Noise canceling headphones are great at cutting out low frequency sounds like the hum of a jet engine but can be less effective at the higher frequencies. Because of this, if higher frequency sounds bother you, you may have better luck using cheap ear plugs and ear muffs that you can find on Amazon. But without active noise cancellation, cutting out bass sounds will be tough so if you’re sensitive to bass, you may need to shell out some money for headphones with active noise cancellation.

1 – Sony WH-1000XM2 $350
These do an incredible job of cutting out all frequencies. While they’re close to Bose in noise cancellation, I think they actually do a better job at higher frequencies and also have a lot more features, like disabling noise cancellation of voice so you can talk to people and still block out bass.

2 – Bose Quiet Comfort 35 / 20 $250 – $330  (QC25 – $130+)
Bose is the king of noise canceling headphones, but also the priciest. They were the first to popularize noise cancelling headphones and also create professional sets for pilots. Bose also make in-ear headphones that cancel noise even better than over the ear headphones, but they may be more or less comfortable depending on your preferences. Check out the QuietComfort 20. The wired version of Bose’s over the ear headphones (QC25) are still available and sometime can be found for as low as 130 dollars on Amazon, which is a steal, considering their noise canceling is just as good as the bluetooth headphones that cost at least a hundred more. These are what I use and they’re life changing.

3 – Sennheiser PXC 550 – $300
I have owned a few pairs of Sennheiser over the years and they’re my favorite headphones. I believe they sound better than both Bose and Sony in terms of audio reproduction. Sennheiser also make noise canceling headphones that cost less than this model, but they aren’t as good.

4 – Cheap ear muffs – $15
In terms of getting rid of sound, ear muffs provide the most protection. You’ll see airport workers on the runway wearing these for that reason. You can put earbuds under them and still listen to music. They can be uncomfortable if you’re wearing glasses with thick legs though and they can hurt your head because they press very firmly against the side of your head. Because of this, they can become irritating after being worn for a while.

5 – Ear plugs – a few cents
Ear plugs are good for getting outside noise levels to go down, but they don’t do as good a job of blocking out bass. You also can’t really listen to music unless you put over the ear headphones on and that doesn’t sound so good because the plugs block out some frequencies more than others.

The post 5 Noise Cancelling Headphones for Autism appeared first on Wrong Planet.

You may wonder, as I did, why scientists need actual brain tissue. Shouldn’t tools such as fMRIs and EEGs be sufficient for most research? The answer to this question is no; Scientists are unable to study the full structure of a brain without having the actual physical brain tissue. Also, the only way to see how gene expression occurs in different parts of the brain is to study the brain tissue itself.

These samples can help scientists understand the genetic functioning of brain cells, epigenetics, gene expression, and changes specific to neurons. The scientists also hope to gain a greater understanding of how our unique brain structures relate to the special skills we possess as autistics.

Now, while donating your brain to science may seem like a bizarre thing to do, it’s actually becoming common place for people with unique brains. For instance, more and more professional athletes have been pledging to donate their brains over the last few years for concussion research. And I personally believe that those of us on the autism spectrum have much more fascinating brains than the average pro baller.

Now you’re probably wondering what supporting this program entails. It’s actually pretty simple. All you need to do is register on the It Takes Brains Page. You can sign up as an individual with autism or even as a family member! You can also change your mind at any time if you decide that you no longer want your brain involved.

But the best part is you can brag to all your friends that your brain is going to be flash-frozen in Carbonite like Han Solo in Star Wars (Autism Brain Net doesn’t use actual carbonite in this process, unfortunately, but the technology is still super cool and futuristic).

Please follow my lead and make a pledge!

-Alex

The post It Takes Brains! – Autism Brain Net appeared first on Wrong Planet.

By John Elder Robison

Yesterday a new hashtag campaign appeared in my Twitter feed – #MSSNG. It seemed to refer to autism, and a new research project. I had an immediate reaction, based on my interpretation of the letters in the context of the autism discussion – I thought, Missing?  Certainly not.  We may be gifted or we may be disabled but we are certainly here.  And we are complete humans.   I posted that right away, and it launched a flurry of discussion.

I wondered what the campaign was about, so I went looking. It’s an initiative by Autism Speaks to sequence the genomes of 10,000 individuals touched by autism.  In my opinion, that is a worthwhile thing to do.  I’ve written before about the value of genetic research.  But it is far from my #1 priority for the autism community. More on the why of that later.

