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The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum Reprint Edition, Kindle Edition
Temple Grandin may be the most famous person with autism, a condition that affects 1 in 88 children. Since her birth in 1947, our understanding of it has undergone a great transformation, leading to more hope than ever before that we may finally learn the causes of and treatments for autism.
Weaving her own experience with remarkable new discoveries, Grandin introduces the advances in neuroimaging and genetic research that link brain science to behavior, even sharing her own brain scan to show which anomalies might explain common symptoms. Most excitingly, she argues that raising and educating kids on the autism spectrum must focus on their long-overlooked strengths to foster their unique contributions. The Autistic Brain brings Grandin’s singular perspective into the heart of the autism revolution.
- ISBN-13978-0544227736
- EditionReprint
- PublisherMariner Books
- Publication dateApril 30, 2013
- LanguageEnglish
- File size9476 KB
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
From Booklist
Review
"In The Autistic Brain, Grandin explains what she's learned in recent years about her brain and the brains of others with autism." -- USA Today
"Grandin has reached a stunning level of sophistication about herself and the science of autism. Her observations will assist not only fellow autistics and families with affected members, but also researchers and physicians seeking to better understand the condition." — Jerome Groopman, The New York Review of Books "Her visual circuitry extends well beyond where neurotypicals’ circuitry stops. Grandin is wired for long-term visual memory. She is sure that one day, autism will be explained by neurobiology. Her new book, The Autistic Brain, outlines that quest." -- Los Angeles Times
"Grandin has helped us understand autism not just as a phenomenon, but as a different but coherent mode of existence that otherwise confounds us…She excels at finding concrete examples that reveal the perceptual and social limitations of autistic and "neurotypical" people alike." — The New York Times
"Autism is a spectrum, and Temple is on one edge. Living on this edge has allowed her to be an extraordinary source of inspiration for autistic children, their parents—and all people." —Time "The Autistic Brain can both enlighten readers with little exposure to autism and offer hope and compassion to those who live with the condition." —Scientific American "The right brain has created the right book for right now." — Pittsburgh Post-Gazette "An iconic example of someone who puts her strengths, and even her limitations, to good use." — KQED, San Francisco "Temple Grandin has yet again been of enormous service to the millions of autistic individuals worldwide, to anyone labeled with a disability, and to the rest of us curious about the brain and the intricacies of human experience." — New York Journal of Books "The Autistic Brain is an engaging look at life within the spectrum. It’s also an honest one." — HealthCare Book Reviews "A tremendous gift, not just to patients and their families, but also to teachers, mentors, friends, and everyone who is interested in understanding how our brains make us who we are…This is a book everyone should read." — Dr. Ginger Campbell, Brain Science Podcast "Highly recommended for anyone who knows or works with people on the spectrum." — Library Journal (Starred Review) "Grandin’s particular skill is her remarkable ability to make sense of autistics’ experiences, enabling readers to see ‘the world through an autistic person’s jumble of neuron misfires,’ and she offers hope that one day, autism will be considered not according to some diagnostic manual, but to the individual." — Publishers Weekly "An important and ultimately optimistic work." —Booklist "An illuminating look at how neuroscience opens a window into the mind." —KirkusFrom the Inside Flap
When Temple Grandin was born in 1947, autism had only just been named. Today it is more prevalent than ever, with one in 88 children diagnosed on the spectrum. And our thinking about it has undergone a transformation in her lifetime: Autism studies have moved from the realm of psychology to neurology and genetics, and there is far more hope today than ever before thanks to groundbreaking new research into causes, treatments, and cures. Now Temple Grandin reports from the forefront of autism science, bringing her singular perspective to a thrilling journey into the heart of the autism revolution.
Weaving her own experience with remarkable new discoveries, Grandin introduces the neuroimaging advances and genetic research that link brain science to behavior, even sharing her own brain scan to show us which anomalies might explain common symptoms. We meet the scientists and self-advocates who are exploring innovative theories of what causes autism and how we can diagnose and best treat it. Grandin also highlights long-ignored sensory problems and the transformative effects we can have by treating autism symptom by symptom, rather than with an umbrella diagnosis. Most exciting, she argues that raising and educating kids on the spectrum isn t just a matter of focusing on their weaknesses; in the science that reveals their long-overlooked strengths she shows us new ways to foster their unique contributions.
From the aspies in Silicon Valley to the five-year-old without language, Grandin understands the true meaning of the word spectrum. The Autistic Brain is essential reading from the most respected and beloved voices in the field.
