Blogs

The Autism Spectrum

A cognitive neuroscientist explores autism, Asperger's syndrome, and related disorders.

by Lindsay M. Oberman

Lindsay M. Oberman, Ph.D. is a cognitive neuroscientist studying autism spectrum disorders. See full bio

April 22, 2008,

Comments on "Let Me Introduce Myself"

Let Me Introduce Myself

By Lindsay M. Oberman, Ph.D. on April 22, 2008 in The Autism Spectrum

I first want to introduce myself. My name is Dr. Lindsay Oberman. I am a researcher in Boston Massachusetts and am currently working at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center of Harvard Medical School. My research over the past several years has focused on the brain basis of autism spectrum disorders. Read More

Fascination with this "disorder"

Submitted by Angelique on May 4, 2008 - 2:37pm.

I am a speech-language pathologist who is working with a decent sampling of young children and teens with both ASD and AS.

I am alternately amazed and annoyed by their ill-pragmatic behaviors as well as their communicative intents--or lack thereof. The prevalance of this population (and the increasing numbers found in a family,(i.e. consectutive children) have me doing a lot of pondering.

I am glad I found your blog. I will follow it along and comment after I cogitate on the opinions and ideas.

Thank you for making this available.

Thank you for your interest

Submitted by Lindsay M. Oberman, Ph.D. on May 4, 2008 - 4:25pm.

Dear Angelique, Thank you for your interest in my blog. I look forward to discussing topics related to autism with the public and hopefully facilitating conversations. Lindsay

"ill-pragmatic behaviors as well as their communicative intents"

Submitted by Suzanne on July 4, 2008 - 11:56pm.

Perhaps you should talk less and say what you mean.

unusual cause of autism theory

Submitted by Andrew Lehman on July 30, 2008 - 5:35pm.

Hi,

Please consider visiting http://www.neoteny.org/?cat=7 to review a unique and unorthodox theory for the cause of autism.

Thank you,

Andrew Lehman

Lack of imagination

Submitted by laurentius@rexx.fsbusiness.co.uk on January 11, 2009 - 4:23pm.

It appears to me that you lack imagination, and the irony of that never escapes me, (yes you would deny my diagnosis because I use the Irony word) but it is you who are equally cognitively impaired, because you need to look in more than the two dimensions of your thinking.

ASD is a social construction, in fact all "illness" is, there is you ought to realise as a psychologist (if that is what you call yourself) a psychological element to the understanding of everything and certainly if you were to study comparitive (and I say comparative not complementary or alternative - are you still paying attention) you would realise that we are all creatures of our times and circumstances and that ASD is only existant now because the conception and terminology could not have existed before the 1940's even if the neurological interior landscape did.

You talk about complexity, but can you really see it?

You are simplistic, not even Ockhamistic, you do not realise or see objectively how your own cognition (all our cognitions NT and autistic alike) frame not only we know but what we can know (qv Lakoff)

There are holes in my cognition, and I daresay in Rumsfeld tradition there are also holes I don't know of because they are unknown unknowns, but at least I know they might be there just as the astronomers postulate about dark matter.

You see I am with Socrates and I know my limits, but do you know yours?

A brief course in the history of autism might enlighten you somewhat because the neurology is not even the half of it.

Re: Lack of imagination

Submitted by Lindsay M. Oberman, PhD on January 11, 2009 - 5:09pm.

Thank you for sharing your perspective. It is true that there are many things that the field does not yet know. We are detectives trying to understand the biggest mystery of them all, the workings of the human brain. The goal of this blog is to discuss some of the controversial topics in autism in an effort to enlighten us all.