can we talk about autism and music

this is a really interesting question. i hope you find some good info.

http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~susan/bib/nf/g/covers/10298.jpg

Define "normal folks." This stupid whimsy insults many people I know who don't consider themselves in any way deprived in connection with "art and sciences." It's even more odious when comparely to people who are severely mentally and emotionally diminished.

The peculiarly dumb shit American superstition: There must be something queer going on with people who show any excellence in science or arts.

have there really been an inordinate amout of autistic artists/scientists out there and who are they and how do they work?

No. Where did this fool's meme come from? Have you actually ever gone to school with or been around any number of real scientists? Why don't you apply this ninny logic to all professions which require some rigor and dedication? Have you come face to face with physicians who are rendered dysfunctional by autism or Asperger's syndrome? Do you think the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project or the Apollo program were autistic? Are you privy to some secret history on these things that no one else knows about?

Do you think Edward Jenner, the father of the vaccine, was autistic or suffered from Asperger's? How about Isaac Newton? Or Galileo. Or Dick Feynman. Or Hans Bethe. Or Enrico Fermi. How about Jonas Salk? Cat got your tongue? Do you think Anthony Fauci, one of the leading AIDS experts in the world, might by autistic? How many of your college professors in the hard sciences were Asperger's sufferers?
How about the guy who helped wipe out smallpox in the world for the WHO, D. A. Henderson?

Did you even know of such people or are "scientists" just a vague group for you?

this is a really interesting question. i hope you find some good info.

Unequivocal evidence of the complete failure of the educational system.

I'm sure there are insider views on this question

I'm sure you are speaking as a ninny.

I remember an article in Wired that may be on line about this question...? It was interesting, and more of an 'insider' view.

Have you ever walked the walk and talked the talk with scientists? Wired magazine, geesh. Have you ever read Science or Nature or the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science or the New England Journal of Medicine or JAMA or The Lancet? There's no insulting of people's intelligence with crap about how scientists suffer from neurological disorders or that predisposition to such things amplify one's aptitude for science.

It's also way far from obvious that the musicians commonly chronicled, criticized, extolled and examined on ILM are neurologically perculiar or impaired.

The term I hear most often is "neurotypical".

My son is autistic. His interest in music doesn't seem very different from that of any other 6 year old. He likes the Human League, because he likes the way Phil Oakey sings.

Many people have "some characteristics" of autism or asperger's syndrome. This is because they are spectrum disorders. Many of the characteristics of ASD are not unusual in themselves, it's the degree to which people feel them, or suffer from the, or wtfe.

Anyway, the main thing that people think of w/r/t autism and music is the whole savant thing, kids who can bang out incredibly complex pieces of piano music at an unbelievably young age or whatever. This is actually very uncommon.

The only ASD/AS related thing that I find interesting w/r/t music is reading gary numan's lyrics on "The Pleasure Principle". They do seem to me to express some sense of "otherness", which is, or is supposed to be part of the condition, very well.

I agree w/jed w/r/t the fetishisation thing. Our kid's life is often going to be very difficult because of his condition, and he is at the upper end of the spectrum. The difference between him and his peers is very plain to behold.

xpost fwiw, many many people I know described themselves as borderline AS/ASD when outr kid was diagnosed, who WEREN'T. I had to develop a thick skin

xposts

Ah, right, so people with mental disorders are inferior in every way to "normal folks". So inferior, in fact, that it would be to "odious" to compare a normal person with scum like them. To suggest that people with autism might possibly have something unique worth contributing to human culture is political correctness gone mad.

er, multiple xpost

er...i'm just going to go back to lurking

i'm going to go join marissa marchant's fan club.

On the other hand it doesn't seem unthinkable that certain mental abnormalities could have some positive effects. Aspects of high functioning autism in particular might well be conducive to intellectual or creative activity.

I know little about autism. A good friend's son has been diagnosed Asperger's, but they live in another city, and I haven't seen the boy in four years. When we talked, he was more comfortable if there was a prop that could be the center of attention. For instance, it was easier for him to focus on a dog when talking to me, and make the dog the main subject, than to speak directly to me, or look at me.