Their choice of a name turned mssng from an announcement of a science initiative to a public relations debacle.  I think it’s seriously misguided on several fronts.

First – the community side

Autistic people are not missing.  We have always been here, and we always will. Yet I and many other autistics live with the knowledge that we occupy a world where autism is widely perceived as a disease or defect. I can’t speak for other autistics, but I don’t much care to be seen as diseased or defective. Nor do I like being seen as “missing pieces,” which the name mssng implied.

To say that is not to deny the very real ways autism disables us.  Rather, it’s a simple statement of fact.  Autism is a neurological difference, not a sickness.  As such, it’s here for a reason. Who are we, to second-guess that?  Remediate its disability – sure!  Wipe it from the world – that’s crazy talk, and societal suicide!

I’ll bet every autistic kid in America knows how it feels to be told we were missing some of our marbles growing up, and reminding us of that in the context of a research initiative is at best insensitive and at worst seriously offensive.

It’s not a name I’d have chosen.  I don’t know who did choose it but I’d bet they were not autistic.

An organization run by autistic people would not have made this mistake.  An organization run by non-autistics, autism parents, and autism grandparents DID make this mistake. Or perhaps to them, it’s not a mistake.  It’s just “Some autism parents speaking.”  But that is not what their organization’s name implies.

If “Autism truly Speaks” it by definition does so through autistics. That’s the only way it could speak.

“Autism Observed” is what parents and non-autistics do, and the observers get it wrong a troubling percentage of the time, in the opinion of many who live autism in the first person.

Those are very different things, and we should get our terminology right.

Second – the science side. 

The idea of researching autism at its most basic makes sense.  But genetic research is fraught with ethical challenges.  However, that is not its biggest problem here and now

The biggest problem here and now is very simple:  Genetic research is an extremely long-term game. The timeline to start a study like this, make a discovery, translate that to a possible treatment, and then get that treatment tested and FDA approved is 10 years at a minimum, and more likely 20 years.

So this effort won’t help any of the autistic children today.  Benefits may flow from the research one day, but the beneficiaries will be tomorrow’s children. Today’s children will be long grown up, for better of for worse.

What we need right now are therapies to help us be the best we can be, as we actually are.  We need tools to help us overcome physical limitations.  We need solutions for the medical problems that plague many people on the autism spectrum.  Those are things autistic people – child and adult alike – want and need right now.  The range of therapies, tools, treatments, and services needed is long and varied – and largely attainable, given the budget and the focus.

We also want societal change and acceptance.  We want sensory friendly workplaces.  We want jobs shaped to our different abilities.  We want help navigating the education and employment mazes.  We want to be productive members of society.  Those too are things we want and need right now.  They too are attainable given the resolve, budget, and legislation to back it up.

If I were running an autistic-centered autism advocacy organization, I’d be making those things my #1 and #2 priorities.  I wouldn’t be talking genetics until I’d made some really solid progress on my main objectives.  Once I showed the community what I was doing for them today, I’d talk a little about the long term game.

And most of all, I’d be looking around me, at autistic people leading the organization.

I’m a big believer in science, and I absolutely understand that genetics may one day solve the riddle of why some people have spontaneous genetic mutations that lead to severe intellectual disability.  It’s led to some important discoveries and it will surely be key to more. But how many individuals who live with intellectual disability today will be helped by that?  How many autistic job seekers will get a job, thanks to that work?  How many autistic kids who wander dangerously will suddenly become safe?  How many autistics that suffer from anxiety or gastric distress will suddenly relax in comfort? Those are a few of the very real issues autistic people are actually thinking about now, and genetics isn’t one of the answers on tomorrow’s table.

Genetics is important.  But it is not job #1 for this community. Once again, with this effort, we are spending money in the wrong places.  We should not be trying to “solve the autism riddle.”  We should not be “looking for missing pieces of the autism puzzle.”  We should be Helping Autistic People – Right Now.

That is my opinion, and my hope and wish for this holiday season.

Discuss this issue on the forums!

John Elder Robison is an autistic adult and advocate for people with neurological differences.  He’s the author of Look Me in the Eye, Be Different, Raising Cubby, and the forthcoming Switched On. He serves on the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee of the US Dept of Health and Human Services and many other autism-related boards. He’s co-founder of the TCS Auto Program (A school for teens with developmental challenges) and he’s the Neurodiversity Scholar in Residence at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.  The opinions expressed here are his own.  There is no warranty expressed or implied.  While reading this essay may give you food for thought, actually printing and eating it may make you sick.

