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PART 1
Information
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CHAPTER 1
Research Related to Asperger Syndrome
BRAIN STUDIES
In the past, medical researchers concentrated mainly on comparing the physical shape of the brains of people with and without AS. No clear differences in shape were found, however. Recently, a new line of inquiry has produced some clear answers: there has been some research showing that people with AS and those without it use different parts of their brains to think and solve problems. (In this book, I will be using the term “the majority” to refer to people who are not on the autistic spectrum.)
On the following pages, I present the results of two related research studies published in recent years, one led by Dr. Robert Schultz (Schultz et al. 2000) and another led by Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen (Baron-Cohen et al. 1999).
Study 1: Schultz et al. (2000)
In each of the four boxes below is a pair of photos. Schultz and his colleagues asked subjects (participants in their study) to look at each pair and guess whether or not both photos were of the same person or object. Fourteen of the subjects were on the autistic spectrum, and 28 were people in the majority. While the subjects were looking at the pictures and thinking, the researchers determined which parts of their brains were being used. (The correct answers are as follows: Box A shows two different people; Box B shows the same person twice; Box C shows two different objects; and Box D shows the same object twice.)
The same, or different?
Results
The red and yellow areas below are the areas of the brain that subjects were using when they looked at the photos and thought about each question.
First, take a look at the top row. The green frames show the parts of the brain used by people in the majority in situations A (when looking at people’s faces) and B (when looking at objects).
What about people on the autistic spectrum (bottom row)? When these subjects worked on the task of distinguishing faces, they hardly used those parts of the brain at all. Instead, they used much the same part of the brain used by majority subjects to distinguish between objects.
So here we have clear evidence that people with and without AS have different types of brains. Moreover, the study provides evidence that this difference is responsible for the difficulty that individuals with AS often have remembering people’s faces and distinguishing between two people who look similar.
Study 2: Baron-Cohen et al. (1999)
This study included six subjects on the autistic spectrum and 12 in the majority. The researchers showed subjects photos like the one below and asked them to guess the emotions of the people in the photos by looking at their eyes. The researchers then determined which parts of the brain subjects were using while doing this task.
Is the person in this photo concerned, or unconcerned?
The correct answer is that the person in the photo is concerned.
Results
As we did with Study 1, let’s use colored frames to analyze the results. When attempting to guess what the person in the photograph was feeling by looking at the eyes, people in the majority used the parts of the brain shown in yellow and blue. Meanwhile, people on the autistic spectrum also used the parts of the brain shown in blue, but not those shown in yellow; instead, they used the parts of the brain shown in red (not used by majority subjects).
Cross-sections from the bottom portion of the brain…
This research study provides further evidence that people with AS use different parts of the brain from people in the majority when solving the same problem.
HOW COMMON IS THE TYPE OF BRAIN THAT CHARACTERIZES THE AUTISTIC SPECTRUM?
People with AS are in the minority
Studies have shown that the percentage of people on the autistic spectrum (people with any of the conditions listed on pp.11–12) is about 1 percent of the world’s total population, with results ranging from 0.9 to 1.2 percent. In other words, one in a hundred people have an autistic spectrum condition – many fewer than the number of people who don’t. This is my reason for referring t...
