Dear Miss Landau

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They Saved Einstein's Brain!

More precisely, they lost it. It finally turned up in Wichita, Kansas, in the hands of the secretive pathologist who’d originally sawed it out of Albert Einstein’s skull and still sought to find the secret of his genius within its cerebral structure.

But there’s no definitive answer. For one thing, hundreds of Mensa-level brains would have to be examined to find if they all had a “sign of omega” (a knob on the brain’s right motor strip often more developed in musicians) or another similar physical correlation. It would also be extremely difficult to work out whether Einstein was born with a big brain or, due to the stimuli he gave his grey matter during his lifetime, developed it.

Some say Einstein might have been autistic but we’ll never know for sure. However, while I know I don’t have his brainpower (one source estimates Albert’s IQ at about 160 but when I was diagnosed with Aspergers my full scale IQ came in at 120), my verbal IQ (essentially my writing ability and spoken articulacy) was “very superior” but my performance IQ (the speed at which I processed information) was “significantly worse than all other indexes” and represented “a clear and specific deficit in [my] ability to quickly and efficiently process visual information.” My processing speed, in fact, was “better than only 3% of the population.”

In other words – input feeble, output fandabidozi; and as my brain could scarcely function any faster than a low-grade moron’s, you might assume I would have needed a structured existence, rigid routines and outside support just to cope with everyday life.

But despite undiagnosed Aspergers and with said deficit, I took that brain independently across Australia for a year in 1988-1989, dealt with major change, coped with unstructured experiences and socialized to survive. Later, I worked in the real world for a living, ran my own flat, wrote a book and filed all these blogs.

Was I born with a “big brain” or did I develop it via stimuli?

Well, as I later explained in Dear Miss Landau:

“Every brain has its hardware and its software. The software holds the higher intellectual capacity for flexibility and creativity. The hardware is the uglier, no-nonsense part of the machine which comes into play when the higher functions, either from fatigue, a hammer blow to the head, or both, no longer function.

Skills deep as bone. Burnt into me in Australia, the back-up capability to make the right decision when I couldn’t think straight.”

And as I’d worked out, and also said in Dear Miss Landau:

“According to the article How To Be A Genius in the New Scientist of September 16 2006, although some people are indeed born with greater genetic gifts than others ‘some critical things line up so that a person of good intelligence can put in the sustained, focused effort it takes to achieve extraordinary mastery.’ Just having great talent or intelligence on its own was not enough, it seemed. That talent had to be built, honed and painstakingly sculpted. There also seemed to be a ten-year rule: ‘it seems you have to put in at least a decade of focused work to master something and bring greatness within reach.’

What happened to the brain as a result of this work?

The article seemed to have the answer:

‘Eric Kandel of Columbia University in New York, who won a Nobel prize in 2000 for discovering much of the neural basis of memory and learning, has shown that both the number and strength of the nerve connections associated with a memory or skill increase in proportion to how often and how emphatically the lesson is repeated. So focused study and practice literally build the neural networks of expertise.’

Although my brain was autistic I’d put in, not ten, but fifteen years of work to bring the neural networks of my verbal IQ up to par. Despite the deficiencies in my performance IQ, my ‘Asperger focus’ had actually given me an advantage, helping me to concentrate on developing a particular skill more easily than a multi-tasking neuro-typical might.

I imagined the way those neural networks must actually have grown and thickened, helping the sparks of inspiration flow more easily. Whereas a talented but unpractised writer might only have the equivalent of low voltage domestic wiring in his brain, I now had heavy duty commercial cabling.”

That is what seems to have happened to me. Studies of Einstein’s brain, however, discovered it had more glial cells than normal, that the neurons in his prefrontal cortex were more tightly packed than usual (possibly allowing faster information-processing), that his inferior parietal lobule (in charge of spatial cognition and mathematical thought) was wider and better integrated than most, that his mid-frontal lobe (responsible for working memory and planning) had an extra ridge, that he did indeed possess a “sign of omega” and also owned a thicker-than-average corpus callosum, allowing better co-operation between brain hemispheres.