From the Back Cover
“The right brain has created the right book for right now.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Temple Grandin may be the most famous person with autism, a condition that affects 1 in 88 children. Since her birth in 1947, our understanding of it has undergone a great transformation, leading to more hope than ever before that we may finally learn the causes of and treatments for autism.
Weaving her own experience with remarkable new discoveries, Grandin introduces the advances in neuroimaging and genetic research that link brain science to behavior, even sharing her own brain scan to show which anomalies might explain common symptoms. Most excitingly, she argues that raising and educating kids on the autism spectrum must focus on their long-overlooked strengths to foster their unique contributions. The Autistic Brain brings Grandin’s singular perspective into the heart of the autism revolution.
"[Grandin’s] most insightful work to date . . . The Autistic Brain is something anyone could benefit from reading, and I recommend it to anyone with a personal or professional connection to autism or neurological difference."—John Elder Robison, author of Look Me in the Eye
"The Autistic Brain can both enlighten readers with little exposure to autism and offer hope and compassion to those who live with the condition."—Scientific American
TEMPLE GRANDIN is one of the world’s most accomplished and well-known adults with autism. She is a professor of animal science at Colorado State University and the author of several best-selling books, which have sold more than a million copies. The HBO movie based on her life received seven Emmy Awards. She lives in Fort Collins, Colorado.
RICHARD PANEK is the prize-winning author of The 4 Percent Universe and the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship in science writing. His books have been translated into sixteen languages. He lives in New York City.
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Meanings of Autism
I was fortunate to have been born in 1947. If I had been born ten years later, my life as a person with autism would have been a lot different. In 1947, the diagnosis of autism was only four years old. Almost nobody knew what it meant. When Mother noticed in me the symptoms that we would now label autistic—destructive behavior, inability to speak, a sensitivity to physical contact, a fixation on spinning objects, and so on—she did what made sense to her. She took me to a neurologist.
Bronson Crothers had served as the director of the neurology service at Boston Children’s Hospital since its founding, in 1920. The first thing Dr. Crothers did in my case was administer an electroencephalogram, or EEG, to make sure I didn’t have petit mal epilepsy. Then he tested my hearing to make sure I wasn’t deaf. “Well, she certainly is an odd little girl,” he told Mother. Then when I began to verbalize a little, Dr. Crothers modified his evaluation: “She’s an odd little girl, but she’ll learn how to talk.” The diagnosis: brain damage.
He referred us to a speech therapist who ran a small school in the basement of her house. I suppose you could say the other kids there were brain damaged too; they suffered from Down syndrome and other disorders. Even though I was not deaf, I had difficulty hearing consonants, such as the c in cup. When grownups talked fast, I heard only the vowel sounds, so I thought they had their own special language. But by speaking slowly, the speech therapist helped me to hear the hard consonant sounds, and when I said cup with a c, she praised me—which is just what a behavioral therapist would do today.
Product details
- ASIN : B009JWCR56
- Publisher : Mariner Books; Reprint edition (April 30, 2013)
- Publication date : April 30, 2013
- Language : English
- File size : 9476 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 253 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #168,346 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #34 in Autism
- #48 in Parenting eBooks on Children with Disabilities
- #67 in Children's Health (Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Richard Panek is the prize-winning author of The 4% Universe and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Science Writing.
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And then, in the introduction, page 3, Temple had written this: "When I wrote Thinking in Pictures in 1995, I mistakenly thought that everybody on the autism spectrum was a photorealistic visual thinker like me. When I started interviewing other people about how they recalled information, I realized I was wrong."
Wow. Temple became my hero for life, and she did it by page 3. Not only did she completely address my every issue that I ever had with her writing, but she explained it in a way that I totally understood where she was coming from when she guessed that all autistic people think in pictures over a decade ago. And, later in the book, she gives an explanation for someone who thinks visually like me, but who can't hold a picture in their head. It's "pattern thinker," and I really like that term, because it really describes me. And it takes a lot of courage to say, "I was wrong." Most people can't even utter those three words, so it gave me a lot of respect for Temple Grandin. I still think that eventually Temple will find some autistic kinesthetic thinkers, too, but that's not in this book.
And, this book is awesome. Temple is obsessed about finding out what about her brain and her personality differs from other people. She has offered herself up to many brain scans, and she's read thousands of technical articles about autism as research. Because of this unique combination, this book provides a unique take on autism that you won't find anywhere else, and it also explains boring, overly critical university research on autism in a friendly and uplifting way.