The post What’s MSSNG in #Autism? – By John Elder Robison appeared first on Wrong Planet.

What worked for them was Candy. Not the sweet stuff — a dog … named Candy. She’s a certified assistance dog whose job basically is to be with Parker; to stick right by his side, 24/7.’

“She helps me, she calms me down, she lets me know she’s there when I’m about to have a meltdown,” Parker says.

Wendy and Mark got the dog about a year ago, and Parker hasn’t had an outburst since.

But that’s just half the story. Kids with autism have a lot of other issues, too — and for those, there’s this: dog agility. Parker says it was “really, extremely tough” to learn at first.

Although it’s generally the domain of middle-aged women, Parker’s mom says the sport is also “great” autism therapy.

“You’re doing speech therapy, you’ve got to get commands out … while you’re running … and you’ve got to keep your body in control when you don’t have good motor movement,” says Wendy.

Part of dog agility is learning how to handle disappointment — especially with this dog. She had yet to actually finish a course. But Parker didn’t seem to mind.

“Anybody who has autism, anybody in the world would just benefit from this,” Parker says. “She’s just like a healing dog.”

Healing for Parker. The idea is still new and unproven, but for one boy, on one day, there was never any doubt his dog had some kind of magic.

During her last race, something got into Candy. The dog that had never finished the course before did every “through” and made every “over.” It was an absolutely flawless performance.

Candy not only finished for the first time — she actually finished first, earning a kiss from Parker. That’s the kind of autistic outburst he and his family can live with.

The post Service dogs for those with Asperger’s Syndrome appeared first on Wrong Planet.

–ip_outcast

Read on for GroovyDruid’s response!
Dear Aspie:
“I only recently stumbled on this website and I’ve found it really interesting. I’m 24 years old, and I was wondering what steps I would take if I thought I had Asperger’s. Also, if I did have it and I was diagnosed, would it even be beneficial to know?”

–ip_outcast

[NOTE: ip_outcast lives in the London-Surrey area, and would be grateful to any WrongPlanet members who would PM him information on recommended diagnosis resources in the area. Thanks!]

Most aspies who seek diagnosis as adults struggle with these questions: how do I get diagnosed, and is it worthwhile or even wise?

It is hard to generalize, but I will put it this way: I’ve never heard anyone regret getting a diagnosis. Many aspies find that a diagnosis helps them build agreement with people, to explain their peculiarities in a way the public can comprehend. Adults who get a diagnosis often describe an unexpected relief after a diagnosis. A diagnosis gives closure to search that, for many, has been ongoing ever since they could remember. I was diagnosed as an adult, and I found it helped me a great deal. I’m glad I got an official diagnosis.

In addition to the personal closure, a diagnosis has a more serious side to it: it gives you legal status as socially and cognitively disabled. Some aspies don’t feel they need this status. Others do. For example, many aspies would find university untenable without their special dispensations to have more time on tests, receive help with note-taking, and complete alternative projects in place of ones they find impossibly difficult. Without an official diagnosis, you might as well whistle in the wind as ask the university for these accommodations. Unless you are certified, they couldn’t care less.

The same goes for the workplace. Some aspies need no accommodation and don’t even tell anyone they have AS, while others find that they can only work in certain aspects of a business, usually away from frequent personal interaction. With a diagnosis, you have far more leverage to negotiate accommodations in the workplace. If you inform your employer that you have a disability and ask for accommodation, and the employer fires you or refuses to accommodate your request, you have grounds for a damaging and embarrassing lawsuit. Without an official diagnosis, the employer simply says that the supposedly-AS employee wasn’t helpful with customers, and that’s that. Getting a diagnosis after being fired will work, but it packs much less of a punch, as you can probably imagine.

Medical doctors, psychologists, and psychiatrists render diagnoses of AS in the United States. The patient goes in for an evaluation—usually accompanied by a parent to fill in childhood history—and afterwards receives a written report containing the offered diagnosis. The interview usually takes from two to four hours. The evaluating professional covers childhood and adult history, family and friendships, social and personal habits, subjective feelings, and often gives an abbreviated or full IQ test.