But did he come out of the womb with his superbrain fully formed, or did a lifetime’s scientific research improve his cerebral hardware, add heavy duty cabling to his neural net and thicken his callosum?

The answer probably lies partly with nature and partly with nurture, but since Einstein died in 1955 and promptly had his brain removed, we can’t ask him. As I’m alive, as I’ve been formally diagnosed and as no one has yet removed my brain (although, having met me, many would like to try) I can attempt inexpertly to explain that the crucible of my experience in Australia plus decades of writing practice does indeed seem to have upgraded my neural net (I can put together the blog you’re reading right now much more easily than I could have done twenty years ago), added back-up hardware and partly compensated for my slow and moronic performance IQ.

But a man’s a man for a’ that, and there’s no single, simple way to find his measure.

(First published in the Huffington Post U.K. by James Christie)

9 to 5 or 14/27?

As I once wrote in Dear Miss Landau, “have you ever met one of those people who always end up standing in the kitchen at parties? The geeky weirdo with a patched and scruffy beard, whose glasses date from 1973, who … will fix you with an unnervingly intense stare, deliver a lecture about the homoerotic subtext in Top Gun and, before he vanishes into the night, mutter something about writing The Great Scottish Novel.”

As you can imagine, minus the 1973-era glasses, I was that weirdo and I did actually spend about fifteen years locked up in my bedroom trying to write such a novel.

On the eve of the anniversary of the 7/7 bombing I was reminded of that focused, seemingly neurotic fact while attending the London launch of the autism charity Autistica’s latest project: research into other mental health disorders also experienced by those diagnosed with autism. The figures are sobering, but not surprising:

• 70% of Autists have at least one mental health condition

• 40% of Autists meet the criteria for two mental health conditions

As an Asperger, I can certainly confirm that most of us have problems with anxiety and depression. I’ve been there myself during 27 hard years trying to stay in work. Remaining sane and safely in employment was a constant struggle (only 15% of people with autism hold down jobs) and I’m not surprised that, according to Professor Martin Knapp of the London School of Economics “autism remains one of the UK’s most expensive medical conditions, costing over £32 billion each year.” It’s costly in human and financial terms, deeply serious and an intractable problem we are only now beginning to grapple with.

Not the kind of thing to comment on by joking about geeky weirdos.

And yet, on that evening, I heard a tale of a fellow Autist who at the age of 14 found he could no longer face the world and retreated to his bedroom. Now 27, he is still there, living a digital ‘life’ via the internet, raiding the family fridge and relating only to his desktop. A night owl ‘working’ into the wee small hours in his own Fortress of Solitude.

But the ‘funny’ thing is this:

I sort of did the same thing.

Granted, I did not become a recluse; but I did spend thousands of hours manacled to my desktop, focused to an unhealthy degree (you might think) on trying to write the Great Scottish Novel, working into the wee small hours, raiding the fridge and occasionally being spotted skulking round an all-night Glasgow café called Insomnia.

Nuts or what?

Well, maybe not.

I can only comment with authority on my own condition and there is no question that other individuals on the spectrum will need professional help, but to even start towards helping those with mental health problems and/or properly utilizing the extraordinary abilities many people with autism possess, researchers may well need to throw away the neuro-typical (NT) rulebook.

I was naturally and downright happily able to catalogue books in solitude for years on end – the average NT would probably have gone off his rocker in three days flat…

Nor was my troglodyte existence working on The Great Novel unnatural for me, although when it all came crashing to an inglorious halt ca. 2008 I genuinely felt like all my efforts had indeed been wasted. But then the strangest thing happened: seven years later I mentioned to my publisher that I had this old manuscript at the back of the computer which, rather topically, dealt with Scottish history, politics and the 1997 referendum. “It doesn’t work,” I stressed, “but maybe it’s saleable.”

