I caught the tail end of Terri Gross's radio show Fresh Air this afternoon. Wished I had tuned in earlier (I think it will be podcast tomorrow on the website).And I was gobsmacked, and couldnt believe what I was hearing. This Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation apparently..well...cured the guy's autism. Or at least got rid of one of the defining symptoms of the guy's form of autism- namely lack of empathy and reading social cues. After a while it wore off. But for a while he was in essence temporarily (for better AND for worse) rid of the condition. Unless I misunderstood what he and the doctor who performed procedure were saying. The doctor said the stimulation "freed up emotional circuitry in his brain that had been dormant", but "he had been like a driver who had unknowingly had the parking break on all of the time for years while driving, and suddenly found out how to release the parking break". But that messed up how he was used to driving.
21 Apr 2016, 7:52 pm
