Temple Grandin: "The Autistic Brain"
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1,930,829 views Nov 20, 2013
Temple Grandin is one of the world's most iconic scientists. A leading expert on animal behavior, she has even been the subject of a movie, in which Claire Danes played her in an award-winning performance. Her accomplishments are legion, including her creation of livestock-handling facilities based on animals' natural behavior. But her greatest impact might be as one of the most prominent adults with autism. The condition has given Grandin unique insights, orienting her work on animals and allowing her to rethink human nature. The result is a series of best-selling books—"Animals Make Us Human," "Animals in Translation," and "Thinking in Pictures," among many others—as well as the hug (or "squeeze") machine, used for calming hypersensitive patients. More recently, autism itself has become the subject of her research. Her most recent book, "The Autistic Brain," presents the latest physiological research and charts the shift from neurological to genetic approaches to the condition. Grandin shares this new work with her trademark intelligence and accessibility.
This program is generously underwritten by Rose L. Shure.
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well it's really great to be here today got lots of things to talk about today in a pretty short period of time and I I
think I'll just start out talk about you know what exactly autism is is a developmental disorder it's a very very
big continum now the thing is when does something of just normal variation
become an abnormality um you know for example people with bipolar have more siblings
in Creative careers and people with Autism have more relatives in technical
uh careers you know if we got rid of all of the genetics that makes autism well
you wouldn't even have any computers you wouldn't have any electricity I mean who do you think made
the first stone spear you know it wasn't the social Yaky Yaks around the campfire that's for sure
see the thing [Applause]
is the thing is is a little bit of these traits can provide an advantage you get
too much of the trait then you get a disadvantage you see that's the problem
it isn't like having tuberculosis where you either have it or you don't I just got back from Australia and I had to
check off on the Customs form whether or not it had tuberculosis and I could definitely say no you see that is
something that's absolutely definitive now the thing is what would happened to
little Albert today Dr Einstein had no speech until
age three he would have been diagnosed autistic in a lot of school systems what
would happened to him makes me really really worried fortunately somebody let him develop his abilities I think a job
at the patent office was a good thing because he got exposed to lots and lots of new ideas what about Steve Job
yep he was a loner he brought snakes to school um he didn't have any
friends and one of the things that fixed him that really helped him was the local
kids computer Club when he was in high school he got in to do computers with other students and this really helped
them because the only place I had friends was where there was shared
interests okay autism is a very very big Spectrum it's not precise it it's a
Autism is a very broad spectrum and diagnosis is not precise. It is a behavioral profile.
behavioral profile you see it varies all the way from someone like um Einstein
Silicon Valley half a silicon Valley's got a bit of the spectrum they tend to avoid the labels and then you got on the
other end of the spectrum somebody very very severe you see it's a huge Spectrum it's a much bigger Spectrum than
something like dyslexia now when I worked on my book The autistic brain we looked at the
history of diagnosis it was kind of shocking how much things have changed you know nobody's changing
the diagnosis of tuberculosis it's still pretty much the same yes there's resistant strains now we got to worry
about but it's still tuberculosis where in 1950 and 1970 they
blamed mothers you know the psychoanalytic approach then in 52 they
were mixing up um autism with schizophrenia this is the American Psychiatric association you see the
problem is these labels are science and the other half is doctors squabbling
around conference room tables and 1968 they just mentioned
autism it just sort of barely got mentioned and then in 1980 they finally came up with a definite diagnosis where
you had to have speech delay and other obviously autistic behaviors in 1987
they added PDD NL pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise
specified well what is that 1994 they added aspirers well now if
you're just a geek and a nerd and you're socially awkward you now get an Autism
diagnosis because you no longer had to have speech Delight well now in 2013
they decided to take out the Aspergers and now the whole thing is very mudded because what about the speech delay in
the abnormal language well that's all kind of fled now then they started a new
um new diagnosis called social communication disorder and they're trying to say say that's not autism what
do you think the core problem is in autism it's socially awkward it's sort of like you take out some social circuits in the brain you end up with
geek circuits to do all the fun geek stuff now the genetics is complicated
it's not a simple thing you know lots of little tiny code variations involved with the DNA that um that's involved
with the brain development it's complicated you know what people don't
Less than of the 2% DNA Codes for proteins
realize there only two to% or less of the DNA actually codes for proteins
makes the animal what does the rest of the DNA do well when I was getting my
PhD at the University of Illinois um they used to think non-coding DNA was rubbish or junk DNA
no it's probably the operating system it tells the other DNA what to do so when
you fold the genome all up coding DNA comes against non-coding DNA in some
unknown pattern in my work with animals um I got new edition now of my book um
genetics and the behavior of domestic animals um it's a textbook um if it
sells a thousand copies that's a best seller for a textbook
and and and one of the first things in the first edition we looked at was how
traits are linked the famous experiments by the Russian scientist BF and he
wanted to breed foxes that wouldn't bite your hand off so they selected foxes to be gentle and they ended up with a black
and white border collie fox dog you see coat color was linked to temperament
yeah traits are linked over select for single trait you're going to have a lot
of problems and this article in science and nature a bunch of articles on the encode project you know somehow maybe
Our results start to place genes and regulatory elements in three dimensional context revealing their functional relationships.
