[extropy-chat] Autism/Asperger's & face processing

[Robert Bradbury]

The BBC is noting [1] that in brain scans of those with autism spectrum
disorders and "normal" individuals there appears to be a difference in
whether facial recognition causes an change in focused attention.

It suggests what is presumably an evolved "interrupt" pathway to
capture/focus ones attention on faces (to deal with the person trying to
steal your dinner, whom you are trying to seduce, etc.).  This would likely
bury or replace what you otherwise might be devoting attention to.  So those
who are autistic who are also intelligent probably have a greater ability to
focus attention and not have it pulled away by such interrupt pathways.
Those who don't test as intelligent may simply have their attention focused
so completely on something else that it can't be shifted to do the necessary
analysis to test as being intelligent.

It suggests that we've got some genetic hardware in the genome which is
supposed to organize the attention shifting interrupt pathways and it
doesn't work particularly well in some people.

Robert

1.
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4888528.stm
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