oh and CSI is a great show, sometmes stiff and sometmes silly but it really tries hard, the acting is good and the cast play well off each other. Grissom is an interesting lead, he's full of quirks and the detection/deduction stuff is excellent (even though the police procedures and timing are, uh, dramatically enhanced shall we say!) - but i have pathologist friends so... a little bias in my enthusiasm maybe! and i love the sara sidle character (in the photo).
as for Autism - well, it isn't a THING, it's not concrete, it's an umbrella term* covering so many potential traits, reactions and behaviours that may or may not be present in an individual. But the idea of 'Autistics' having 'Superior right brain functioning' is just - well 1) it makes them 'different' = they have different wired brains to us! (yeah right). but 2) 'superior' = 'special' which is another way of distancing and objectifying people. and lastly the idea that the brain functions in a simplistic polarised left/right fashion is, as i delight in repeating, utter bollocks. The sensory input and neural reaction/communications systems of the brain are a heck of a lot more complex than that. And really all we KNOW is that we don't know.
slightly o.t. (feel free to slink away now while i just waffle on!) but it was hilarious some years back (early 90s, earlier maybe) when the left/right thing was first being touted a Japanese Professor became quite famous for analysis proving that Japanese men listen with the left sde of their brain, whilst Westerners use their right side. This is why oriental musc and theatre can seem so bizarre and atonal to non-Japanese.
Until another Japanese Professor pointed out that this was a cunning way of saying 'See we're different than you - we have better brains!' and very thoroughly (ie with transparent and well validitated methods) debunked the whole thing. Much egg on the face of Prof 1 and certain western journalists who had been reported the 'alien nature' of the oriental mind-set.
so, you have to laugh.
yes there is a left and right to the brain but it's more like a football pitch, the players can change ends and the teams can change formation. patients recovering from major head trauma and/or brain injury have been shown to be able to therapautically utilise very unexpected areas of the brain to compensate and adapt. so it's not so simple as the left brain does THIS and the left brain does THAT. Abouthe most useful thing we know is that there the two sides can work independentally and that if you don't keep both stimulated then you can get very fatigued.
*part of a crude spectrum running roughly from dyslexia through aspergers, through autism and eventually ADD (more especially Adult ADD - bt covering a plethora of other elements and none of these labels is likely to remain fixed as research develops.
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Date: 2009-05-09 03:38 am (UTC)oh and CSI is a great show, sometmes stiff and sometmes silly but it really tries hard, the acting is good and the cast play well off each other. Grissom is an interesting lead, he's full of quirks and the detection/deduction stuff is excellent (even though the police procedures and timing are, uh, dramatically enhanced shall we say!) - but i have pathologist friends so... a little bias in my enthusiasm maybe!
and i love the sara sidle character (in the photo).
as for Autism - well, it isn't a THING, it's not concrete, it's an umbrella term* covering so many potential traits, reactions and behaviours that may or may not be present in an individual. But the idea of 'Autistics' having 'Superior right brain functioning' is just - well 1) it makes them 'different' = they have different wired brains to us! (yeah right). but 2) 'superior' = 'special' which is another way of distancing and objectifying people. and lastly the idea that the brain functions in a simplistic polarised left/right fashion is, as i delight in repeating, utter bollocks. The sensory input and neural reaction/communications systems of the brain are a heck of a lot more complex than that. And really all we KNOW is that we don't know.
slightly o.t. (feel free to slink away now while i just waffle on!) but it was hilarious some years back (early 90s, earlier maybe) when the left/right thing was first being touted a Japanese Professor became quite famous for analysis proving that Japanese men listen with the left sde of their brain, whilst Westerners use their right side. This is why oriental musc and theatre can seem so bizarre and atonal to non-Japanese.
Until another Japanese Professor pointed out that this was a cunning way of saying 'See we're different than you - we have better brains!' and very thoroughly (ie with transparent and well validitated methods) debunked the whole thing. Much egg on the face of Prof 1 and certain western journalists who had been reported the 'alien nature' of the oriental mind-set.
so, you have to laugh.
yes there is a left and right to the brain but it's more like a football pitch, the players can change ends and the teams can change formation. patients recovering from major head trauma and/or brain injury have been shown to be able to therapautically utilise very unexpected areas of the brain to compensate and adapt.
so it's not so simple as the left brain does THIS and the left brain does THAT. Abouthe most useful thing we know is that there the two sides can work independentally and that if you don't keep both stimulated then you can get very fatigued.
*part of a crude spectrum running roughly from dyslexia through aspergers, through autism and eventually ADD (more especially Adult ADD - bt covering a plethora of other elements and none of these labels is likely to remain fixed as research develops.