there's some kind of mathematical relationship on how the operating system system works okay all you aspy hackers
out there I challenge you the ultimate hack is the non-coding DNA I mean why do
you want to mess around with people's Visa cards and things like that when you can hack DNA a lot more interesting and
a lot more valuable but the problem is we don't really know how the operating system
works okay I like to look at variation and personality trait sort of like a music mixing border or audio mixing
board you know you can make anxiety a little less you can make anxiety a little more you can make depression a
little less you can make visual thinking more or less mathematical thinking more
or less these things are on AUM see what the problem with top- down
verbal thinking is once someone gets labeled autistic there's a tendency sometimes to
overprotect you know like oh well little Jimmy um you know he's got Aspergers or
autism he doesn't have to order his food in the restaurants I go yes he does that's the kind of stuff that my mother
always had me doing I had to do stuff she had me be a little hostess at her
cocktail parties so I'd learn social skills really important stuff like
that now being a visual thinker was a really big asset in my work designing
equipment and this is actually a curved um round crowding pen going up to the Shoot To Go in one of the beef packing
plants that I worked on and when I design something I can test run it in my mind now if you want to see
how this works you can go on YouTube I have a video called beef plant video tour with temple grandon then you can
see how it works now people always ask me did the cattle know they're going to get slaughtered well I had to answer
that question and I found they behaved the same way at the slaughter plant as they do in the veterinary shoot yes
there's some stress but if they knew they were going to die they should be jumping out and
they used are not doing that okay I used to joke around that had
a huge visual thinking circuit a big graphic CF in my brain and it turns out
that I do have a pretty big circuit in my brain for visual thinking this goes all the way back into the visual cortex
it's probably in the top of 25% and when you're a weird nerd and
you're trying to get your business started I found nobody wanted to talk to me me but when I showed them my drawings
they went oh you did that well then I got respect you see I started out my
business freelance one little project at a time and one of my big concerns where you got kids labeled dyslexic they're
labeled ADHD they're labeled mildly autistic Asbergers is I'm seeing too many smart kids that are way less severe
than me and they're not going anywhere they're getting addicted to video games they haven't learned job skills around
age 12 boy I wish the paper routes were around well let's find a substitute for
paper routes things like walking dogs for the Neighbors how about um working on a neighborhood website something like
that um they've got to learn how to do work and there's a scene in the HBO
movie where I walk up to the to the head of the farm and ranchman and I get his card I actually did that you know I
started out one little freelance article at a time one little project at a time
building up a freelance business in fact I know a lot of people
out in the meat industry that are mildly on the autism spectrum in good jobs like
they run the um maintenance engineering shop at a large Plant start out entry level then work up I know two people
that uh run metal fabrication companies and they run them they own the companies
I'm people that do it for major corporations you see as I go back and and forth between the livestock world
and the autism World um I'm just seeing too many kids kind of getting
overprotected no you got to get them out you got to get them out doing things and when I was 15 I didn't want to go to my
aunt's Ranch my mother said well you could go for a week or two or you can go
all summer but not going was not going to be an option they weren't going to
let me become recluse in my room well and this is another brain scan
was done in 2010 can and what the blue part shows is basically water cereal
spinal fluid my left parial area is pretty well trashed out that kind of wrecked the math department I did just
fine with Elementary School math and I hit a wall at algebra so how did I get through college well back in ' 67 The
Fad at the time was finite math that was sort of the big fat everybody was doing
probabilities matrices and statistics and with 10,000 hours tutoring I managed
to get through that that absolutely saved me I'm getting worried today with
all this emphasis on stem that my kind of mind is going to get locked out you
know but I'm going to show you where you need my kind of mind you know as I've said in my previous Ted Talk world needs
all kinds of minds and they can work together and complement each other well
back in ' 68 I had access to the same computer that Bill Gates had had access
Malcolm Gladwell uses this example in his book outliers you and he basically said well if you have enough access to
the education and enough time to practice everyone can become an expert I wanted to learn how to program the
computer but I couldn't do it I just couldn't do it and one of the things I
want to emphasize is build on the kids area of strength when you get kids of
different labels they tend to have uneven skills build on the strength my ability and art was always encouraged
you know if I hadn't had art and sewing when I was in school I would have gone nowhere but I was encouraged to do lots
of different kinds of Art and I just got back in Quebec and in Quebec I just
found out that art um uh dance and theater all required classes up there
you know the French culture seems to value that
and let's look at Steve jobes Steve jobes was an artist he wasn't an
engineer he was an artist and you know what turned him on when he was in college even though he dropped out calligraphy he was fascinated with
calligraphy and that's why computers have nice fonts you know it was the art mine that
designed the user interface on every single smartphone that there is it was not an engineer Engineers have to make a
work see this is where you have to have the two kinds of Minds working together and I'm going to give you some other
examples of where my kind of mind that can't do Algebra is needed this is one of my most important slides I am a
Develop Talents in the Individual's Specialist Brain 1. Photo Realistic Visual Thinking Object Visualizer - Poor at algebra 2 Pattern Thinker Spatial Visualizer Music and Math - Poor in reading 3. Verbal Facts Language Translation - Poor at drawing 4. Auditory Thinker - Visual perception fragmented
photorealistic visual thinker let's call an object visualizer everything I think
about is in a photorealistic picture now when I was young I didn't know that other people um didn't think this way I
thought everybody was a visual thinker you know then gradually I learned that
um other people think differently than I think kinds of jobs I'm good at is in industrial design there's a whole
college major in industrial design people that are visual thinkers are very good at things like fixing cars and
skilled trades I think one of the worst things the schools have done is taking out all the skilled trades classes
absolutely the worst you know you've got people to
young people today they don't cook they don't sew I was sewing up a RI and some
clothing last night and I was wondering if a young person even knew how to use a needle and thread U they've never had to
do those things um woodworking welding okay I talked about the guys that own
the two metal fabrication shops that was welding but the other thing about doing those Hands-On classes is they teach
practical problem solving you know real projects don't always work out just the
way you want them to work out you know then you make a mistake or you don't have some of the materials can you
figure out how to to substitute another material that's resourcefulness and then you have the
pattern thinker the spatial visualizer these are the kids that are going to ace all the math stuff but the ones that are
really brilliant in math often have trouble with reading and I'm seeing some very bad situations where I see a kid
who's a little brilliant mathematician in the third grade and they're making him do that baby math over and over
again well you'll just end up with a behavior problem if he can do the high school math let him do the high school
