Did Michelangelo have a form of Autism?

[Vader]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/3765509.stm

Some feel he may have. Then again how can it ever be proven or disproven now?

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Duct tape is like the force they both have a light side and a dark side and they bind the universe together.

[extropalopakettle]

Every now and then another article comes out that says so-and-so was autistic (or had Asperger's syndrome). Einstein, Newton, Bill Gates, ... Who knows? I've worked with autistic kids and have an interest in the condition and societies misunderstanding of it, but I never really paid much heed to these stories. Maybe they were, maybe they weren't.

[Legion]

I suppose the question is 'so what?'

[Vader]

I too have worked with people that have Autism, and various other disabilities so this just interested me. As far as the so what question I just thought it would be a good discusion. I'm glad to see that something is being brough to the table.

[Legion]

Is autism really considered to be a disability?

[extropalopakettle]

For some people it certainly is. It's often refered to as "autism spectrum disorder", spectrum meaning there is a wide range from severely autistic to "neuro-typical". Even for "high functioning" autistics (above average intelligence, excellent language skills), not having the intuitive grasp of social skills that most people take for granted can make life very stressfull.

[MTGAP]

[Antrax]

Smarter? I personally don't consider an idiot savant to be "smart".
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After years of disappointment with get rich quick schemes, I know I'm gonna get rich with this scheme. And quick!

[Zag]

I recently read Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's. It gives a great inside view of someone with Asperger's.

The author has been through extensive training and gone to extensive effort to learn to be socially appropriate, such that he now has a degree of empathy that was foreign to him growing up. He says that, having now dedicated a big part of his brain to this effort, he is no longer as "smart" as he once was in the areas that he used to be genius.

For example, he used to be able to design circuit boards for amplifiers, creating great amps with no distortion, or else creating different effects intentionally. He says that he could just "see" the sound waves, transformed into electrical waves, and then modified as they went through the circuit. He now looks back on some of the designs that he made (and are still used) and he has to work to understand them. In some cases he marvels at how anyone could come up with such an elegant design, when he briefly forgets that it was he who did it.

He does conclude, however, that he is glad for the trade-off. He still remembers how lonely and miserable he was back when sound waves and electronic circuits were the only form on communication in which he was proficient.

I have seen this somewhat in my own life. When my math genius son was only 3 or 4 years old, he could "gestalt" up to 11 items. That is, I could pull a handful of small objects (dice, say) and spill them on the table, and he could instantly say how many there were without counting or grouping and adding. Most people can do this up to 3 objects, and many people can do 4 objects, but hardly anyone can do 5. (Try it. You can't just "see" that it is 5, you'll see a group of 3 and another group of 2.) He also could instantly tell you what letter of the alphabet was in any position, going from number to letter or vice-versa. I know that by 6 years old he couldn't do that. We've never repeated the gestalt experiment, but I'd be surprised if he could do any more than a normal person.