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

[Sahyinepu]

I am a very high functioning autistic and the interrupt system doesn't  
work in many areas.  I cannot feel extreme pain if I am very focused on  
trying to do something for one example.   As a child I could omit sound  
and even control what area(s) I saw(create tunnel vision for only one  
specific area of interest), and how I retrieved and processed memory.   
I still have some of that, but not to the extent that I once had.  The  
part of me that allows me to do all this is what I call the observer  
mind, and it seems aware all the time...so that I ma analyzing all  
levels of thought and behavior consciously.

Sah

On Monday, April 10, 2006, at 09:35 AM, Robert Bradbury wrote:

> 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/ 
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