math also we got to get a lot more into what are they going to do when they grow up
and in my autistic Brain book I discuss all these different kinds of Minds then
you got the verbal facts thinker these these guys they're very good with anything with words they understand
words and obviously most so-called normal people are mixtures of these uh
different kinds of thinking now we need to have evidence today that this is not just some U
nonsense that I've made up and the autistic Brain book has got all the references for the evidence of the
two types of visual V thinking you know that there's the object visualizer and then the more where you are in space see
in your brain you got circuits for what is something that's my kind of mind
another kind of circuit is where is something where are you located in space
that's the mathematician mind and there's also um a some pet scan studies
that show that this is this this actually is real and I found these studies while surfing one night at the
on the internet 2:00 in the morning I found these studies they were kind of Hidden Away you know there's sort of
this bias that everybody is exactly the same now there's a big amount of brain
plasticity there's a big bunch of people in the middle range yeah you practice enough you can get really good at a lot
of different things U I wasn't very good at public speaking to start with and I walked out of my first graduate school
talk you know I think I come a little bit of a way since
then but then there's other things where it'd be better off just to work on on developing the
strengths you know there's two ways to do the math there's the verbal way and there's the more geometric way some of
these kids that are really smart at this stuff they don't show their
work well I think people need to understand they think differently we need to take some precautions against
cheating but once we've done that then accept the fact that they think differently now I want to give you a
little glimpse into the mind of the mathematician this is not my mind that praying manice is made out of a single
sheet of folded paper no cuts no tape in the background is the folding pattern
that certainly is not my mind and there are some beautiful origami stars some kids gave me there I
always like to show my drawings off because when you're weird nerd I learned that you got to sell your work rather
than yourself during an interview we got to figure out ways to shortcircuit that process and you never know where you
might meet the person that open the door so your portfolio better be on your phone here's gorgeous artwork that Jesse
Park did she's more at the moderate level this is a good example of of
developing talent and getting a person to do work other people want she was
obsessed with electric blank blanket controls well nobody wants that for
artwork we had to they had to get her off that and here's some beautiful artwork that another person on the
autism spectrum at the moderate level is making and both of these artworks are being sold
professionally all right what's this mess okay Gearheads out there okay
Engineers this is a reason why you need us art mines that can't do Algebra uh what's left there is
something you don't want to get very close to it's the remains of the Fukushima nuclear power plant and when I
found out why this burned up why they had you know breach of containment
radioactivity going into the ocean total mess how did this happen so I read lots
and lots and lots of articles I spent a lot of time on the plane reading I'd go buy three newspapers and I would read
everything about it and I piece together what happened they made a mistake that
to a visual thinker is so Elementary I could couldn't believe that they had made this mistake well you know when you
scram a reactor and you shove the control rods back in it almost turns it off but there still it gets hot and
you've got to have an emergency cooling pump to keep water going through it well
they put all that equipment and the generators that run that equipment in a basement that was not
waterproof all right so what do you think happened diesels do not run
underwater that's what happened that's a mistake I would never
ever make and you know I go wait a minute you got to have some submarine doors here that crank shut you're going
to need some sump pumps if the water's leaking you know in there well if they'd had those simple things things I
understand things I think you understand wouldn't have had this problem we really do need all kinds of Mines now in my
first work with cattle I noticed that they were afraid of a lot of visual detail like for example this flag
waving okay animals notice detail you see an animals world is sensory based
it's not word-based and I noticed they they notice all kinds of detail in the environment and refus to walk through a
shoot and if I got rid of all these little distractions then they would you know go
right through the shoot now how many people there noticed that that animal was locked onto that Sunbeam like
radar okay you see that's being attentive to visual detail getting back
to the slaughterhouse I found if I got rid of stuff like that I'd walk right in the slaughter house this amazing I can
go in Meat Plant Do What I Call lights and cardboard and I get a portable light on a long extension cord where I can
light up a dark shoot entrance then I get cardboard to cover up something that might be making a shadow like that it
works it's amazing lights and cardboard really does work well of course some of my earlier
work was making an optical illusion room when I was in uh high school and my teachers didn't tell me how to make it
they wanted me to figure it out for myself that's what I had to do it wasn't
easy animals World sensory based so when they remember something it's a picture
let's say an animal gets afraid of something okay like there was a horse that was terrified at black cowboy hats
white cowboy hats were fine but black cowboy hats were really scary don't want to be anywhere
black cowboy hats in human beings language covers up sensory based thinking there that type of Alzheimer's
whereas the language parts of the brain are trashed artwork like this comes out or van go was painting star night and
putting swirls in there and he didn't realize he was doing mathematics the mathematicians got a hold of this this
My thinking is bottom up Concepts consist of specific examples placed in categories Everything is learned by specific examples
is an important slide and it's true for both um lot of people on the autism spectrum it's true for me it's also true
for Animals bottom up thinking everything is has learned by specific examples and I was just at a really nice
bookstore last night and I noticed a book they had out there about a Genus dog at border colleague that learned all
these words and when they trained that dog it was all specific examples
everything specific examples they had to teacher categories for different types of toys okay balls versus sticks or
something like that that's done by specific example you want to teach a kid with autism things like up and down you
need to use seven or eight different specific examples otherwise they might think up just meant up the stairs no the
kite went up in the air the cup was put up on the Shelf I picked up the paperclip youve got to use a bunch of
different specific examples everything is learned by specific examples and specific examples are put into
categories that's how my mind works it's also associative not linear it's
associative thinking so if I see in my mind the picture of United Concourse B I
was just in there the other day my mind can either go into a glass structure category or an airport category you see
my mind works like Google search engine and I'm going to show you a brain circuit that I've got that what that's
going to explain that and there's no generalized pictures of any of these things it's all specific it's what's
called bottomup thinking we need a lot more bottomup thinking in government policy that's something we really need
we got people coming right out of college with agree in something like political science or public
administration and they're going right into politics or lobbying but they have
no practical experience with any of the stuff that they're legislating or or lobbying about and I think it is a real
problem that's why we got so many bad problems today okay glass structure category go through those quick how
