University of Brighton fine Art (Painting) submission

A neuroscience summary from Temple Grandin’s book

[Apologies for the delay on this post – I went on holiday last week and our flight back Saturday got cancelled (Autistic Hel was REALLY happy about that!) and so we didn’t get back until late Sunday eve. SO, anyway, where was I…..]

On the aforementioned holiday I started reading Temple Grandin’s The Autistic Brain. Chapter 2 absolutely fascinated me, wherein Temple recounts her insights after her brain got MRI’d a bunch of times for research. It made me think of both ASD and ADHD.

Here are some findings that will make your brain light up:

1. A wonky cerebellum may be making you clumsy. The brain has a ventricle on each of its two halves. Temple’s brain showed one ventricle as a lot bigger than the other. This bigger ventricle took up a bit of space where her cerebellum should be occupying, resulting in the latter being a tiny bit smaller. The cerebellum is responsible for motor functioning and Temple believes this is why she loses her balance, drops things, bumps into tables, etc.

2. Your rubbish working memory might be a parietal situation. The oversized ventricle in Temple’s brain also meandered into her parietal lobe, which is responsible for working memory. She says this helps explain her inability to follow a series of instructions, or walk into a room and forget why she was there. The parietal lobe is also linked to maths, and Temple apparently doesn’t have this skill either.

3. White brain matter is why you may feel like both an idiot and a genius. White matter is the fibrous tissue that connects bits of the brain to other bits. Temple had lower white matter connectivity between significant cortical areas, which affects tasks like social cognition and executive functioning. However, she had white matter overconnectivity in more localised areas, such as in her visual cortex, giving her excellent visual pattern-finding abilities.

4. Your enlarged amygdala may be making you feel like one big exposed nerve. Temple’s MRI showed she had a larger than average amygdala, which is responsible for threat detection. Given the amygdala’s size can be changed (enlarged by trauma or shrunk with meditation) it is not clear if her anxiety is the cause or effect of her amygdala’s size (or both). Nevertheless, if you’ve shut down or feel burnt out, that’s your amygdala screaming at you to go into fight or flight.

As Temple herself says, whilst there are consistencies across studies of autistic brains (and I wonder if the same is true for ADHD), all our brains are still variable, and imaging technology shows correlation, not causation. But the next time you feel your brain figuratively (or literally) tripping you up, remember that it’s not you being careless, stupid or useless, it really is how your brain is wired.