I do not know equivalent procedure in the UK, where you reside, but I suspect it’s the same, or nearly so. Wherever you are, though, I can offer you one golden piece of advice: seek a diagnosis from a health profession who deals regularly with patients on the autism spectrum. First, a psychologist or doctor who deals with aspies regularly will know how to make you feel comfortable, and that comfort makes a big difference when you are in the vulnerable position of having your entire life evaluated and possibly labeled. More important, though, I have heard one horror story after another of aspies who went into their local head shrinker—or two, or three—and received several wrong diagnoses before finally going to someone who knew what they were doing. This can be frustrating and traumatic, since a possible diagnosis of autism is hard in itself. But when an ignorant mental health professional follows up with a blithe diagnosis of this-is-all-in-your-head-itis and mild social anxiety, it can knock you flat. Don’t do that to yourself. Go to a pro.

I hope that some of our members here on WrongPlanet can point you toward a good professional in your area. In the absence of that, you might contact the Nation Autistic Society, a UK-based group, and ask for a referral: http://www.autism.org.uk/

Best of luck, whichever way you decide to go!

Send your questions to “Dear Aspie”! Just PM your question to GroovyDruid or send an e-mail to dearaspie@wrongplanet.net. Questions of a personal nature may be submitted anonymously, though printing a user name is preferred. “Dear Aspie” reserves the privilege of editing for spelling and clarity. Thanks for your submissions!

The post Dear Aspie: Should I Get a Diagnosis? appeared first on Wrong Planet.

Duke University student John Finan’s “mood phone” placed first among five hundred submissions. The phone, designed to interpret the mood of the person on the other end of the line, is meant to help individuals with Asperger’s syndrome who may have difficulty recognizing emotional and social cues in the speech of others.
“The ability to dream is one of youth’s greatest assets. MOTOFWRD allows the next generation of scientists, inventors and designers to show us their best,” said Motorola chief technology officer Padmasree Warrior.

“Most people don’t think of a gadget as a solution to Aspergers. But a truly new tool that makes people freer to move and communicate can change behavior, and that is how a revolution begins,” Finan said.

For his innovation, Finan was awarded $10,000, a Bluetooth enabled car, a suite of Motorola products and an apprenticeship with Motorola’s chief technology office.

The post Asperger’s Phone wins Motorola design contest appeared first on Wrong Planet.

The following article is the second in a series of three, excerpted from the book “Born on the Wrong Planet, Second Edition” By Erika Hammerschmidt. ISBN 09748570-6-8.

When she was very young, Erika Hammerschmidt was diagnosed with with Asperger’s ADD, ADHD, Tourette’s and OCD. Ms. Hammerschmidt speaks three languages, is a graduate of Augsburg College in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and has studied all over the world. This and all other excerpts are copyright (c) 2005 by Tyborne Hill Publishers LLC, Palo Alto, California. The entire book is available in paper from Tyborne Hill www.tybornehill.com, at Amazon.com, or and Barnes and Noble.com. Or at any bookstore. This article is used by permission. Reprint permission is available from www.tybornehill.com.

Unmedicated

I take three pills in the morning and two in the evening. Of the morning pills, one is to keep me awake and help me pay attention. One is to stop panic attacks, one is to keep me from being hyperactive and impulsive, and twitching and fidgeting with Tourette’s tics.

One of the evening pills is a second dose of the pill for tics and impulses, the other is to help me sleep. Without the sleeping pill I stay awake until noon the next day. I’ve never learned to put myself to sleep by imagining dull, repetitive things like sheep jumping over a fence, because for me they aren’t dull and repetitive. When I picture something happening in my head, it happens strangely, especially when I’m tired. The sheep are all different colors, or they wear swimsuits and sunglasses. They don’t clear the fence; they hit their heads on it, or scrape their bellies and bleed.

If my friends and family were asked what my medicines were for, they would probably think first of my attacks of impulsive behavior. That’s the first thing that starts to show when I am late to medicate myself. When I start giggling crazily and saying irrelevant, ludicrous things, my loved ones turn to me and say, “Erika, have you had your meds?”

Not long ago at a family gathering, I waited a few hours to take my pills, afraid that if I took them at the usual time I would fall asleep before it was time to go home. The result was insanity.

I became not just silly, but crude. I pinched people on the behinds. I made loud speculations about the sex lives of Star Trek characters.

“On my next trip,” I shouted, “I want to go to Saginaw Bay! Because if the Great Lakes are a picture of a wolf, and Lake Superior is his head, and Lake Michigan is his paw, and Lake Huron is his body, do you know what part of him Saginaw Bay is?”