about airport category yeah they're all specific and U oh Atlanta big security
lines okay all right and when I asked a physics Professor one time to think
about a church staple instead of getting specific ones the way I do he got
pictures of motion of people praying and singing and swaying I go oh wow trippy
that's not my mind now animals make categories let me show you one that
found in the cattle industry okay we got a man on horse the cattle can get will get real close to the man on the horse
they feel comfortable with the man on the horse but when the guy gets off the horse and is on foot the Catt will run
away but think about it man on a horse is a different picture than man on the
ground you you've got to train them to both animal thinking is extremely
specific and I talk about this in my book animals in Translation how do we categorize a
problem when we're troubleshooting is there something wrong with equipment or something wrong with training or are you
People training vs. equipment design problem A major design fault vs. an easy-to-fix glitch
working with a kid is it a biology problem like sensory over sensitivity or
is it a behavior problem like frustration because they can't talk or I want to get out of doing something or I
want to get attention I find categorizing problems really easy but if you want to be good
at troubleshooting you need to be able to categorize things here are the lucky
Geeks they got to land the Mars rover on Mars but I'm seeing the younger versions of
too many of these kinds of guys getting addicted to video games and I'm hearing this story well I can't get him out of
the basement he's 18 I can't get him out of the bedroom no they weren't going to let me become a recluse in my room this
is what makes me crazy because I've been out to Silicon Valley I've been to Disney imagineering I've been to Google
I've been to Pixar I've been to a whole lot of different places oh it's all full
of people mildly on the autism spectrum you know all kinds of people
there some of them old older people now where a diagnosis later in life can be
helpful is an understanding relationships but when we're dealing with these more milder people on the job
front I'm seeing them get held back not learning any work skills kind of overprotecting some of these kids what
you got to do is you got to stretch them you got to push them just outside that
comfort zone don't Chuck them in the deep end of the pool don't give them sudden surprises but if you don't stretch them
they don't develop I was more interested in looking at pictures of things than pictures of people but we need people
interested in things after all Tesla who invented the power plant probably was autistic you got to stretch them mentors
I had a fantastic science teacher you know you got to expose kids to interesting things to get them
interested in interesting things if I hadn't been exposed to an optical illusion room I would not have gotten
interested in it you know sort of Imagine their heads got like a the internet and you got to fill it up full
of web pages you got to go out there and show them interesting stuff kids today don't just play together and make up
their own games you know you got to learn how to negotiate when I was a little kid we did lots of stuff with
turn taking these kids have got to learn how to take turns wait and take your
turn my ability and art was always encouraged we need to get a lot more emphasis on building up areas of
strength and then you go what about the school requirements I'll tell you right now there's a lot of Industries with no
barrier of Entry oh oil industry screaming for certified welders right now you want to get to run five oil rigs
you're a really nice 26 year old guy uh that likes to drink Coke in his hotel
room instead of getting blasted on beer and you do a job for like seven or eight years you'll run five oil rigs I mean
there's a lot of Industries out there where there's absolutely no barrier of Entry oh the computer field is
definitely one of those Industries you show off a good portfolio of all your programming you're in you know
industrial design all kinds of stuff like that okay great online resources
Con Academy Udacity free programming classes if that kid wants to spend eight hours a day learning programming he can
do that wants to learn how to make video games code academy I didn't put down code academy another free programming
corsera free courses in every field lots of humanities classes but you've got to
do that as a college course you know it's not at your own pace there's a lot
of great free stuff on the web now there's one of my designs in Google SketchUp SketchUp is free software well
let's get kids together that are kind of different and have them in a SketchUp club and then they can get to print
their Creations on a 3D printer which makes their their creation out of plastic resin well 3D printer is a
mechanical device this is where electronic interfaces with the real physical and you don't do things right
it will print you pile of goo rather than printing your thing you know it is interacting with the real world you know
but getting back to making things I was very disturbed today to look in the newspaper the Chicago Tribune today and
they had SD's model rockets already pre-made I was an SD's model rocketer
when I was a kid but we had to build our own Rockets we had to make them you just got cardboard tubes and bolts of wood
and you had to build them here's some other great online science projects when I was in high school not
doing much studying I was learning lots of work skills you know I decorated our
skiel house up really nice by the time I got out of college I had done a ton of work skills
stuff where are we going to find mentors oh there's lots of retired people that could Mentor some of these kids that are
kind of different I'm really concerned are Educational Systems Failing to stimulate some of the especially the
I am concerned that our educational system is failing to stimulate and educate the visual and pattern thinker
more art type of thinkers like me really worried about it that we're going to just get marginalized you know and but
the thing is the mathematician Minds need us let's look at another big
gigantic engineering mistake airbags that killed babies and young children well there's no way I would have made
that mistake that was an example of blindly following a specification that the airbag had to had to restrain an
adult man with no seat belt well what you know you better do up your seat belt guy because an airbag is strong enough
of that is going to kill little cats wouldn't have made that mistake either you know already discussed about the
problems of taking out the Hands-On classes this is the stuff that saved me horses model rockets and electronics lab
those are the only places I was not teased The Bullying stuff has really gotten out of hand what people are doing
on Facebook I mean 12-year-old girls bullied another girl wrote horrible
things on Facebook to the point where she jumped off an old abandoned cement plant and killed herself you know I that's like
completely terrible last night on the TV um people thought it was funny to take other picture other people's little kids
pictures and put them up on a fake Facebook page and make fun of them you know that's got worse on some
of this teasing stuff not better you know we need people in this country that can get out there and do
real stuff yeah and that means involving making things businesses can't find enough
mechanics they can't find enough high level programmers there's a lot of places out there where there's shortages
of jobs I'm just seeing too many talented quirky kids I'd rather call the wild
aspirers that just kind of going nowhere you know they're playing video games
collecting a social security check and they shouldn't be and then I go out to the meat industry world and here's the
guy that came out of the trailer park and he's not doing that he is U running the maintenance shop now people in the
trailer park are going to have a terrible time with the more severe cases of autism they're going to end up just
going absolutely nowhere see this is the problem you have with autism it's such a big Spectrum but you know those ones
real mild ones they had to work okay you sell your work and not
Keys to Successful Employment on the Autism Spectrum Sell your work, not yourself . Ask your boss for specific goals and work outcomes Bosses need to correct mistakes and give specific instruction. Don't be vague.
