Autism Gives Woman An 'Alien View' Of Social Brains by Jon Hamilton

August 23, 2010

It takes a smart brain to invent a spaceship. But putting one in orbit takes a brain with extraordinary social skills.

That's because getting from concept to launchpad takes more than technology — it takes thousands of people agreeing on a common goal and working together to accomplish it.

Humans have succeeded in part because we evolved a brain with a remarkable capacity for this type of complex social interaction. We automatically respond to social cues and facial expressions.  We can look at the world from another person's point of view. We are predisposed to cooperate.

But all these things are so much a part of us, they're easy to take for granted.

Unless you have autism, like Lisa Daxer.

Daxer, 27, is a biomedical engineering major at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. And for her, things like reading faces and understanding what's on another person's mind are a struggle.

When Daxer was in elementary school, it became clear that although she was better than her classmates at reading and math, they were better at social interactions. "I realized that they had friends and I didn't," Daxer says.
Skip Peterson for NPR

Lisa Daxer says she doesn't want a typical brain and that her autism is part of who she is. But she says she will probably always feel like a bit of an "alien."

Autism has made Daxer feel like an outsider, even an alien. "I have a weird brain," she says.

But it's also helped her become something of an expert on the social behavior of people she calls "neurotypical."

Daxer records her observations about neurotypicals in a blog called Reports From a Resident Alien.

People like Daxer have taught scientists a lot about how typical humans interact socially, says Simon Baron-Cohen, a professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge in the U.K.

"We didn't really focus on how complex social development is until people with autism pointed out to us that this is something that doesn't always just develop naturally," Baron-Cohen says.

Most children quickly figure out the importance of making eye contact, how to read facial expressions and social cues, and how to fit into a group.

The Social Behavior Of 'Neurotypicals'

But Daxer says these things are still very difficult for her. So she has become something of an amateur anthropologist, studying the social behavior of the people around her, the people she calls neurotypicals.

One of the first things she noticed on campus was that students tend to "clump."

"By default, they socialize," she says. That's true whether they're in a coffee shop, a library or even the anatomy lab, where Daxer once watched a group of young women gossiping as they dissected human hearts.

"You have to actually interfere to stop neurotypicals from socializing," she says.

This compulsion to socialize is no accident, Baron-Cohen says. "Amongst primates, particularly social primates, it is important to stay within the group," he says. "If we took an evolutionary perspective, that would be for physical survival. A member who becomes separated from the group is at increased risk of predators, to put it bluntly."

So the humans who survived were predisposed to have what you might call a "social brain."

It's still with us. Think fraternities, or Facebook.

And if you want to be part of a group, you must constantly monitor your status with other members, Baron-Cohen says.

"You're picking up cues about what they might find acceptable or interesting, or unacceptable," he says. "Picking up those cues very early could mean the difference between inclusion and exclusion. If you've done something that might offend somebody or upset somebody, it's good to notice that quickly, so you can fix it."

Before they defriend you.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129379866

[KarenDiane]

Very interesting. Thanks for posting this.