I liked how this book recommends that we match autistic kids' abilities with activities. A lot of autistic kids are really underutilized in their strengths. Here's one way the book expresses it: "I've seen these cases--kids who are considered to have severe behavior problems at school until you give them math lessons that meet them where their brains are. Then their behavior normalizes, and they become productive and engaged--maybe even model students."
It gives a lot of techniques that I've never heard of too. One was blinking fast, so that you get a bunch of pictures in your head, instead of a steady stream of information. That can help with sensitivities. Another was wearing different shades of glasses, using different colored lights, or setting the background on your computer screen to different colors, until you find the colors or the shades that best complement your brain.
This is the first book that I've read from Temple, but it definitely won't be my last. I loved this book, and heartily recommend it to everyone.
Pros:
+A great first read on autism, or even a great twentieth book
+Takes antiseptic, critical research on autism and presents it in a non-depressing way
+A great narrative about Temple GRandin's life
+Has good information on what you can try to help with autism sensitivies
Cons:
-Like all books currently on autism, this is probably incomplete
I did additional digging into a few things I was curious about, like the fascinating relationship between IQ and people on the spectrum (overall vs. those with Asperger's), but I wouldn't like to have to do that for all of the topics discussed here. (I discovered that while IQ is inherited, autism doesn't seem to be. So the whole area of those like me diagnosed with Asperger's is quite confounding for researchers, which partly explains why Asperger's has been so hard to diagnose. And I apologize, but I find the term "Asperger's" much easier to comprehend than "L1ASD" or whatever the more formal name might be this year.)
One thing that's clear from reading this book is that anybody seriously interested in this field is going to need to have a fairly wide swath of knowledge about several discrete areas of study and research as well as the history behind them, including: cognitive psych, neuro psych, behavioral psych, genetics and genomics, and probably some background in PT, OT, and ST as well.
After reading this book, I'm left with one dominant conclusion: for everything question researchers in this broad field answer from their work, five more questions turn up. I also cannot figure out how so much material got crammed into so few pages. Temple is an amazing writer and communicator, in spite of the fact that she thinks in pictures and this is NOT a "picture book" but mostly an abundance of words.
As the grandfather of an autistic boy and as a friend of the autistic Iris Johansson, who I think of as the Temple Grandin of Sweden, I was intensely interested in the contents of this informative book. As the translator of Johansson's book "A different childhood" A Different Childhood I was particularly interested in Dr. Grandin's discussion of the sensory problems experienced by many autistics, the visual and auditory processing issues in particular. In this context I was disappointed to not find any comments about synesthesia which I believe is often associated with autism. On this subject, the book by Johansson is a particularly rich source of material, describing her synesthesia (perceiving her mother's anger or grandmother's scolding as beautiful light-shows that made her happy), her out of body-like experiences (seeing her body sitting on the ground as she herself was swooping around in the sky with her spirit friends), her tactile problems (wearing her flannel shirt inside out and backwards to minimize the unbearable irritation of rough fabric).
As Dr. Grandin emphasizes, there are many variations in the autistic experience, but also many characteristic similarities. One way to possibly think about it is that what's common is the areas in which autistics differ from neurotypicals, but the way they are different varies greatly. For instance, Dr Grandin refers several times to her poor short term memory, while for other autistics super memory is their most notable characteristic. Overall this book is well worth your time, even if you are not associated with anyone on the spectrum. If you are, then it is a book that belongs in your library.
Top reviews from other countries
Instead of focusing on the specific bounds of diagnostic labels, Grandin looks to a future where autistic children and adults are instead assessed, helped, and encouraged based on their specific strengths and weaknesses. She foresees a future where autism, as well as other neurological conditions, is diagnosed biologically through brain imaging technology which will provide better understanding of individual brains. The book contains interesting anecdotes, personal examples, and even visual representations of some of the subject matter. Best of all, it provides information about different types of thinking that applies to all humans - not just to autistics. If you hadn't already considered that even "neurotypical" people experience and process the world in vastly different ways, this book will illustrate how.
I would recommend "The Autistic Brain" to everyone I know. Without being overly sensational, it presents autism in a more positive light by describing how the autistic brain works and the wide range of specialized skills a person with autism may have. It would be a great introduction for parents or teachers thinking about the educational and occupational future of both their autistic and non-autistic children.
This was by far the best book I've read in the past year.