Abstract
In this chapter, we will examine the conflicts and contradictions in the autist’s abilities to comprehend the spatial relations between objects and speculate what brain patterns may underlie those peculiarities. We will also explore the meaning this may have in the context of the whole autistic clinical-brain pattern.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
This is why this region is often referred to in literature as temporal-parietal-occipital region (TPO)—a term which will also be used in this book.
- 2.
“Elly” is an autistic woman described several times in various writings by different authors since the time she was a child. In some writings she has been called “Elly,” in others, “Jessica.” Her case will be discussed several times throughout this work, and, for consistency, she will always be referred to as “Elly.”
- 3.
VP (ventral posterior nuclei group) is the principle relay station for somatic sensations (Kandel & Schwartz, 1985).
- 4.
The LP (lateral posterior nucleus) is the associative thalamic nucleus, receiving afferents from the VP (the somatosensory relay thalamic nucleus) and containing extensive reciprocal connections with the inferior parietal cortex. Although the LP’s function remains largely unknown, it has been suggested that it is concerned with complex somesthetic association mechanisms related to various parts of the body (Malcolm, Carpenter, & Sutin, 1983).
- 5.
Unique for each of us is the sensual kinesthetic image of our body, stored at the thalamic level. Only at this level, kinesthetic (muscle) sense is directed toward one’s own body (bodily feelings). Recall that kinesthetic sense from pathways that pass through the thalamus, onto the somatosensory cortex, has a different meaning than that of the thalamic level. Kinesthetic sense in the sensory cortex is used for evaluation of external stimuli, their weight, consistency, and texture. This fits with somatosensory cortex belonging to the sensory-motor level.
- 6.
From THINKING IN PICTURES by Temple Grandin, copyright © 1995, 2006 by Temple Grandin. Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.
- 7.
Patients with schizophrenia and autistic individuals are similar at a superficial, behavioral level: they do not communicate with the external world. Some psychiatrists considered autism as childhood schizophrenia. Indeed, in children it is sometimes difficult to differentiate autism from schizophrenia. Even the term “autism” was taken from Bleuler’s autistic thinking as a core symptom of schizophrenia. However, both Kanner and Asperger emphasized the specificity of their described syndrome and that it had nothing to do with autistic thinking.
- 8.
The lateral posterior nucleus of the thalamus.
- 9.
We will see in the following chapters that it is the LH that gives us a sense of having one separate self.
- 10.
“Sense of belonging” as used here does not equate to the familiar connotation of this phrase: of being a member of a group—a separate but related part (for example, as one feels he belongs to a particular social group). Instead, I am using “sense of belonging” to refer to the right hemispheric experience of identification with the group and all its parts, animate and inanimate, including the surrounding space. It is an experience of an indivisible continuous whole, infused with meaning.
- 11.
A mystical experience is in fact a special state of consciousness connected with exposure of the particular part of the brain; it occurs rarely and in exceptional situations.
- 12.
Note, however, that Grandin has insight into and partial voluntary control over this associative flow. This is the influence of the left frontal lobe, which will be discussed later in its relation to autism.
- 13.
Another group of non-root morphemes is suffixes. They, in contrast to other non-root morphemes, do not just mark but are closely interwoven into lexical meaning. The suffix’s grammatical meaning reflects spatial relationship of the parts within a single object. Noun’s suffixes may express the idea of form, e.g., suffix -ium marks the sign of containment, receptacle—planetarium, sanitarium. Suffixes may also reflect representation of a great number of single objects “molded” into one form, giving to this quantity unity or collectiveness, e.g., humankind, brotherhood.
- 14.
It is interesting, however, that when we hear the above example of word meaning “moving along a surface, performed with effort, slowly, like crawling” which implies “his older brother,” we do not find it irrelevant. It resonates in us with some kind of emotional pleasure, like that of a good metaphor.
- 15.
Recall the example from the prior section of the patient with a lesion in the left parietal-occipital area.
- 16.
Elly’s outstanding topographical memory was discussed in reference to the right parietal-occipital region at the beginning of this chapter.
- 17.
Numbers for Elly are not only “emotionally charged individuals,” they are assigned with almost mystical power. The intensity of her experience of numbers—awe and excitement, nearly ecstatic joy—suggests involvement of the thalamic level: RH LP–RH TPO.
- 18.
Interestingly, the visual-spatial symbols of doors are important for Elly and also for Temple Grandin as we will see in Chap. 8.
- 19.
BA40 of the parietal lobe and BA19 of the occipital are areas mostly specialized for shape and color, respectively.
- 20.
Reprinted with the permission of Simon and Schuster, Inc. from THE MAN WHO MISTOOK HIS WIFE FOR A HAT AND OTHER CLINICAL TALES by Oliver Sacks. Copyright © 1970, 1981, 1983, 1984, 1985 Oliver Sacks.
Excerpts from The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks. © 1970, 1981, 1983, 1984, 1985 by Oliver Sacks, used by permission of The Wylie Agency, LLC.
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, Picador, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, Copyright © Oliver Sacks, 1986.
- 21.
However, they do name numbers, presumably a function of the left hemisphere.
- 22.
BA39 appears to be specialized in spatial relations between objects, while BA40 is concerned predominantly with shapes (Glezerman, 1986).
- 23.
Non-representational is defined as that for which a name does not exist.
- 24.
There is variability among autists in degree of LH involvement, but the core “player,” I believe, is the RH, and this constant belongs to the pattern of autism per se.
- 25.
