What a horrible presentation. There's a difference between agile and frenetic.

Jill Bolte Taylor gave a much better presentation at this conference and it hasn't gotten as many votes.

[BTW, I'm guessing Asperger's Syndrome - not cocaine. Or maybe both.]

Half-autistic and half-not is a bit misleading -- recent evidence has been suggesting that Autism is on a spectrum, and we all lie somewhere on that spectrum. The vast majority of us are near 0, but people with Asperger's are somewhere in between the normal person and the average Autistic person, making his analogy fairly reasonable, just a bit semantically off. Great video though. Very brave, very candid.

My cousin has been diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome, which as stated in the video is a high-functioning form of autism. In other words, they don't seem that much different than you or me, but yet they are.

My cousin is an extremely smart little kid, and can be really funny too once you get to know him. He loves computers, building toys, and his pet rats. But he has trouble with his peers, because he generally doesn't know how to properly interact with them. Basically he has trouble making friends. Because of this he often feels sad and lonely, and it hurts me to see him this way. Recently he's been getting in trouble at school because he's learned a way to get his classmates to laugh at his jokes: By using dirty words. I mean REALLY dirty words and phrases. He's gotten into a lot of trouble because of this, and so he finally seems to have gotten the message to stop doing it. But at the same time he's really sad because now his peers aren't paying attention to him anymore. He even told me point blank after a bad day at school (because of his peers): "I want to fit in, but I don't know how to!"

I mention all this for a reason, because I can see both sides of the story presented in the video. We need to allow autistic people to be themselves, but at the same time we do need to recognize that there should be programs to help autistic people function in our society. I understand what that autistic girl in the video is saying, but at the same time she should realize that if we didn't give a hand to people like her then she wouldn't be able to live the way she is, because unless her parents are wealthy I'm sure she is receiving some form of government assistance. I say that because I doubt she is employable anywhere.

My cousin needs help because of Asperger Syndrome. Not as much as that girl in the video or other autistic people, but he still needs help. Therefore if calling it a "disability" instead of "differently abled" will get him the help he needs to grow to become a happy, functional member of society, then so be it.

Let's not get hung up on words. Let's do the best we can for each other, that's all.

*promote

Asperger syndrome at work.

check out his book called 'Born on a Blue Day';just finished it and greatly enjoyed it.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Born-Blue-Day-Aspergers-Extraordinary/dp/0340899743

even greater insight into a savants brain

I'm aware the condition is refered to as 'Down Syndrome' in the US, and 'Down's Syndrome' practically everywhere else English is spoken. There could be an interesting reason for the transferal from 'Down's' to 'Down'.* This particular USian convention, I would argue, does a disservice to past discoverers who had been rightly honoured for their work. Taxonomical, geographic, medical, astronomical, protocol should be maintained in this spirit of homage.

The USian linguistic convention of dropping the 's' in 'Asperger's' is not the same animal. It's a predictable habit of speech, which gets transfered to the written language, wherever one 's' is directly adjacent to another. Over time it has been transcribed the way it is (mis)heard, and has entered common usage this way.

*See Metaphors We Live By; Mark Johnson and George Lakoff, University of Chicago, 1980.

http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/index.php/Aspergers

I am a 49 yr. old autistic guy. I pass as normal, and tell no one, except rare friends.
I guess that makes me "aspergers", except that I graduated mid class in 76 in a school where there were "special " classes for the "special" kids. We all called them the retards though. I'd about rather died then be in that class.
I liked your video. I can read but I need to do it over multiple times to get my excellent understandings.
You live in a world where you have support. I did not, and have learned this.....
1. The world is full of stupid people that can barely take care of themselves. An inteligent autistic person has an advantage. The primary difficulty for an intelligent autistic such as us is to believe the absolute and near total mind jammed stupidity of the normal people. It is difficult to grasp, yet trust me, it can be done. You are surrounded by trained monkeys that are building nuclear weapons to bring about a magical event that they "feel " (they feel like rats smell) will gaurantee them an eternal afterlife. Because it is impossible for an autistic (who cannot link their logic and feelings togather normally)to grasp why normal people "feel" this is not just "right", but normal. And of course, being normal is the only standard the normals follow. Jesus's spirit comes into and changes the hearts in Kansas, while in Iraq, the magic heart of Mohammed
is so busy flutting about doing the same. Once you grasp this is not puzzling to the normals (because they think with their feeling's in a way we cannot),you can begin to grasp the enormity of your problem sir.
No one gives a half a rats ass about our autistic problems. O.K., maybe your momma loves you. The rest are wildly retarded beyond almost all comprehension. If only we were all autistic!

Good post! Really interesting to look into the mind of someone who thinks differntly.

plus aspergers sounds like ass-burgers. so thats good too.

mmm i love fresh aspergers

Rembar: From interviews with him which I've read, it may be barely noticeable for us to notice anything markedly different about him in these glimpses we have, but it's undoubtably an issue for him. He has to count the items of clothing he's wearing before he leaves the house, and drinks tea at the same times each and every day, to name just two examples.

Does anyone else find it really interesting that he's gay? Don't think I've ever heard anything at all about the sexual orientation of any autistic people (even high-functioning ones) with the possible exception of Einsten, who some people believe may have had Asperger's syndrome...

WTF?! That is scary how yer brain works.. classic.

"the cosmological combinations...
non-linear snapshot #987359876"

Mr Wiltshire has some interesting books: 'Floating Cities' is said to be the most fun.

http://www.stephenwiltshire.co.uk/books.aspx


...and I second much of Farhad's comments. Individuals on the spectrum don't use more of their brain, they're just wired to use whats there a bit differently. The loops that build sensation to memory to recall are just skewed a bit from the average. For example, instead of being able to immediatly recognize the dispostion of a person, along with their approximate age and health, someone with Aspergers might instead be able to immediately recognize the number of stripes on their shirt.

I studied savantism and aspergers for some time when deciding what direction to pursue graduate studies. Its was a very tempting direction, as there are amazing imaging and population studies going on around the world. However our understanding of so much of the brain is so very simplistic it makes studying savants to try to learn how to give ordinary people better memory recall seem like trying to jump the gun to me. Very unlikely that we can skip right to that without years of further research on the human brain in actual humans.