My family, accustomed to such things, ignored me until I tired myself out, went into a corner by myself, read a book, and calmed down.

That’s a fairly typical episode, although they are not always in such bad taste. Sometimes I just get mildly silly, within the range that friends can laugh at pleasantly.

There have also been worse episodes. One semester I took an apple from a student and threw it at the wall; picked up a chair and threatened another student with it; wrapped myself around a third student and started mauling his neck in front of the entire class and the professor; and barricaded myself in the computer room, shouting to people who asked if I needed anything, “Send Kevin in here with a leather bodice and a whip! I require it to survive!”

Finally the madness built so high it broke over the rocks of my own shock and outrage, and I ran home before I could do anything more. In the days afterwards, I was miserably ashamed and depressed, and completely avoided contact with other people.

Such severe outbursts happen less often now than they used to. Of my memories of grade school, over half are memories of being punished for going crazy. Back then I made fewer obscene comments, but I chased and kissed other children all the time, not caring what gender they were or if I even liked them. I mooned people. Once I went through the hallways seizing male students by the arm at random and saying, “Darling, where shall we go on our honeymoon?” The most common answer was “What the f-k?” I wrote their responses in a notebook, and told people I was doing a scientific study.

People are more understanding now than they were when I was a kid. Teachers ask me what the problem is and how they can help, rather than punishing me. Friends are uncomfortable during my insanity, but later when I say I’m sorry, they accept my apology and seem more concerned than offended. Apparently adults can get away with more than children can.

During the attacks of hyperactivity, I crave attention and laughter from other people, but if they do laugh, I get more hyperactive. My closest friends know that I calm down faster if I’m ignored. It also helps to go somewhere alone for a while and do something solitary like reading. Of course, the first thing to do is to take my pills.

Panic attacks usually start with a legitimate inconvenience. For example, something goes wrong with my computer, or the school bureaucracy is uncooperative with my attempts to pay tuition bills or sign up for a dorm.

However, it’s not always something that would get me truly upset at a good time. Once I had a panic attack when I couldn’t get a menu on my computer to be in the part of the screen where I wanted it. Sometimes small things trigger panic attacks, and sometimes they don’t. I don’t know what makes the difference, but pills have a big part in it.

When a panic attack starts my muscles tense up and my breathing becomes fast and tight. Those are typical symptoms of anxiety, but for me, they are a warning sign; I know that soon things will get worse. My breathing rate becomes faster, and it can accelerate so much that it’s hard to stop. I start to feel a tingling around the corners of my face, and people tell me that I’ll faint if I don’t calm down. But if I try to breathe more slowly, I feel that I’m not getting enough air and the panic builds higher.

I start crying uncontrollably. Despair sets in. I feel that everything’s going wrong, that nothing will ever work out, that the worst-case scenario will undoubtedly come to pass. Every time someone expresses a hope that something good may happen, or suggests how things might be made better, I come up with some reason why that couldn’t possibly work.

I become unreasonably angry, snapping at people who offer help. Then I swing abruptly into remorse, apologize, curse myself, and minutes later begin snapping again.

Even though I know that my panic is hurtful to others, I crave company, becoming still more depressed when people leave me. Then, once alone, silently I curse those people for not caring about me, not wanting to be with me.

I become sensory-defensive. Loud noises, bright lights, and strong smells raise my panic to unbearable levels. Although I don’t want to be alone, I can’t stand being touched, or even having other people too close to me. It feels like an invasion, like an attack. Sometimes my skin becomes so sensitive that physical contact is actually painful.

The feeling isn’t confined to people. There are times when I am so sensitive that even wearing clothing hurts, and there are times when I need my personal space so much that I can’t endure being in a small or cluttered room.

There’s no clear pattern to what will stop a panic attack. Sometimes, when the initial problem is resolved, the panic begins to wind down slowly. Sometimes it disappears unexpectedly, for no apparent reason. Sometimes I cry myself to sleep and wake up calmer.

As with the impulsive outbursts, though, there’s less chance of a panic attack beginning in the first place if I have taken my pills on time. If I haven’t, and one does start, the first remedy is to take them as soon as possible.

The tics involved with Tourette’s Syndrome are different for each person who has it. Some hit or throw things uncontrollably; some spit or grind their teeth or lick their lips; some yell out words, or repeat what they or other people have said.

I’ve had several different tics, usually not severe ones but enough to make life difficult. As a young child, I had one noticeable vocal tic. It was palilalia: repeating the beginnings of words and sentences several times before finishing them.