I'm curious about why people have tried to retroactively diagnose Wittgenstein with Asperger's. Isn't one of the features of autism a difficulty in reading social cues, especially in reading motives and tone of voice? The biographies of Wittgenstein do paint him as both demanding and displaying a candor that was almost dysfunctional. But his books are among the most nuanced in their use of language of any that have ever been written, with voices constantly interrogating other voices, often shifting from ideas that were his own to ideas that he considered enticing but very wrong, guiding you very subtly so that you first see the ideas as plausible and as potentially his, and then you follow them along to where their taken to their falsity, and clearly not his. (I'm not explaining this well. My language skills aren't up to Wittgenstein's.)

(I obviously don't have anything to offer on how an autistic's use of music would be different from someone else's.)

Because it's layman pop psychology and semi-entertaining bullshitting?

Have you ever read Science or Nature or the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science or the New England Journal of Medicine or JAMA or The Lancet? There's no insulting of people's intelligence with crap about how scientists suffer from neurological disorders or that predisposition to such things amplify one's aptitude for science.

This is fairly accurate.

there is a much higher prevalence of austism related disorders amongst hi-tech workers children than in the average community.

No. There will have to be furnished a real scientific epidemiological survey before getting people other rubes to smoke it See below.

For example, this from the NIH:
====
Prevalence estimates for autism spectrum disorders for the United States are
unavailable. However, recent studies from Canada and Japan indicate that autism
spectrum disorders may not be as rare as heretofore assumed. Studies from those
countries indicate that prevalence rates are greater than ten per 10,000. There
is a need to increase research efforts in epidemiology in order to understand
etiologic factors, rigorously characterize high-risk groups, identify comorbid
conditions, clarify the relationships between disorders (e.g., Asperger's
syndrome and autism) and document their broad range of expression. Of particular
interest are developmentally-focused, longitudinal epidemiological studies that
follow children and families over time. Areas of interest include, but need not
be limited to, the following:
===
Full announcement:

http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-98-108.html

Also consider:

Autism and many of the autism spectrum disorders are characterized by significant
impairment in both verbal and nonverbal communication, deficits in emotional
understanding and expression, difficulties in initiating and maintaining verbal
interaction, and a limited behavioral repertoire with restricted interests and
activities. Longitudinal data are limited, so the course of communicative,
social and emotional development in children with these disorders is poorly
understood. Longitudinal studies of communication combined with techniques such
as neurochemistry and/or neuroimaging are needed to elucidate their underlying
biology and the interplay between biological and environmental influences on the
course of lifespan communicative competence.

====

If you read this document thoroughly you'll find there is keen interest in basic research on autistim disorders to the genomic level.
Ther is interest in developing fundamental understandings of impairments, outcomes of treatments that exist, the effect of environment and complex variables on patients with the spectrum of problems. There is no request in the call for grants on the study of autism spectrum disorders as they relate to allegedly hypertrophied scientific or artistic abilities.

i'm sure it varies wildly from person to person, but i've read that many austistic people say they are not insensitive to social cues, but generally cannot respond in a traditional way. however i don't know anything about wittgenstein and certainly just one thing shouldn't make folks suspect he was. i know the evidence for bill gates having aspergers is pretty intense. also, don't really know if there is some trend of proclaiming certain scientists/artists as autistic, or if there is some recognition going on...which i think would be a positive thing.

by the way, the neuro-diversity movement which has been adopted by many communities of mentally-different people, began in the austistic community; there are many individ. and their advocates who feel there is no disease, who (gasp), like they way they are...meanwhile, the medical community is fairly aggressively treating on all manif. of autism as disease and they are looking for a cure. i'm not sure why all this fascinates me. its not a fetishistic thing, more of a --if different thinking folks have stuff to bring to the table but aren't being nurtured, - being silenced/shamed/ignored etc., even spending too much time trying to adopt ways foreign to their thinking when maybe its not that critical-the whole world suffers. and b/c i think in a certain way, i might connect with the creative outpour. but i'll stop posting on this topic unless i come up with any interesting connections with music.

I feel the same about high functioning autism in electronic music (I can't speak for any other field). It seems quite prevalent, from the inside at least. I am just comparing the qualities of the aspergic cluster of traits - which tend to pick out the highly repetitive, obsessive and bizarre behaviours of an individual (we all have a few) as particularly noticeable in about half of my electro muso friends. It's almost as if you have to be, to make electronic music: or at least, to bang away at it for days on end ignoring meals, girl/boyfriends, the garden etc, and never really getting to grips with dealing with people or social situations in general.

