JSBACHlover wrote:
I'm confused. Are people with right-brain caetextia also autistic/Asperger's?
I am a little confused about that too. I listened to the entire lecture and I understand it a little more. But when I think about myself I definitely see strong elements of both sides. I tend to hyper-associate a lot and I have a vivid imagination but I also have a very strong side of the other side, I am very analytical and I am rigid in many ways and cannot manage a whole lot of variables like he was talking about. I also have trouble seeing the deeper contexts sometimes and my husband says that I lack empathy and the ability to understand the situations and feelings of others. I think I have empathy and I can understand the feelings of others a good bit of the time but not always. And maybe I think I do that better than I do because he tells me I don't do it as well as I think I do, at least not when it concerns him anyway. And I do meet all the DSM5 criteria for Asperger's/Autism Spectrum. I don't know if females present differently in these scenarios than males. But this is truly fascinating.
I think that I may have my own theory which might need to be explored as well. I am not a scientist or an expert in these matters at all and I do not know if I ever will be so these words are just my own thoughts about what I am thinking about my personal self. But from looking at my own behaviors and from what those who know me best say about me, I think that one of my issues which is something that I think should be further explored in Asperger's is that I think I have an inability for both hemispheres of the brain to work together and communicate properly with each other. And even though my right brain is very much less active and underdeveloped, I don't think it is completely dead or 100% nonexistent so whatever little bit it has going on, I think that there is a failure to be able to communicate with the other side. The reason I think this is that I show both sides of what he is talking about but I know that I am definitely not psychotic and I know that I am on the Autism Spectrum. But I believe that there is definitely a barrier between my two brains.
My husband says that I am very left brained as well and I have had therapists tell me that I have very little right brain activity and that my left brain has learned to grossly overcompensate for the lack of the right. But I do a lot of right brain type things like I do have a vivid imagination, I lean more towards arts and music and language than maths, and I am very gifted when it comes to hyper- association and I am super emotional even though, on the flip side, I can be extremely analytical, black and white, dogmatic, rigid, hyper-focused, and linear in my thinking. I also have difficulty understanding the deeper underlying concepts of certain types of things like he talks about. In fact, my husband tells me that he thinks that I am actually not capable of understanding some of these things. This has actually been a frustrating thing for us since we have been together and it was not until now when he read this article that he understood that I am actually not capable of understanding certain concepts. This was huge for us to realize and I know it will help us be closer to each other. I am also one of those people who can easily get bogged down in the details of a story. And I am ambidextrous as well as dyslexic. But my husband told me that even though I do right brained things I do them in my left brain.
For example, one time I had performed the National Anthem to open a sports event. After my performance someone from the audience told me that he was a Vietnam veteran and that in all his years that he had heard the anthem sung he had never been so moved as he was when he heard me. I asked my husband about that because I thought that for me to sing it the way that I had to have done it with my right brain. My husband told me that actually the reason why the guy was so moved is that I sang it in my left brain. I sang it as it was written and as it had originally been intended to be sung. And because I did that, I was able to express the song in its purest form and in its purest form, it is an incredibly moving piece of music. But my husband told me that even though I may do right brained type things and even though I have a great imagination, it is still very obvious that I am extremely left brained in how I function.
So I think there is much more to be explored in how this all works and I think that the connection between the two brain hemispheres and how they are able to communicate with each other or the lack of communication between the two is key and can really help us understand these conditions more completely. And I think that males and females may differ in what Joe Griffin was talking about too when it relates to Asperger's so I would love to see more study done on the differences there as well. But this is all very fascinating stuff.
_________________
"I'm bad and that's good. I'll never be good and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me."
Wreck It Ralph
28 Mar 2014, 5:35 pm
Presumably because the Lab Pet is using the other hemisphere.