My motor tics were many and varied. I shifted my feet back and forth, over and over again, in a repeated pattern; I rubbed my hand briefly and repetitively at my head or my face or my arm; I sucked my thumb much longer than most children.

Now, as a young adult, I have milder tics. There is a distinctly “Touretty” pattern to the way I adjust my glasses and my hair. Sometimes I put the side of my finger to my nostrils and exhale sharply, or raise my upper lip until it rests almost against my nose and breathe on it.

Right now, lying on my stomach on my bed as I write, I am pushing my foot against the top of the footboard in such a way as to force it in between my toes. I have been doing this over and over again without thinking. As with any tic, I could control it for a while if I tried, but as soon as I stopped consciously thinking about controlling it, it would begin again.

A problematic urge is my habit of picking at my skin. I’m not sure if it’s a tic or part of my obsessive-compulsive disorder. It started with my discovery of pimples in adolescence. I have never been able to leave them alone, and now I don’t even wait for them to become visible. I go over my skin for a quarter-hour or more, usually the skin of my face or chest, squeezing at every tiny irregularity in case there might be a bit of pus or oil in it.

I pick those spots until they become scabs, I pick the scabs until they become scars, and then I open up the scars and start over again. I go through phases: sometimes my chest and my face get a chance to heal, sometimes I spend weeks looking as if I had chicken pox.

The tic that causes me the most problems lately is holding my breath. The urge is similar to the urge to yawn, and indeed the action is very much like a yawn: I lean back, stretch, and take a fast, deep breath. But I hold that breath much longer than the one taken in a regular yawn. So long, in fact, that I begin to lose consciousness.

It seldom gets to the point that I fall down. Usually I just become less aware of my surroundings until I have been breathing again for a while. People watching me usually don’t notice anything. Either I go very still, or start shifting slightly as though uncomfortable. My other tics become more severe during these fainting spells, and I may push at my glasses or my hair, or fidget with my feet more rapidly and energetically than usual.

The only thing sure to catch observers’ attention is the short, hard exhalation when I let out the breath. However, if people happen to ask me something before I fully come back to consciousness, they will certainly notice that I don’t reply, or I’ll murmur incoherently or answer inappropriately.

At a party, I was talking with my young cousins, and my cousin Peter said, “The best way to do a maze is to start at the end.”

For most mazes, this is true. I have done them that way many times, and I’ve occasionally tried the challenge of designing a maze that was as hard to go through backwards as forwards.

However, when I heard Peter’s comment, I was just coming out of a fainting spell, and somehow the phrase “start at the end” sounded like complete nonsense to me. I burst out laughing, thinking that he had said something ridiculous.

Another time, while having a fainting spell in biology class, I heard the professor end a sentence: “… it’s a useful ability for a mammal to have.”

I blurted out, “Why? Does it help make milk or something?”

The rest of the class laughed, and it wasn’t until I heard more of the discussion that I realized he had been talking about the ability to control bowel movements.

During these attacks, I can have any number of interesting sensations. My skin tingles and my vision is affected. Sometimes it just gets cloudy, and sometimes it goes black entirely. Sometimes my vision remains but I lose the ability to attach meaning to what I see, perceiving only colors and shapes.

Occasionally I have distinct hallucinations. Sometimes they are of things I have seen or thought about recently, like beads when I have been making bead jewelry, or flowers when I have been gardening. Sometimes they’re completely unexpected things, like a neon-colored, fuzzy cartoon bird, or a gray-green face covered with tentacles. Sometimes they’re just geometric patterns, complicated and multicolored.

One or more of my senses–hearing or smell, for example–may become less sensitive, or disappear for the interim. Or one or another of my senses might become more sensitive, so that I notice the rushing of water in a pipe in the wall, or the quiet ticking of a clock across the room, or the smell of my own sweat, none of which I would notice in full consciousness.

A limb might go limp and heavy for awhile. Sometimes one entire side of my body is affected, and I know for a moment what it might be like to be paralyzed on the right or the left. I might get an erroneous idea of what position my body is in; I may think that I’m sitting when I’m lying down, or that my hand is in my lap when it’s on my desk. Sometimes these thoughts even apply to my clothes. I believe for a moment that I’m wearing socks when I’m not, or that my shirt is on backwards when it’s on forwards.