Is this meditation? Recall Temple Grandin’s experience while looking at grains of sand.
- 26.
Kanner and Asperger, however, noted it.
- 27.
As discussed above, normatively the inner structure for calculation is a specific spatial schema, combining quantity and order; this schema is connected with the left parietal-occipital region, BA39,40.
- 28.
- 29.
“Calculation” is in quotes above because what autistic calculators are doing is not calculation per se.
- 30.
Such interhemispheric differences were visited before in this chapter in regard to the perception of word sound and numbers.
- 31.
Recall Temple Grandin’s bay window experience discussed earlier in this chapter. Our neurophenomenological analysis showed that her brain stayed on the beaten path of the human brain’s historical development when her right inferior parietal area was used to discover grammatical constructions underlying the linguistic meaning of relation. In calendar calculators this same region is used! Indeed, the autist’s brain is in some way a “walking history” of the human brain.
- 32.
See Chap. 5.
References
Asperger, H. (1991). ‘Autistic’ psychopathy in childhood. In U. Frith (Ed.), Autism and Asperger syndrome (pp. 37–92). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Blonsky, P. D. (1935). Memory and thinking. Moscow-Leningrad: Ogiz.
Bogyo, L., & Ellis, R. (1988). Elly: A study of contrasts. In L. K. Obler & D. Fein (Eds.), Exceptional brain (pp. 265–276). New York: Guilford Press.
Cutting, J. (1990). The right cerebral hemisphere and psychiatric disorders. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Glezerman, T. B. (1983). Brain dysfunctions in children. USSR Academy of Sciences, Department of Physiology, Nauka: Moscow.
Glezerman, T. B. (1986). Psychophysiological grounds for intellect deterioration in aphasia: aphasia and intellect. Moscow: USSR Academy of Sciences, Department of Physiology.
Glezerman, T. B., & Balkoski, V. I. (1999). Language, thought, and the brain. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.
Grandin, T. (1995). Thinking in pictures. New York: Vintage Books. A division of Random House.
Hermelin, B., & O’Connor, N. (1990). Factors and primes: a specific numerical ability. Psychological Medicine, 20, 163–169.
Horwitz, W. A., Kestenbaum, C., Person, E., & Jarvik, L. (1965). Identical twin ‘idiot savants’ – calendar calculators. American Journal of Psychiatry, 121, 1075–1079.
Howe, M. J. A., & Smith, J. (1988). Calendar calculating in ‘idiots savants’: how do they do it? British Journal of Psychology, 79, 371–386.
Hurlburt, R. T., Happe, F., & Frith, U. (1994). Sampling the form of inner experience in three adults with Asperger syndrome. Psychological Medicine, 24, 385–395.
Jakobson, R. (1971a). Linguistics in its relation to other sciences. In UNESCO (Ed.), Main trends of research in the social and human sciences (pp. 419–463). Paris—The Hague: Mouton.
Jakobson, R. (1971b). Two aspects of language and two types of aphasia disturbances. In R. Jakobson (Ed.), Selected writings (Vol. 2, pp. 239–259). Paris—The Hague: Mouton.
Kandel, E. R., & Schwartz, J. H. (1985). Principles of neural science. New York: Elsevier Science.
Kanner, L. (1943). Autistic disturbances of affective contact. Nervous Child, 2, 217–250.
Kanner, L. (1946). Irrelevant and metaphorical language in early infantile autism. American Journal of Psychiatry, 103, 242–246.
Katznelson, S. D. (1972). Typology of language and verbal thinking. Leningrad: Nauka.
Kretschmer, E. (1927). Medical psychology. Moscow: Life and Knowledge.
Levy-Bruhl, L. (1930). Archaic thought, Moscow (translated from La Mentalite Primitive, Paris, 1922).
Luria, A. R. (1980). Higher cortical functions in man. New York: Basic Books.
Malcolm, B., Carpenter, M. D., & Sutin, J. (1983). Human neuroanatomy. Baltimore/London: Williams & Wilkins.
Miller, L. (1999). The Savant syndrome. Intellectual impairment and exceptional skill. Psychological Bulletin, 125, 31–46.
Mishkin, M., Ungerleider, L. G., & Macko, K. A. (1983). Object vision and spatial vision: two cortical pathways. Trends in Neuroscience, 6, 414–417.
Park, D., & Youderian, P. (1974). Light and number: ordering principles in the world of an autistic child. Journal of Autism and Childhood Schizophrenia, 4, 313–323.
Sacks, O. (1987). The twins. In O. Sacks (Ed.), Man who mistook his wife for a hat (pp. 195–213). New York: Harper & Row.
Smith, S. B. (1983). The great mental calculators. New York: Columbia University Press.
Spitz, H. H. (1994). Lewis Carroll’s formula for calendar calculating. American Journal on Mental Retardation, 98, 601–606.
Treffert, D. A. (1988). The idiot savant: a review of the syndrome. American Journal of Psychiatry, 145, 563–572.
Ullman, S. (1995). The visual analysis of shape and form. In M. S. Gazzaniga (Ed.), The cognitive neuroscience (pp. 339–350). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Waterhouse, L. (1988). Extraordinary visual memory and pattern perception in an autistic boy. In L. K. Obler & D. Fein (Eds.), Exceptional brain. New York: Guilford Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Glezerman, T.B. (2013). How Autistic Persons Perceive Space and Spatial Relations (Where System in the Brain and Autism). In: Autism and the Brain. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4112-0_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4112-0_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-4111-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-4112-0
eBook Packages: Behavioral ScienceBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)