yourself also I learned that I had to um ask my boss for specific goal when I
worked for the farm and ranchman magazine I knew I had to do a certain amount of articles there were certain things I had to cover there was certain
meetings I always had to cover certain livestock shows I had to cover then I was free to do um uh to do some features
it was clear like what I was supposed to produce and when there's a mistake the boss cannot be vague like for example
let's say we're training somebody to be a Museum tour guide you got to demonstrate the correct distance you
Examples of Specific Instructions for Museum Tour Guide Demonstrate correct distance between people Demonstrate correct greeting . Give assessments of performance; similar to coaching a character to be in a play
can't just say oh were you too aggressive with the patrons you've got to say well watch Susie how
she does it you got to demonstrate the correct greeting it's just like coaching an actor in a play that's how you've got
to do it now I want to discuss problems with sensory you know Sound Sensitivity
visual sensitivity problems these are things that happen in conjunction with a
lot of different labels sensory processing problems and they can range from being a nuisance to being something
that really is very very debilitating when I was a child in the
and the and the school bell went off it hurt my ears we used to go on this ferry boat and when the horn blew I just flung
myself down the deck started screaming because it hurt my ears um another problem I had is I had
problems hearing hard consonant sounds like if you said rat cat or bat a very
hard time differentiating those so my speech teacher when she worked with me when I was very young she'd slow down
and she'd enunciate her hard consonant sounds she'd say cup and then she'd say
cup she'd go back and forth and I was a kind of kid that in the 50s used to just
get put in an institution because when I was three years old I had absolutely no language at
all okay done some brain scanning with Walter Schnider University of Pittsburgh
and this is a circuit for speak what you hear the speak what you hear circuit
this type of scanning can track uh fiber bundles in the brain that are sort of
like a cable bundles that connect up all the different parts of the brain now
that is a Cable bundle that goes from the language motor area down to the
visual cortex for speak what you see this is
mine and I all those different bushes you can see there that they've actually cut off the ends of the bushes because
they go all over the brain and basically the way my mind works is I have a
language-based visual search engine in other words you can put keywords in and it pulls up all kinds of other um um all
kinds of pictures now the thing is there's still a Continuum here you can see that the normal circuit he got a few
bushes on it at what point the extra bushes become an
abnormality okay there's no black and white dividing line now the reason why this scanner was developed was a it's
all funded by the defense department to look for head injuries in in veterans now if you have a head injury these
bundles will be ripped and they look like spaghetti bundles where you twist it and break half of them and it's like
oh man go this guy's in trouble but when it's a developmental abnormality you know what point are more bush is
abnormal but it's not clearly black and white now the price I paid for all those
bushes which I think have a lot to do with visual thinking I have less bandwidth for speak what
I speak what I see I had trouble getting my speech out getting speech out that
was really really really hard and and I but I had bandwidth okay getting back to
the malcol Gladwell thing well I got a few fibers there so they were able to you know maybe expand those and and I
could do a I finally learned how to talk another problem that happens lots of times in autism is a tension shifting
Takes longer to shift back and forth between two different things
slowness it takes longer to shift back and forth this is why I didn't want the photographers down there in front of me
because okay I see a move down there shifts my attention and then I just um
lose my train of thought some kids when they go to read the print will jiggle on the page
and this doesn't explain all reading problems maybe it only explains 10% of reading problems but I'm finding about
one out of 50 the so-called normal population has this problem see in the
back of your head you got circuits for shape color and motion they got to work together something's wrong with how
those circuits work together sometimes some very simple treatments will work for this things like pale pastel paper
get away from fluorescent l these are the kids that can't tolerate 60 Cycle oldfashioned type fluorescent lights
they um things like a checkerboard pattern on the floor will drive them crazy because I can kind of see it doing
this um things colored lenses sometimes help some of these
kids well there's my head all right that is the connectome
hopefully there's some gray matter in the space there I hope and I'm but what
this shows is the white matter circuits that connect up different brain
departments and this new scanning technology they can actually dissect out the cable bundles that do the different
things because with this technology you can tell do two melinated fibers Cross
or are they an intersection that's connected you know Bridges versus intersections it can tell the
difference well there's the connectome with out um rest of the
head and some other scan findings show that my fear Center my amigdala was uh
much bigger than normal well and that's been helped now with anti-depressants there's a lot of visual thinkers I know
visual thinking designers they're not autistic but a little bit of proac in the morning really helps um I've been
taking um anti-depressants for about over 30 years they sto
my constant panic attacks you know in the movie that showed me in my 20s and I
was eating all that yogurt and Jello the reason why I was eating the yogurt and Jello is is I had colitis and when I
went on the anti-depressants the colitis kind of got cured it made the colitis
stop but you got to use really low doses of anti-depressant otherwise you're
going to have problems okay here are some accommodations for the workplace
getting rid of 60 Cycle fluorescent lights I need a quiet place to work there's some individuals may need
frequent breaks also no sudden surprises in work routine and I still can't stand
scratchy clothes and I have found that some cotton itches and other cotton does
not itch and I really don't know why now I had a terrible time in a regular large
high school and I was kicked out for fighting in nth grade for throwing a book at a girl who was bullying me she
called me a and then I went away to special boarding school for gifted
kids with emotional problems you got to remember this is 60s this is 60s you got to remember that and and I got in some