All sorts of strange thoughts might come to me, not always related to my body. Sometimes I have déja vu. Sometimes I make a strange connection between an aspect of my fainting spell and a topic that has been on my mind. For example, I notice that I am breathing in a pattern of three short breaths at a time, and connect that to the fact that I am taking three classes each day that semester.

Often a nonspecific scenario comes into my head that has no connection to my own life. Someone wants something and cannot get it. Or, There are two ways to do something, and one of them is better than the other.

Sometimes, when I am having a panic attack, it ends during a fainting spell, or one that has ended begins again. Sometimes, I have inspirations.

Obviously, with so much going on in my mind, my fainting spells distract me from things that need my attention. They are most common when I am sitting still and not physically participating in anything, and so they frequently interrupt when I try to listen in class. On a bad day I miss 30 seconds of the lecture every two or three minutes. I don’t know how I continue to get good grades.

There was a phase some years ago when the spells frequently involved convulsions and loss of balance. My body would start jerking uncontrollably and I’d fall to the floor or ground. Sometimes I’d hit myself on things, getting painful bruises. Neurologists and cardiologists studied those fainting spells and found no explanation or treatment. Luckily, the phase ended by itself.

At the moment, the most troublesome part of fainting spells is the increased tic activity during them. Not only do I touch my hair and twitch my feet, I move air around in my mouth and respiratory passages in such a way that it goes up my salivary ducts and sinuses, causing sore cheeks and headaches.

Worst of all, I grind my teeth. Seeing how quickly I have worn through my first few protective retainers, I wonder how I am going to afford dentist bills if this goes on for the rest of my life.

I don’t know exactly how well the pills repress the breath-holding tic, but I am fairly sure it happens more when I take the pills late. I will continue trying to find a tic medication that controls the tics better.

At different times in my life I’ve taken different pills. At first it was only one kind; at other times it has been as many as seven or eight. My psychiatrist and parents have always come up with the ideas for what I will take, based on conversations with me and with each other.

I have no idea how any of the pills work. I’m the poet in my family, the dreamer, the artist, what my brother calls a “literature bum.” He is the math and science expert. The concepts of chemistry fascinate me, but whenever I’ve tried to study the details, I’ve gotten hopelessly confused.

Certainly, I have no understanding of how the chemicals in those particular medications affect the biology of my brain. I know myself as a person, not as a diagnosis. I don’t claim to comprehend the inner biological workings of my disabilities, only the effects they have on my life. I know that when I miss one of the pills, I can’t sleep at night; when I miss another, I get drowsy in the day and can’t pay attention; when I miss a different one, I have more panic attacks, and so on.

Sometimes I think that maybe I’ve gotten too used to taking the pills, too dependent on them. If I go two days without them, I have panic attacks in which I become so shaky that it’s like having convulsions. That never happened before I took the pills. But I was a small child when I started. My brain and my body have changed since then.

Of course I’d like to be able to live a happy life without medications. I will have to find a time when I have the freedom to risk inconvenient behavior changes, and the courage to risk the emotional trauma that would go with those changes. I would have to cut down slowly, over a long time, and be willing to stop cutting down if it didn’t work. I might do it, someday, but for now my pills are too helpful to give up.

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“These devices can be programmed to monitor where the child is, or whether the child has said anything, and then to say something appropriate. In other cases, the robot head will spout things randomly. Prof. Scassellati said that with three year olds, nonautistic children will continue to interact with a robot that is responding appropriately, but will quickly tire of one that isn’t. Autisti. . .

“These devices can be programmed to monitor where the child is, or whether the child has said anything, and then to say something appropriate. In other cases, the robot head will spout things randomly. Prof. Scassellati said that with three year olds, nonautistic children will continue to interact with a robot that is responding appropriately, but will quickly tire of one that isn’t. Autistic children, however, show no such preference, and will be equally fascinated by each.” Link to article

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Link to article

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“In an effort to streamline data-gathering processes and support the therapy team. . .

Link to article
“In treating children with autism, it is critical in many programs and services to track significant amounts of data, both for reporting purposes and in assessing learning, behavior and intervention effectiveness. Current data collection techniques can be extremely time consuming, may inhibit the caregiver-child interaction, may be subjective, and do not always communicate all of the information needed to fully assess the skills and treatment objectives under consideration.

“In an effort to streamline data-gathering processes and support the therapy teams working with individuals with autism, Gregory Abowd, D.Phil. and his research team have received a CAN Innovative Technology for Autism grant award.”

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