Vortrag

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From a medical point of view autism is a pervasive development disorder. The words

he communication disruption and perceptual processing disorder are as

understandable as pervasive development.

 Ok this you can understand as good as which are also used often when you talk about

autism. At this point I need to say that in the medicine you call many things a disorder

when they don’t work as they should do.

But how should something work normally if the basics are not present? The autistic

brain is wired differently from normal. More exactly the brain areas are more or less

tied together than what you would aspect. It could also be that some brain areas are

tied together whereas you can’t find the contacts in the brains of non-autistic people.

At least in an autistic brain there are sometimes other brain areas active as in a brain

of non-autistic people. An example that is well known is that an autistic brain uses the

same brain area for things and for faces. The brain of a non-autistic person uses

different brain areas for faces and for things.

It's also noticeable that an autistic brain processes all sensory impressions individually.

That means that there is no connection between the seen and the heard. So, there could

be the following problem: “There in front I can see someone who split wood but

where comes the knocking noise from?”, that there is also a noise when someone split

wood must be learnt consciously and so connect picture and sound remains something

you need to do more or less consciously. In this case it doesn’t become simpler if there

are more sensory impressions like smell and feel.

The non-autistic brain connects sensory impressions together so that they make sense.

So, there are not that match single impressions than an autistic brain has, that doesn’t

connect the impressions and processes every sensory impression extra. After that it’s

more difficult to understand the sensory impressions and it’s harder to understand that

you can see and hear someone who split wood.

To find all the important puzzle pieces for the current situation, if you have many

pieces, isn’t possible. The result is that all the impressions are equally important and

are being processed on an equal footing in the brain. For example: during concerts,

autistic people can hear at the same time the respiration, movements of their

neighbour and the music of the concert.

In a situation like that, it can quickly lead to sensory overload. The brain stops its own

functions to have chances to process all the information it gets. Seen from the outside

it can be a fit of rage, self-harming behaviour or frozen. The uncontrollable emotions

and the blackouts are rarely visible from the outside and create problems for those

affected. These people need often long periods, for example some days, to regenerate

themselves. Something that mustn’t be forgotten is that not every overload or

excessive demand can be registered immediately. There are some overloads that show

their effects after hours.

That’s the reason why autistic people can show an unremarkable behaviour during an

event. But after this event they are very exhausted and need to regenerate themselves

for days in their bed.

Overloads can be triggered via one sensory channel. For example, very loud music or

flickering light can trigger an overload with all consequences. If one sensory channel

has an overload it can affect all the other sensory channels and that can be the reason

for a sentence like: “Please be quiet, I can’t see anything!”. It isn’t important which

sensory channel has an overload, it has effects on the others, sometimes so strong that

one or more sensory channels fail temporarily.

But not only can the brain cause problems for autistic people, the nerve pathways

between the brain and the rest of the body also have their pitfalls. I talk about a

phenomenon I know very well: I mean the phenomenon of time shift. I explain it, with

an example: I can hold test tubes from one end to another when they are 80° without

feeling the heat. After some minutes I must use gloves against the heat as the other

people. The heat signals need a lot of time to come up from the fingers to the brain

and the way back can also be very long.

That means that it isn’t guaranteed that information arrives in the brain or at another

place in the body on time. So, it could happen that in a situation in which I need to sit

down on a chair, that I understand what I should do, I want to do it and I know how to

do it but I can’t do it because my brain can’t send information to the muscles about

what they have to do – that’s a transient phenomenon. If there is a problem with the

nerve pathways or with the muscles, you can`t know it and it isn’t important.

Information that are stuck in traffic jams and arrive match to late, have a very strong

or a very weak effect of the brain. The reason is some of them are chancing during the

way between the starting point and the end point.

Information that arrives in brain without resistance can result in fatal reactions.

Still, other information arrives in the brain so slowed down that there isn’t a reaction

on this, or this reaction is very weak. The language is of hyposensitivity and

hypersensitivity. To deal with that, often you can only organize your live so that you

can live with your own perception and hope that other people pay attention to your

perception.

Autistic people know the most of what I have described before as a problem which

chance during the time or stay for a long time. The expression of problems are very

different.

But one thing is clear: This problem doesn’t make the life easier and makes the need

of structures and safety greater.

In contact with other people, this structural difference is particularly difficult. People

not only communicate with each other via very diverse signals, but are usually neither

logical, predictable nor unambiguous. In a conversation, an autistic person does not

hear some things at all, some things much more intensively and some things with a

strong time delay from the other person. What an autistic person hears is often filled

with contradictory information. This can be due to the ambiguity of the counterpart as

well as the fact that some information arrives at the wrong moment due to the time

shift.

So as an autistic person you are busy with stimulus processing, compensating

behaviours and the content of the conversation to be able to interpret what is said.

That’s often enough to do, so there isn’t time to interpret the things which the other

people said. Many autistic people can understand and use phrases if they are light and

without overload. If there a small overload or something else, those skills collapse

immediately because the brain doesn’t have the capacity for that.

Thus, when dealing with autistic people, one is well advised to be clear and

unambiguous in what one says and not to get upset if the desired response is delayed.