I could be wrong, but I'll go with my personal experience until science can tell me otherwise.

i've read that many austistic people say they are not insensitive to social cues, but generally cannot respond in a traditional way

According to the New York Times, people with Asperger's have trouble with subtext; e.g., when asked "Do I look good in this dress?" they don't realize that "No" is never an appropriate answer, since they don't perceive the underlying unstated question, "Do you still find me attractive?" (Most men, by the way, are afflicted with Asperger's. They develop upper-body strength to compensate.)

also, for purposes of closing this thread, I should make it clear that I really wasn't thinking about the savant aspect of things when i wrote this thread, although i'm not sure if that came across. I realized this when someone brought up the HYPO-scientific/creative issue and how folks weren't studying that with regard to austists etc. I was more thinking about how this different way of thinking might lead to different understanding of science and a different flavor of creative expression and god knows what else -and a deeper connection between the two somehow?? as far as i can see there should be reasons for interest...simply the nature of the disease -minds working but not really integrated, there are many more males than females with autism -which is odd (Cambridge University suggested it might be some form of "extreme maleness" (which i think is kinda palpable)), also the fact that a lot of hi-functioning autists are at the center of the neuro-diversity movement... its kinda interesting, and yeah sure that there seems to be a tech connection with this group. I've thought about all this from time to time, but the thing that reminded me again was Ellen Allien's new album ... yet hard to explain why. Its something about how she relates organic systems to seemingly non organic symptoms or seemingly organic systems to non-organic (you get it) through their basic structures and how its very very boiled down. Also, my realization that a lot of people would probably think it was a dry sound or might not "feel" the images it produces for me and also thinking about how it ultimately fails and why? and did it have to? etc. In addition, I've always felt her music was very "male" and I wanted to stop saying that b/c its more "male" than anything i've heard from men. Its just some common denominator I associate with male thinking and wanted to explore its roots more. Anyway, I tend to think like Moley with this stuff... I see what I see and until proven otherwise I'll just continue believing. and pretty tired talking about this in pseudo-scientific terms and also fielding pseudo-academic smackdowns. er. so there.

Damn, I was looking for another thread, and I found this one - blast from the past both about how nasty ILX could be in 2005, and also how ... *limited* people's understanding of what autism is/isn't, was in 2005. (I mean, the ~male brain~ bullshit and the ~fashionable now~ garbage upthread is just offensive - but I couldn't say my understanding of autism was any better at that time?)

I wanted to talk about stimming, because I was curious - y'know, what does stimming do the brain chemistry, that it *feels* so good? And when googling, all I could find was medicalisation after medicalisation and annoying articles from parents asking how they could *stop* their children from stimming. (Why would you want to stop something which is so beautiful, so useful, so calming, and amazing?)

Because what I wanted to talk about, was the use of music for stimming. I spent much of Saturday listening to the same song over and over again, and even listening to the best *part* of the song over and over again until I put myself into a state of almost manic excitability and getting chills up and down my skin. The best thing about being autistic, is that one does not habituate very easily - something which is pleasurable the first time will be even more pleasurable the second, fifth, twentieth time! (But the flip side of that is that something that is *annoying* the first time will never stop being annoying at the same or increasing levels of annoyingness.) I think I was still in my teens when I realised that the *pleasure* I derived from music was far more extreme than most of my peers - and it wasn't until I found places like ILM that I realised there were other people who experienced music this way. That autistic sensitivity makes music absolutely *amazing* in a way I don't know if more neurotypical people experience?

I think there is a connection between some forms of electronic music and autism, but I'm not sure I can adequately express it? The griddyness of sequenced music is very pleasing. The repetitiveness is very soothing. Like, there's a particular motif - and it comes from Kraftwerk, I wrote a whole essay about why Kraftwerk's music is so great for autistis! - of scratching back and forth between one or two notes, while changing a filter sweep, or something which slowly alters the tonal quality of those two notes. And that combination of "exactly the same" plus "changing in a predictable pattern", for an autist, is like scratching the bit of your mind that nothing else can reach, and nothing in the world feels quite so *good*.

At least, it does for me, an autist who is extremely highly sensitive to sound.

