In Musicophilia Dr. Sacks offers the concept that removal of normal auditory input might result in a hypersensitivity of the auditory cortex causing heightened powers of musical imagery -- and sometimes auditory hallucinatory process.
Dr. Sacks' focus is with music and how it is utilized and occupied in the brain of neurotypical persons, many of whom developed their non typical and more fascinating response to music later in life.
What is not lost where autism is concerned is the fact that many times sight perception, auditory perception, and other sense perception translates to unique and non typical understanding of life experience for many within the spectrum.
My autistic daughter's auditory sense is profoundly unique in how it is processed, and certain sounds affect her physical well being. This means that she most probably has not learned in the usual manner even from her earliest years.
If one is dealing with a confused non typical auditory process, a process that might even have ramifications with regard to feeling physically well or not, their complete focus would not be upon a normal assimilation of all that is going on around them. Learning about life in typical context -- the abstract, the concrete, emotions and so on -- would hardly be doable.
Perhaps because of the above my own daughter's ability to discern life in context -- to understand the abstract, the vague, pretend, real, rote meaning, and meaning in context -- has either been delayed or lost in varying degrees. Indeed, she has more easily understood things that are rote in nature, or mathematical; and these have been a strength for her. Perhaps the abstract, vague, pretend, real, concrete, rote meaning, meaning in context, have equal relevancy in her mind and are not neurologically tucked away where each type of memory belongs.
Her understanding of all thought and life experience might very well be that concrete is abstract and abstract is concrete -- there is no difference. There seems an absence of pecking order with regard to types of thought, and thought's assimilation in her brain. Thus her intellectual complexity creates a repertoire process that is similar in concept to musical imaging that Dr. Sacks describes -- but hers is a process that is intensified and includes more than processing of music.
The autistics' neural underpinnings might not always possess development of separate identity types for different types of thought (Short-Term, Long-Term, Explicit, Episodic, Semantic, Implicit, Priming, Procedural); those underpinnings might be hard pressed to develop typically since, for those with hyperacustic hearing, ability to focus typically to the stimuli is absent.
Not just my own daughter, but all within the autism spectrum, most likely possess an unique intellectual complexity that is amazing, hardly understandable to the masses. Understood only by those who have in some significant way witnessed an autism affected person's life experiences.
I suppose that due to the offensive way my daughter has heard all along, her neural connections might have never developed the proper pathways with regard to directing typical comprehensions during differing types of thought scenarios. Her neural connections have taken unique non typical paths, therefore her thought is utilized and occupied in a vastly different way than normal.
The autistic mind, every one, has potential for extreme brilliance that is housed in such a way that we might only be lucky to be able to test it or tap into it. The methods by which IQ is tested, cannot identify the kind of smarts that many in the autism spectrum have.
My daughter's worsening autism -- psychosis nos -- seems to represent the "filling in" that Dr. Sacks describes with regard to musical imagery. His book describes how some persons' brains actually function as if they are hearing music, when they are not exposed to the auditory input of music playing. The way such was determined was to play familiar songs quietly as subjects listened, but have gaps where the music wasn't playing (while performing the brain imaging).
In truth, my daughter's "filling in" is not about music, it is about her whole life experience. She seems to lack the thought filters that are standard in most human models. Her neural stimulation seems a hodgepodge that is simply invoked by even the most novel of thought associations. It has made life for the rest of us most interesting and many times for my daughter, most exhausting.
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About our journey with autism... At the very beginning I figured we would get our daughter normalized in no time and pretty soon she would be asking for the car keys. It didn't quite work out that way and as my entire family and I continued to work through the ebb and flow of her unique walk, we fell madly in love with her in all her glory. This articles are just an outreach.
For a real life look at one case of severe autism, just Google "Hello, Dr. Wells". It is a sixteen year account of autism that turned to schizophrenic like psychosis.
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