I didn’t expect to hear any more after I sent it to her, so you could have knocked me down with a feather when she said it was “too good to be forgotten” and with a bit of revising and tightening, could be published.

Fifteen years of working into the wee small hours in my own Fortress of Solitude had paid off!

So what more can I say: while the severity and scale of our mental health issues is not to be joked about, Autists are capable of contributing productively in their own unique ways. The problem is how to integrate night owls like me who do not follow the neuro-typical 9 to 5 routines into society, how to alleviate the mental health issues we often suffer and then how to utilize the unique abilities Autists are endowed with in order to staunch or even partly reverse the £32 billion costs being paid out each annum?

How to differentiate between the night owl really working on a classic in the attic and the recluse merely playing Gin Rummy?

The society into which we may wish to integrate ourselves is itself also heading, as I think Steinbeck said, into a future we can’t foresee. According to science presenter James Burke, there’s also the intriguing possibility (probability?) that with nanofabrication (which as he explains, “assembles molecules into stuff”) we might no longer need governments or factories.

Atypical night owls self-manacled to their desktops from the age of 14 to 27 may even be the prototypes of tomorrow’s productive workers, a far cry from the 9 to 5 generation of the 7/7 era...

(First published in the Huffington Post U.K. by James Christie)

Road Rage Rants and the Sound of Thunder...

Funny thing about Ronnie Pickering's road rage…

I did the same myself once.

I was at a roundabout near the bottom of Birmingham which verges decorously upon the green fields and garden centres of Worcestershire, watching traffic come and go, waiting for an opening.

Then I saw this Brummie driver behind me, gesticulating splenetically, fit to burst like a Goodyear tyre for my mortal sin: I’d hesitated more than two seconds before launching myself into that multi-tributaried, fast-streaming flow of traffic.

Terrible. What is the world coming to.

I’m usually slow to anger, but like some men in my age bracket (51-60) I’ve a growing exasperation with the slings and arrows of my daily fortunes which, in other times, I’d let slip and pass away.

In one smooth motion of clear and present anger, I let slip my lap-strap, came out of my seat, stood upon the road, and let him have it:

“I’ll take my time, thank you very much!”

I think he and I were about the same age. I might have hesitated if it had been a testosterone-fuelled bunch of yobs in a hot hatchback filling my rear view mirror, but there and then it was just two fizzing middle-aged men in a momentary face-off; one realizing he’d just woken the kraken, the other producing a sound of thunder which cut his codswallop off at source in a millisecond.

Unlike Ronnie's rant, there was nary a swear word spoken. It was all over very quickly and we departed the scene within seconds, driving with a certain studied calm.

No more than a couple of quinquagenarian crackpots making momentary fools of themselves, you might say.

But here’s the serious bit.

When I was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, I found out (among other things) that the speed at which I processed complex information was “significantly worse than all other Indexes” , that it represented “a clear and specific deficit in [my] ability to quickly and efficiently process visual information” and that “the rate of which new information is learned is better than only 3% of the population.”

In practice, this means I must (and I mean really must) give myself a little more time than the average neuro-typical (whose processing speed will be much greater than mine) to work out what all those cars coming at me are doing. If I rush it carelessly, I could careen into heavy traffic without knowing what I was doing, cause a major crash, kill others, die.

Yeah, it’s serious.

I’ve had a driving licence for thirty-four years, but once I was diagnosed with autism I revised my road manners to accommodate the deficits I now knew I had, to relearn my limitations and (to use a little gallows humour), not just to drive with due care and attention at all times, but above all to make sure I didn’t go round crashing into other cars. Shorn of the glamour of The Fast and the Furious, a car really is a lethal weapon, it can kill people. I’d like to think I’m responsible enough to know that.

So if you see a small blue Nissan Micra hesitating by a major road, give the guy that second’s grace. God knows, he or I may need it.

(First published in the Huffington Post U.K. by James Christie)

Don't You Dare Do Away With My DLA!

