Autism and Animal Behavior
Zoo animals kept in barren concrete cages become bored and often develop abnormal behavior such as rocking, pacing, and weaving. Young animals placed alone in such environments become permanently damaged and exhibit strange, autistic-like behavior, becoming overly excitable and engaging in stereotypical behaviors such as self-mutilation, hyperactivity, and disturbed social relations. The effects of sensory deprivation are very bad for their nervous systems. Total rehabilitation of these animals is extremely difficult.
Animal and human studies show that restriction of sensory experiences causes the central nervous system to become hypersensitive to sound and touch. The effects of early sensory restriction are often long-lasting. Puppies reared in empty concrete kennels become very excited when they hear a noise. Their brain waves still show signs of excessive excitability six months after they are removed from the kennel and housed on a farm. The brain waves of autistic children show similar signs of excessive arousal. Further experiments with rats have illustrated the damaging effects of restricting normal sensory experiences. Trimming the whiskers on baby rats causes the parts of the brain that receive sensations from the whiskers to become oversensitive, because there are no incoming touch sensations. This abnormality is relatively permanent; the brain areas are still abnormal after the whiskers grow back. It may be that the autistic child's abnormal sensory functioning causes his or her brain to develop secondary abnormalities because of distorted sensory input or a lack of such input. And these distortions may affect what are considered normal emotions.
The environment a young animal is raised in will affect the structural development of its brain. Research by Bill Greenough, at the University of Illinois, indicated that rearing rats in cages with toys and ladders to play with increased the number of dendrites, or nerve endings, in the visual and auditory parts of their brains. I conducted research as part of my Ph.D. dissertation that indicated that pigs engaging in abnormal rooting, owing to being raised in a barren plastic pen, grew extra dendrites in the part of the brain that received sensations from the snout. Construction of this abnormal «dendrite highway» may explain why it is so difficult to rehabilitate zoo animals that have engaged in years of stereotypical pacing. This is why it is so important to start therapy and education when an autistic child is young, so that developing nerve endings can connect in the right places.
Autistic Emotions
Some people believe that people with autism do not have emotions. I definitely do have them, but they are more like the emotions of a child than of an adult. My childhood temper tantrums were not really expressions of emotion so much as circuit overloads. When I calmed down, the emotion was all over. When I get angry, it is like an afternoon thunderstorm; the anger is intense, but once I get over it, the emotion quickly dissipates. I become very angry when I see people abusing cattle, but if they change their behavior and stop abusing the animals, the emotion quickly passes.
Both as a child and as an adult, I have felt a happy glee. The happiness I feel when a client likes one of my projects is the same kind of glee I felt as a child when I jumped off the diving board. When one of my scientific papers is accepted for publication, I feel the same happiness I experienced one summer when I ran home to show my mother the message I had found in a wine bottle on the beach. I feel a deep satisfaction when I make use of my intellect to design a challenging project. It is the kind of satisfied feeling one gets after finishing a difficult crossword puzzle or playing a challenging game of chess or bridge; it's not an emotional experience so much as an intellectual satisfaction.
At puberty, fear became my main emotion. When the hormones hit, my life revolved around trying to avoid a fear-inducing panic attack. Teasing from other kids was very painful, and I responded with anger. I eventually learned to control my temper, but the teasing persisted, and I would sometimes cry. Just the threat of teasing made me fearful; I was afraid to walk across the parking lot because I was afraid somebody would call me a name. Any change in my school schedule caused intense anxiety and fear of a panic attack. I worked overtime on my door symbols because I believed that I could make the fear go away if I could figure out the secrets of my psyche.
The writings of Tom McKean and Therese Joliffe indicate that fear is also a dominant emotion in their autism. Therese stated that trying to keep everything the same helped her avoid some of the terrible fear. Tony W, another man with autism, wrote in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders that he lived in a world of daydreaming and fear and that he was afraid of everything. In my case the terrible fear did not begin until puberty, but for some autistic people it starts in early childhood. Sean Barron reported that he felt pure terror during the first five or six years of his life. The highly structured environment of the classroom reduced some of his fear, but he was often afraid and anxious in the hallways.
The intense fear and anxiety I used to experience has been almost eliminated by the antidepressant medication I've been on for the last thirteen years. The elimination of most of my fears and panic attacks has also attenuated many of my emotions. The strongest feeling I have today is one of intense calm and serenity as I handle cattle and feel them relax under my care. The feeling of peacefulness and bliss does not dissipate quickly like my other emotions. It is like floating on clouds. I get a similar but milder feeling from the squeeze machine. I get great satisfaction out of doing clever things with my mind, but I don't know what it is like to feel rapturous joy. I know I am missing something when other people swoon over a beautiful sunset. Intellectually I know it is beautiful, but I don't feel it. The closest thing I have to joy is the excited pleasure I feel when I have solved a design problem. When I get this feeling, I just want to kick up my heels. I'm like a calf gamboling about on a spring day.
My emotions are simpler than those of most people. I don't know what complex emotion in a human relationship is. I only understand simple emotions, such as fear, anger, happiness, and sadness. I cry during sad movies, and sometimes I cry when I see something that really moves me. But complex emotional relationships are beyond my comprehension. I don't understand how a person can love someone one minute and then want to kill him in a jealous rage the next. I don't understand being happy and sad at the same time. Donna Williams succinctly summarizes autistic emotions in Nobody Nowhere: «I believe that autism results when some sort of mechanism that controls emotions does not function properly, leaving an otherwise relatively normal body and mind unable to express themselves with the depth that they would otherwise be capable of.» As far as I can figure out, complex emotion occurs when a person feels two opposite emotions at once. Samuel Clemens, the author of Tom Sawyer, wrote that «the secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow,» and Virginia Woolf wrote, «The beauty of the world has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.» I can understand these ideas, but I don't experience emotion this way
I am like the lady referred to as S. M. in a recent paper by Antonio Damasio in Nature. She has a damaged amygdala. This part of the brain is immature in autism. S. M. has difficulty judging the intentions of others, and she makes poor social judgments. She is unable to recognize subtle changes in facial expression, which is common in people with autism. In developing many varied, complex ways to operate the squeeze machine on myself, I keep discovering that slight changes in the way I manipulate the control lever affect how it feels. When I slowly increase the pressure, I make very small variations in the rate and timing of the increase. It is like a language of pressure, and I keep finding new variations with slightly different sensations. For me, this is the tactile equivalent of a complex emotion and this has helped me to understand complexity of feelings.
I have learned how to understand simple emotional relationships that occur with clients. These relationships are usually straightforward; however, emotional nuances are still incomprehensible to me, and I value concrete evidence of accomplishment and appreciation. It pleases me to look at my collection of hats that clients have given me, because they are physical evidence that the clients liked my work. I am motivated by tangible accomplishment, and I want to make a positive contribution to society.
I still have difficulty understanding and having a relationship with people whose primary motivation in life is governed by complex emotions, as my actions are guided by intellect. This has caused friction between me and some family members when I have failed to read subtle emotional cues. For instance, it was difficult for my younger sister to have a weird sister. She felt she always had to tiptoe around me. I had no idea that she felt this way until years later, when she told me about her childhood feelings toward me. Motivated by love, my mother worked with me and kept me out of institutions. Yet sometimes she feels that I don't love her.
She is a person for whom emotional relationships are more important than intellect and logic. It pains her