I really wish that more non-autists would concentrate less on what seems bad or unusual or debilitating when dealing with autistic people, and listen a little more to come to an understanding of the joy, the pleasure, the intensity of it. Like, how much of what makes for a Good Pop Hook is what makes for a good audio stim toy, the itchiness of it, the catchiness of it, how many times you can hear it before it loses its flavour.

I used to keep a great resource list of autistic bloggers which I sadly don't have any more and the politics of stimming was a regular source of discussion.

I don't know if you've come across this site Branwell but it seems fabulous: https://www.stimyourheartout.com/

From my presumed neurotypical perspective I've often found something deeply satisfying about the "readability" of electronic music - I can see how the pieces interconnect, it's fugal like Bach or something and that creates a degree of fascination in being able to follow each of the constituent parts as they interact, almost like you can see how the music "works" in some way that's different to denser musics. Also yeah a lot of electronics foregrounds timbre and texture in more obvious ways.

Stupid work have blocked that site for some reason - will have to read it on my mobile. Thanks, I will check it out!

(I'm reading even the National Autistic Society's reccommendations and they are as a group, generally quite good, but I'm recognising some of the stuff that was done to me to try to control my 'obsessions' and it didn't diminish them at all, it just drove them underground and made me feel a sense of *shame* about them.)

Is electronic music really more readable in that sense? I completely understand what you mean - following the different threads of instrumentation and seeing how they interact and harmonise - or don't. It's easier to follow simpler instrumentation - a 3-piece power-punk band with guitar-bass-drums is also quite easy to follow the threads. But lots of electronic music, especially the dance variety, is deliberately stripped down to only the 'important' parts.

I don't know; as one starts to understand more about music, one can learn to follow more and more complex structures - from understanding what a string quartet is doing, to understand what every part of a full orchestra is doing. Paying attention to each strand, or letting it merge into one big texture. Sensitivity to music on that level isn't *necessarily* an autistic quality - but I think that the intensity of general autistic sensitivity makes it overwhelming in a very pleasurable way.

Just really noticing lately, the combination of 'intensity of a really exciting new Special Interest' plus 'stimming really stimmable music' is just such a source of joy and pleasure!

Not autism, but reading the above reminds me of hearing this discussion of whether Mozart had tourettes

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2117611/

My son spends hours every day on YouTube with a mix of fishtanks, water-features, playstation game d+b, electric fans, swimming pools, chopped and screwed horror versions of C-beebies themes all sorts of loud and quiet "music" or what could be loosely termed field recordings! When I had to endure the dreaded Section 47 this complete dickhead advised me I should have safesearch on to protect him from Islamic State propaganda or any unsuitable youTube content, I'm not being facetious about Islamic State - the fucking clown actually used that as an example. I felt like saying I'm a card carrying member of IS, deal with it you smug bullshiting prick! Anyway I didn't apply any oppressive filter to his youtube experience and lied to them that yes I agree safesearch is just the kind of mindless neurotypical interfering condescension he needs to ruin his enjoyment of sounds + images, of course I will play along with it.

I've done the dreaded PREVENT training three times now, it does something terrible to people's brains

It just made me join IS with calz

It's strange but interesting how much understanding more about my Autism has led me to understand my own listening habits more.

For as long as I've been obsessed with music, I've noticed this pattern, where I've become really, really obsessed with *one particular band* (or individual or style of music) and just really tunnelled and gone deep-digging on that artist. Because it gets to a point where I don't really want to hear any other music but that artist, like, nothing else will do, nothing else will scratch that itch - and I might spiderweb out a bit, through connections which lead to other interesting things that become interesting *through* their connection to the Current Most Interesting Band.

I always thought it was something really special about the *music* that made it so interesting, and kind of searching for what strange connection that there might be between bands as disparate as Spacemen 3, Aphex Twin, Radiohead, Secret Machines/SVIIB, Kraftwerk, Neubauten, and whoever else I've obsessed on over the years. (And that weird experiment where we tried to see if we could make ourselves *like* an album through repeated close attention to it - and I found that not only that I could make myself like a band like Interpol, but that literally, the act of *paying close attention* to something could indeed lead to a Special Interest as much as *paying close attention* could be the result of a Special Interest.) But it turns out, there's nothing inherent in the music that makes it obsessable to me (though I suppose what they generally have in common is that they are very closed-system bands in some way) - it's that I have an obsession-shaped brain.

There's nothing really inherent about the *things* that I like the way I do... it's that I *like* liking things in that way?