 20 years, there has been a huge increase in the number of autistic children, which has led to a lawsuit that parents have lost. However, all that may change, now that a new study shows that exposure to low doses of thimerosal, a mercury preservative used in childhood vaccines, can lead to the development of autism in mice.
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The artist Michelangelo may have had a form of autism called Asperger’s Syndrome, and Albert Einstein, Socrates and Jane Austen may have had it too. Psychiatrists describe Michelangelo as “strange, without affect, and isolated” and “preoccupied with his own private reality.” Other potential Asperger’s cases are Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, Marie Curie, the poet W.B. Yeats and pop artist Andy Warhol. Even Microsoft’s Bill Gates has been mentioned as possibly having it.
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New research shows that autism may be linked to male hormones circulating in the developing fetus, and babies who produce high levels of testosterone are more likely to be autistic. It’s an affliction that mostly shows up in males. This has led to the theory that autism is an exaggerated form of the way ordinary men think and behave. Researcher Simon Baron-Cohen says, “What I am doing is testing this idea that autism might be an extreme of the male brain.” Baron-Cohen tested amniotic fluid taken from 70 pregnant women during amniocentesis for testosterone levels. When the children were born, he found that “Those who had a high level of testosterone also found it more difficult to fit into new social groups.” While they were not actually autistic, they did have more autism-like traits.read more