big serious fist fights and they took horseback riding away for a while I
still could clean the horse barn but I just couldn't ride them and I switched from anger to crying it's okay for geeks
to cry it's okay for boys to cry NASA space science cried when they shut down the space shuttle and they did it on 60
Minutes you know you can go and look that up you know looking at some of these
It Takes a Village to Raise a Child Communities need to work together to help kids succeed. Includes teachers, local businesses, neighbors, religious organizations, and professionals
things we got to get a lot more resourceful on how we deal with these
kids you know let's think about these girls that wrote the awful things on that Facebook page like drink bleach and
die that was one of the things they wrote on this other girl that commits suicide that's the printable stuff the
other stuff they wrote is not repeatable um and okay so they're putting a felony
charge on these girls a better thing to have done they're 12 and 13 years old a better thing to have done would be to
pull them into a big meeting maybe with the with the judge the prosecutor the
police School parents you know relig you know the the priest or Rabbi or whatever
all together and and the prosecutors there saying well I can sign this form you know get wrapping you with a felony
or you are banned from social media and you're 18 and you're going to be doing a lot of community service especially with
um with people that have been bullied and they have that that would be a more constructive way that would be the take
the Community Way using a community to work with them and I've read some interesting stuff on on getting you know
um gangs cleaned up and stuff by taking this kind of approach I where
um okay you know now you have a family member with severe autism you see this is the problem if you have very severe
autism even with good treatment you may not be able to do normal activities you can't go to a football game you can't go
to the supermarket without the being a tantrum from sensory overload that's really stress stressful for the family
you know and we've got to get um supports for those families one of the things we got to do we need to do this
in everything is getting people out of their silos you know one of the problems with the government agencies they don't
communicate with each other people have got to get to where they start communicating with each other and then I
got to show some pictures of this because we're building a new therapeutic Writing Center at CSU show that there's
a webside up there because defin we need we got to raise the money to build this and because the states have cut
back all the budgets now for every state college everywhere uh and and since I'm an a
this state right here cut all the budget for Future Farmers of America program which is an egg program for high school
kids which is just terrible because for some of these kids that are kind of quirky and different that's the greatest
program learn how to fix tractors learn how to weld uh you know everyone needs to eat okay now what we got we've got
enough time here to do questions I'm supposed to save 15 minutes for questions and I can go until four
minutes after 12 because I'm allowed exactly one hour okay they've got
um that's the mic I didn't realize that mic was the one
you were going to use well I've got a roving mic now I can't see out here very well but um hopefully oh they're going
to turn the house lights up good good I think somebody's over here because I
would definitely like to do a few
questions okay hopefully we can get it to somebody yes I can't see okay
good hello is an animal lover I'd like to thank you for all your work with uh
the Humane treatment of animals I really appreciate that well thank you thank you
very much and uh on a rather simplistic level
I as an animal lover I uh do things like buying uh cagefree eggs and then I was
devastated to hear someone on TV the other day say well if you buy those eggs
that sounds really good on the curtain but it really isn't so it depends upon
how the cagefree eggs are done what you know it depends how they are done exactly you see this is you see this
this is the problem on a lot of things um you know what's really going on in
the world is somewhere in the middle what I think is going to happen in egg is you're going to have things like you know cage free eggs cage free eggs to
really do them right they are going to be more expensive now what are we going to do about our people that are working
at minimum wage they have to buy the cheapest eggs for their kids all right let's go to a large scale commercial I'm
not going to use that buzzword factory farms that um is's going to provide some amenities for the chickens like for
example they can walk at full height and walk in the normal posture what do chickens want they want a private place
to lay their eggs you know they don't like to do that out in the open perching scratching place it's called a colony
house or a colony cage that probably be a sensible alternative for you know
large scale commercial eggs and then for the cagefree eggs they'll work well
where they don't work is where you try to get the stocking densities too high and then you end up with a big dust mess
they do work fine at lower stocking densities but then you have to have maybe five times more buildings than
You' have for for um you know large scale commercial you see things aren't
quite so simple sometimes you get people pro and con on an issue and they try to oversimplify it
my book animals make us human actually discusses these issues and it is for sale in the
bookstore okay right here just say it real loud loud and quickly and I'll I'll
repeat it okay it's a Calico mix
cat tortoise cell and Calico we got some weird genetics there you might be interested in my genetics and the
behavior of domestic animals book
the cat gets panic attacks she's very very easily overstimulated I can't tell
what is overstimulating her and what isn't you have to be so careful okay the thing is now this also ties into some
autism stuff you got a cat that gets over stimulated and what does it do when it gets over stimulated she can for no
apparent reason to me I can be holding her and she'll suddenly scream and literally I think you've got a I think
you've got a psychom motor epilepsy there really are you serious and you can also get this in some very very very
severe uh cases of autism where where you get a sudden you know jump up knock
the wall out I she's not that severe but she will cry and she will jump straight
up in the air and God help you if her claws are near you yeah but that's Pro you see when it comes on like a switch
right and and this can happen in some people especially nonverbal individuals with autism you get it's where that
they're not in a noisy store they're in a quiet place you know now if they're having a meltdown in the middle of
Walmart that is just plain sensory overload in fact that's a really good way to tell if someone on the spectrum
