Beedow, MD
I'm reading BLINK by Malcolm Gladwell The following excerpts (from pages 218-19) caused me to either (a) underline them, or (b) write "wow" or "crazy stuff" in the margin.
"In anything less than a perfectly literal environment, the autistic person is lost."
"Normal people, when they were looking at the faces, used a part of their brain called the fusiform gyrus, which is an incredibly sophisticated piece of brain software that allows us to distinguish among the literally thousands of faces that we know. (Picture in your mind the face of Marilyn Monroe. Ready? You just used your fusiform gyrus.) When the normal participants looked at the chair, however, they used a completely different and less powerful part of the brain -- the inferior temporal gyrus -- which is normally reserved for objects. (The difference in the sophistication of those two regions explains why you can recognize Sally from the eight grade forty years later but have trouble picking out your bag on the airport luggage carousel.)"
I am now intrigued by autism. Perhaps I shall study it. Or, at least, finish the chapter about it.
2 comments:
While doing Christmas shopping last month, I saw this Gladwell dude's books for the first time on display at Borders. Never heard of him or the books before.
But they ("Blink" and "The Tipping Point") both looked very interesting. I actually put the latter on my Christmas wish list.
Alas, I didn't get it from Santa.
I'll have to content myself with THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2, The Gruesome Edition DVD instead.
But all that mind crap is pretty cool.
I never got around to it, but the movie AWAKENINGS made me aware of the writings of Dr. Oliver Sacks, and I've always been curious about checking out his collections of essays (I believe) entitled "The Man Who Thought His Wife was a Hat."
I'm assuming the title is referring literally to a case of Sacks' or one that he heard of, and that alone sounds interesting.
The brain... such a fascinating organ.
I always thought the story of "Sybil" was a strange and wonderful example of the brain trying to solve a problem. Its solution, saving the aspects of Sybil's personality into separate personalities was so strange.
But considering that she was the child of an abusive mother, I think the (or, perhaps, a)normal pattern is that the child grows up to abuse children as well.
So Sybil always seemed to me an example of what happens when the brain attempts to break a behavioral pattern its being taught but is left completely on its own without guidance as to how to go about doing it.
That's probably way incorrect in terms of what actually happened in that case, but that's what Sybil always makes me think of with regards to our brains.
So, anyways, bla bl bla...
This book sounds cool.
Maybe I should have just said that to begin with, huh?
Sacks' stories sound scintillating. And the book IS cool, I'm amazed more and more as I continue reading. I'd like to check out "The Tipping Point" I think next.
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