Their emotional coldness, fear of change, obsessive movements and absent appearance can confuse even loved ones. But behind the invisible wall with which the autistic person fences himself off from the world, vulnerability is hidden, and sometimes unusual intelligence. What is the nature of autism and how do autistics feel in our world? Opinion of neurophysiologists and expert comments.
The sound of an alarm clock deafens them, the light of a table lamp hits the eyes like a spotlight, clothes scratch the skin, and faces seem like a frightening mosaic – this is how millions of autistic patients perceive the world. Swiss neuroscientists Camilla and Henry Markram (Kamilla, Henry Markram) from the Brain Institute in Lausanne claim that they were able to understand the mechanism of this disease. Until now, most scientists believed that the manifestations of autism are caused by malfunctions in some parts of the brain. The Markrams believe that the cause of the disease is different: not disorders, but excessive brain activity, which is due to genetic characteristics or provoked by negative effects on the embryo (for example, drugs taken by the mother) in the first trimester of pregnancy. “Autistics are characterized by abnormal brain growth in the first year of life,” explains Camilla Markram, “by two or three years, it exceeds the average size by 10%. Part of this volume is formed by special structures in the brain stem – neural bundles that have an excess of connecting processes. Each one works like a microprocessor: it processes information extremely quickly and establishes many new connections with other neural bundles. It is this hyperreactivity and hyperplasticity that underlies autism.”
What is Autism
Autism is a condition in which thoughts, feelings and desires are subject to their own worldview and do not agree with reality. Symptoms become apparent in the second year of life, from two to five years autistic defenses are formed: at this time, children go into themselves as much as possible. All symptoms of autism can be found in three to five children out of 10. In a mild form, it manifests itself in 40 out of 10 thousand children, and in boys three times more often than in girls.
When the brain does not have time to combine into a whole multitude of details, a person perceives the world as fragmented and overly saturated. “Autistic people perceive, feel, remember too vividly and too much,” says Camille Markram. “Their brain is overloaded and cannot cope with the flow of information.” Trying to hide from the annoying world, the autistic person withdraws into himself, in his usual rituals, maniacally repeating what he once remembered. At the same time, brain hyperplasticity in some cases stimulates superpowers (expert phenomenon) and supermemory.
If Camille and Henry Markram’s hypothesis is correct, it is important to notice infants’ unusual behavior as early as possible, to protect them from sensory overload (for example, using noise canceling headphones), to teach them to interact with other people, to identify and develop strengths associated with their characteristics. brain.
* See New Scientist, no. 2674, 2008 for more details on the results of the study.
Club of connoisseurs
Unique memory and intelligence are manifestations of a form of autism. Thanks to Hollywood, the most famous autistic icon is Dustin Hoffman’s Rain Man. The prototype of this character, 57-year-old Kim Peak, knows thousands of books by heart, he is called a “mega-scientist” because he is a genius in 15 fields of knowledge at once. And 12-year-old Matt Savage, having absolute pitch, remembers the score of the symphony the first time and determines the brand of the car by engine noise. Almost a quarter of Microsoft programmers are people with autistic symptoms. Autistic people with intact mental abilities (about a third of them) have significantly higher than average intelligence, but the inability to communicate prevents them from expressing themselves.
* Barry Levinson’s Rain Man (1988) won four Oscars.
“You can reconnect with them”
Psychologies: Do you agree that autism can be associated with excessive brain activity?
Marina Bardyshevskaya: This hypothesis is consistent with many observations. The hypersensitivity of autistic children was also studied by Soviet specialists Viktor and Klara Lebedinsky. They, in particular, believed that autistic perception is inherently “negative”: an autistic person has a negative attitude towards any experience. Their brain is super-receptive, but the mental activity of the child is low. He, for example, can memorize a huge amount of information, but this does not develop him, he does not acquire individual experience.
A hypersensitive child will certainly grow up different from everyone else?
Much depends on the emotional state of the mother after childbirth. A mother who is prone to mood swings, experiencing conflicting feelings, can unwittingly provoke the development of painful symptoms. And if the mother is calm and completely absorbed in the child, she protects and protects him like a cocoon.
How do you know if your child is special?
It can be seen that the baby is hyperexcitable and suffers: he cannot sleep, then he chokes, then he does not take the breast and starves. Or, on the contrary, the baby is too submissive: for hours it is focused on one sensation, it does not ask for hands, it can remain alone for a long time. Later, these children are not comfortable with touching, they do not understand games like “okay”, they do not use or perceive pointing gestures, which is why it is so difficult to get their attention.
What can be done to help them?
In order for a child to be able to live among people, you need to convince him that the living is better than the inanimate. This is very difficult: autistic people prefer everything unchanged and are afraid of other people simply because faces express different emotions, change. Therefore, it is easier for them to draw a person from the back, and their mother’s portrait sometimes attracts them more than the mother herself. They like to do the same thing over and over, like retelling The Simpsons endlessly before being asked to come up with a new series with the same characters. They love to communicate with the computer, trust it and with its help they master much of what we understand intuitively. Of course, medicines, diet are necessary, various types of psychotherapy help, for example, holding therapy, when the mother, holding the child in her arms for a long time, gradually restores her bodily and emotional connection with him. To reach out to an autistic child, you need to act very carefully, delicately. This is a long but necessary work.
Marina Bardyshevskaya – Associate Professor, Department of Neuro- and Pathopsychology, Faculty of Psychology, Lomonosov Moscow State University. M. V. Lomonosov, author of the book “Diagnostics of the mental development of a child”, (Acropolis, 2008)
Have a question?
- Children’s Mental Health Center, tel. (495) 954 3653, 952 4920, www.neuro.net.ru/org/dpb6.html
- Children’s Rehabilitation Center “Our Sunny World”, tel. (495) 486 4219, www.ecosystem.ru
- Foundation for Assistance to Children with Developmental Disabilities “Fathers and Sons” (St. Petersburg), vol. (812) 571 7406 www.otsyideti.org.ru