is really sensitive uh just but when it's something out of the blue like this and the cats in a quiet place and then
just does that that's probably a psychomotor epilepsy that is treatable
with standard epilepsy drugs used for humans you need to find a veterinarian that's skilled in using those drugs in
your area also there's a book by Karen overall it's a little outdated now but
it's available on Amazon on medications for Animals Karen overall spelled like
overalls U I don't know if she's updated it or not but that sounds like a typical psychomotor epilepsy and if you get
something like that similar in a non-verbal person uh it's treatable with epilepsy drugs thank you so much Temple
oh Dr grandon hi I'm over here okay I can't tell which way the sound's coming from anyway I'd like to talk um more
about um the parent over over hovering over an
autistic child trying to find a reasonable balance for my 17-year-old
daughter I wanted to know do I go get her a job does she get her something oh you need to grease the job you need to
grease the skit some my mother when I was 13 I saw a a house where a lady um
did freelance sewing out of her home just in the neighborhood and she went in talked to the lady explained the
situation I now had a little volunteer job two afternoons a week taking apart dresses and hemming them and she liked
me so much she started paying me you know me mother set up the ranch stuff no you need to set up some things for your
17-year-old daughter okay first of all what is she good at this is a subject I really like to talk about what she good
at I actually um struggling with that but she Lo she goes to Regular high school and what what is
her F best class she loves the anime club anime club well first of all we need to get the art ability more
broadened she's taking graphic design in SCH she taking graphic design the second level so she's already passed the first
level so she's really good at art stuff well how about working on a neighborhood newsletter how about she actually
interested in doing yearbook okay good let's encourage all that kind of stuff
but if she hasn't had any job at all you need to set up some job it could be something like like um U you know
helping at the farmers market every weekend you help set the tents up uh doing something in the park with some
children's program or you know just find stuff in the in the neighborhood and it can be volunteer stuff that's fine but
she needs the discipline of a job okay every Saturday afternoon at two you're going to help old Mrs Jones get our
groceries you just set up stuff like that okay um okay thank
you hello I was wondering how you feel about mainstreaming um of all different
kinds of Minds in the same room do you think that well it all depends upon the particular situation right but do don't
do don't get too to down thinking on that right that's something that gets a lot more specific situation now I
generally with little kids want to see them mainstreamed into a normal classroom but let's say let's go back to
the little Math Genius well right if he can do college math in third grade you
get a laptop loaded with college math software and you bring it down to the third grade classroom because I want the
social of the third grade but you don't make them do the baby math right so
different so different Minds should be able to be trained in different ways and sometimes in the same room oh definitely
they can be trained in the same room the room that is just frankly too much for the teach sometimes it doesn't work I I
uh I I talked to a very nice teacher who was in Colorado talked for about half an hour about a student she had was
non-verbal student who made a lot of very disruptive no noises he was not
able to participate in the class at all that was not working but then there's other situations where that non-verbal
student may be working just fine I also get asked all the time about public versus private schools and all that
stuff I I said I don't even want to hear that I have found is I travel around there's so many things depend on the
particular people and the particular situation and and how the parents and
the teachers get along parents and teachers have got to be on the same
wavelength I I cannot emphasize that enough when I had a tantrum at school
the penalty was no television that night that was the the penalty that was the
rule whether it happened at home or happened at school uh now I was not punished for
flinging myself on the deck of the ferry when the horn went off because that was strictly sensory overload but um we've
got to um we've got to get them on the same page I want to I what I don't want
to see I'll tell you some things I don't want to see I don't want to see a smart fourth grader that's fully verbal put
into an Autism class mostly with non-verbal clients uh that I don't want to see because then that Asperger end
going nowhere when maybe he ought to go to Silicon Valley see this is the problem we've got with autism when the
kids are very little and you have speech delay they all look the same you work hard on early
intervention really really hard and I'm a everybody any kid who not talking at
age three needs to be in an ear early intervention the worst thing you can do with those kids is do nothing with
them and when I get down south where there's no services at all I say you got to go to your church group you got to go
get students you got to get someone to work with these kids okay then when you work on them they kind of diverge into
two into kind of three groups real high-end group um maybe really you know math geniuses art you know stuff like
that but they have some skill deficiencies could go into a high level career there's kind of a moderate group
and then there's a group that does does not become verbal and it's definitely going to have to live in a supported
living situation see this is the problem how did all the how did such a broad thing get all called autism because when
they were three they all look the same you know when the little kids and then the Asbergers thing that had no
speech delay but now they've merged that in now it's gotten even broader and more murky hi okay yep I'm right here on your
right you see I can't tell what the sounds I'm right in between the opening okay my name is Mandy I'm a behavior
therapist and um a graduate student in Psychology um first I just want to say thank you for all that you've done for
the autism community
and so my question is you've talked a lot about how being um um a visual and
pattern thinker and developing that strength has been really helpful for you so I'm wondering how and when you figure
that out and how you were able to communicate that to other people in your life that's a really good a really
really good question my ability and visual thinking showed up around third and fourth grade eight and nine years
old you know the drawings and pictures I made in kindergarten and first graders are just normal little kids stuff you
