Recent Developments In Autism Research by Manuel F. Casanova
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Interesting collection of essays detailing the state of austism research. This book was published in 2005. I’m not a scientist or a researcher, but I did notice a few interesting things. Because austism is defined by phenomenon, it is difficult to define biologically, as there are many complex effects (through nuture or nature) that create the conditions for austist’s inability to process information like neurotypicals. This book goes a long way in attempting to figure out what the etiology is… I won’t repeat much of the biology talk, but I did find some interesting correlations in how austism is defined and how the various essays speculate on particular abnormalities in neuron or minicolumn or cerebral structures behave (as scanned in EEG or various other ways). Basically because austism is defined through in ability to extend particular behavior into generalities of context, what is known as weak coherency (or the maintenance of social context) researches speculate that weak neurological processes or abnormally formed structures contribute to a lack of larger functioning within the brain. This is to say that while parts of the brain can work well separately, in many austists, these same parts can’t work together as well as a neurotypical’s can.
Now, I have read some speculative literature however, that argues that austists have a more general functioning and it is the neurotypicals reliance on certain hardwired protocols that limit their ability to generalize contexts, but once one takes out a basis for how to measure deviance, one loses the ability to speak of coherency whatsoever. Being social creatures, we need to form group coherency, and while different social groups form coherency differently, the inability to form a strong coherency whatsoever between individuals does make for problems in social behavior. This is defined as austism.
What makes austism studies so interesting is that its abnormalities in functioning reveal to us outlier examples of how our own mind/brains work. What is missing in this austism research book, I thought, was further examples of how the diagnosises defined and cohered what austism is. Certainly the definition has changed over time, and such definitions would impact the study. After all, all this scientific research is an attempt to find a way to determine how it some humans cannot cohere neurotypical social and cognitive extensions… it would be interesting, although perhaps beyond this work to discuss what normal actually is.
Anyway, an interesting read as scientists and researches attempt to find patterns in one area (social behavior and discourse coherency) and correlate it to patterns in another (in this case, brain functioning) or genotypical expression.
