User talk:Bearpa
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[edit] AS overview (vision) creation feedback
Bearpa, I'm glad to offer any assistance I can. My solution to the problem you're having regarding editing space is to create a new page in my user space. For an example, see User:Renice/Caduceator where I've started collecting information that I will eventually begin organizing into an article. If you look at the page's history, you can see that I used the same space to edit half of the African Rite article.
One way to start a new page is at Help:Starting_a_new_page. Another is to simply create a link, e.g., User:Bearpa/Asperger syndrome. Click it, and there you are.
I'm still reading about AS and autism, and there's a lot to sort through. In his NYTimes op-ed piece, Baron-Cohen summarizes some of his theories and directions of inquiry (I need to read his books now of course). I think his idea of brain types, which he has called Type E, and Type S (with Type B as a combination of the 2 extremes) is basically the same idea I've been getting at about "healthy Aspies".
It seems biochemical research is trying to answer what levels cause a healthy Type S to become dysfunctional. Of course defining 'dysfunctional' is an enormous quagmire, but I think a lot of people have missed the brain-type discussion altogether, as I had.
I think the idea is, certain hormonal and neurotransmitter deficiencies result in certain pathologies, with Autism as a pathology of Type S brains. It seems to me that confusion has arisen when people, esp physicians, see anyone with a Type S brain and pronounce them "Asperger victim/patient/etc.", or environmental stressors specific to minority thinking styles actually cause pathology (e.g., depression). (Other areas of inquiry have spawned confusing debates on where Type S comes from (Neanderthals?), and why they persist (assortative mating?).
However, I believe we must tease out what is pathology and what isn't. For example, Aspies have been described as having heightened auditory or visual senses. Is that pathology? They are also known for literal thinking. Is that pathology?! On the other hand, depression and ADD probably are pathologies (i.e., having outside-of-optimal levels of specific biochemicals), and they probably look different for each different brain type.
I'm writing sci-fi at the moment (which is how I started reading all this in the first place), and I can imagine a future when there will not be pathologies called "autism" and "aspergers", or even "sociopath" and "depression". Instead, we will say "He is a Type S, Oxytocin- and Endocannabinoid-deficient." (Re endocannabinoid research and AS, see http://renice.com/chakrabarti_et_al_2006pdf.pdf.) In my future, a simple breath test will reveal a child's individual metabolome and parents will be given a 'manual' that includes a list of substances the child cannot metabolize without injuring its systems (much like PKU now, but on a grander scale). The consequences of such a future is the fun stuff of fiction, while we continue in our time to struggle to merely grasp, and actually embrace, the beauty of diversity and polymorphism.
--Renice 14:24, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