know sometimes these things show up earlier but lots of times it doesn't show up that early now first of all the
kids that are the visual thinkers like me usually are really good at Art that's your first tick off also going to be
really good with Legos okay then your math kids they're going to be good at math they also tend to be really good at
Legos but they have the little math heads have trouble with reading that tends to be the pattern and the word
thinkers I'll they'll memorize um every fact about whatever their favorite thing is and that will show you know that will
show up sometimes they learn more than one language there are some word kind of
word math combinations that actually end up being good at programming now in my
book The autistic brain I fully discuss um how the different kinds of minds work
and provide scientific evidence for that um I work with both uh children and
adults with autism and especially a lot of the adults were really upset by the
changes in the dsm5 and these are adults that were were ASG that had previous Asperger diagnosis um so I was just
wondering your opinion on the changes if you think that they're legit or if you
think that there should be a separate Asbergers diagnosis well you see the problem is so you know the science is
kind of showing a Continuum um you know I think I think as more work's done with brain scans and
things like that start breaking autism up in the component parts see the problems with the eye with the face
recognition eye contact a lot of that social stuff that's the core deficit then you get into things like what kind
of thinker they are that's something different um it I think one of the
reasons for doing it was politics they were trying to narrow the Spectrum but I think all that's happened is has muddied
the waters as far as I can tell because now I'm what I'm I it varies a lot by
state by state kind of what's Happening some states are going to say they got to be re-evaluated others they're just
calling everything ASD and it's sort of more of a big muddle um it's still kind
of hard to tell exactly how it's going to work out see but the problem you've got here is that these Cate diagnostic
categories are half based on science and the other half is doctors fighting around a conference room table in a
secret meeting meeting and they got bashed for having secret meetings um in
hotel conference rooms you know that's not how you're supposed to do science you know as a scientist kind of rubs me
the wrong way I it it's I the other thing I want to talk about I'm getting
concerned too many kids autism is becoming their whole sense of being
especially kids on the higher end of the spectrum now people say to me if I could snap my fingers and make myself not be
autistic um would I do that no because I like The Logical way I think but being
working in animal science and doing my animal work that comes first I think it's important to have a profession and
have a sense of identity where the autism just is not the first thing I don't particularly like it when
nine-year-olds walk up to me all they want to talk about is their autism it's all they want to talk about
no I'd rather them talk about their they raised they trained dogs or something like that or there was a girl that
raised chickens for 4 project or they like astronomy or they like you know history or something you know I it it's
I get concerned where that becomes a total sense of of
being Dr grander well I think we have time for
one or two more quick ones because we'll be an hour we got one minute before it's an hour is up right quick right
there that's okay
okay quite basically what he's saying is that an unconventional path yes that's right I got in a lot of back
doors okay what mother what happened with me um mother got me my mother got
remarried that brought the ranch into the family and I got to go out to my aunt's Ranch but then by the time I
graduated from Franklin Pierce College um with a bachelor's in psychology mother had worked on setting up a a lot
of job stuff the sewing job the ranch an internship at a hospital that had a
autistic and emotionally disturbed children you remember this is 60s and a internship at a research lab where I had
to share a house with another lady that's stuff where she greased the skids and set it up then when I went out but I
also had been doing all these carpentry projects and I'd sold a few signs so when I went out to um Arizona I was in
graduate school well I went over to the Arizona State Fair and started painting signs for the carnival I sort of had you
know that entrepreneur I really did walk up to the Arizona fire ranchman guy and I got his card and and I said told him
about my Master's thesis you see and that started out one little article at a
time this stuff I did on my own you know start out just one little
thing on its time and you see then you start writing and you write about a subject then you start building up a
reputation in that subject also I figured out by the time I graduated that
certain people could open the door something that I figured out you never know where those people are going to
be we're g that's what I did um I'm so sorry um this is gonna be our last
question okay hi all right I don't know where you're at I can't see you okay one right
here there's some of the black uh oh all right or you can talk really loud I'll try to repeat it um I
just oh there was one other I didn't see it I can't I can't I can't see what's sorry okay I
just wanted to say first like I have ADHD and I really admire you because
you've come so far and you're and your and you've do you've studied animal cognition that you
come with all these great theories it's exactly what I want to do um but my main
question was that I that there's with artificial with artificial selection in
dogs and things like that there's those genetic traits that I know you've talked about oh there's really problems with dogs the Bulldog is like a deformed
freazy you want to see what a bulldog's supposed to look like go to Google images and type in Bulldog's dilemma and
you'll see the 1938 version my question was do you feel it's
unethical um to breath them or do you think we can actually like I know they're study saying we can learn from
the art the problems that come with them well I don't think we should be breeding animals either for pets or for food
where the animal has physical problems like lameness it's not able to have its
babies naturally it's got neurological problems Bulldogs can't hardly walk they
have to have their puppies by sarian uh they can't breathe CU I kept breathing
for that smashed in face um I have problems with that you know we shouldn't be breeding animals that are physically
defective either for food or for for pets and you over select for single
trait you wreck your animal and U you'd probably be a fan of my behavior you know second edition of genetics the
behavior domestic animals and I
and well it can be ordered for many bookstore
[Applause] [Music]
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