After a torrid few days which saw Iain Duncan Smith resign as Work and Pensions Minister partly over the change from Disability Living Allowance (DLA) to Personal Independence Payments (PIP), blow a hole in George Osborne’s budget before he turned out the lights and left, and the government then backtrack and say it wouldn't introduce new extra cuts to welfare; it’s fair to say there have been and will be more twists than a contortionist turned into a snake by the name of Ouroboros…

So I’ll keep it simple, and explain how I myself got DLA.

I was diagnosed with autism in 2002 but it wasn’t until 2008 that an autism charity suggested I apply for DLA and helped me fill out the form. My first application was rejected and I appealed, giving specific information relating to the nature of my disability, which as I said then and indeed say now, is “an incurable neurological disorder which causes me significant depression as I struggle with the frustrating and demoralising tasks an ever more complicated world requires of me.” I asked the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) to look again at their decision in January 2009, only to be rejected once more.

With the autism charity’s support, I took the DWP to an appeal tribunal held in July 2009. My appeal was allowed and I was awarded DLA from 2008 to 2011. Between July and October of 2011, I had to claim DLA again. This time it was awarded indefinitely.

It would be easy to moan about the inequities of a system which basically made me apply three times, but I was well aware I’d probably have to appeal as there are people who try to manipulate the system and, in general, a more protracted process does weed out the chancers.

However, after four years, in receipt of payments totalling no more than £21.80 a week (I deserve no more – I’m physically fine but mentally slow), formally diagnosed with an incurable neurological disorder ensuring that “my ability to literally make sense of the world on a daily basis is very limited and may well worsen as I age,” and just after celebrating my forty-seventh birthday, it seemed I could relax and breathe easy.

After all, autism is incurable and I’m only going to get older.

But only sixteen months later (February 2013), I was one of many who got letters telling them DLA was going out, PIP was coming in and we’d have to have face-to-face consultations.

Again.

The previous paragraphs have been tightly written and well-controlled, but now I think I’ll just let it all hang out.

I’m now over fifty. This lifelong incurable disorder won’t go away or improve, that’s why they call it lifelong and incurable!

D’oh, as Homer Simpson would say!

Due to the specific nature of my disability (crippled information-processing capabilities), I will never be able to work as fast as others. You can’t incentivise a Nissan Micra to perform like a Ferrari, Mr Smith, Mr Osborne and Mr Crabb; the engine capacity simply does not and never will exist!

I’ve sat before an appeals tribunal. I’ve delivered verbal and written evidence of my diagnosis. What riles and provokes me is the inability on the DWP’s part just to accept the answer and be done with it. I feel I’m being both kept hanging, and also poked and prodded like an experimental animal. Adults with autism dislike instability and uncertainty just as much as companies and organizations do. You’ve been given the facts, they will not change, get the message, stop bothering me.

And just in case you haven’t worked this out, there aren’t many jobs going for over-fifties anyway!

Frankly, if I get hauled in front of a PIP assessor, my first impulse will be to be as obstreperous as possible. I even have to wonder whether there’s a cynical desire afoot just to keep on questioning people like me until we throw in the towel in exasperation and/or die or something.

Well, is there?

Enough is enough. It would have been harder but cleaner simply to have been refused in the first place, but now that I and others like me have fulfilled the criteria you really should just let us be. I accept that tax receipts are not a bottomless pool, that the UK population is aging and the government has both debt and deficit; but my disability and employability will not change much now. In the future you, the government, will have to look at ways of letting people like me work you can’t currently even imagine (there is talk of a universal basic income, which sounds a bit like Universal Credit to me); and you’ll have to come to terms with facts of life which will not change: at fifty-one (happy birthday to me!), I will only get older and slower, and with autism I will probably never again be up to a stressful full-time job.

In the end, and as the psychologist who first diagnosed me said:

“Know your limitations.”

I do know mine. I’ve explained them clearly to you. It’s time you accept what I’ve said and be done with it; and let me contribute as well as I’m able within a stable and supportive framework.

(First published in the Huffington Post U.K. by James Christie)