23 ms·

An Experimental Autism Treatment Cost Me My Marriage

560 points by salgernon 11y ago

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
leemailll 11y ago
Is what he described different from popular view that autistic personal has a problem because they are incapable of handling their sense of emotions from others so they choose to avoid social interaction?
bung 11y ago
> It took me five years to find a new balance and stability. In that time, my sense that I could see into people’s souls faded. I wondered how that would go, we all go through years of social interaction and have to build walls. Nowadays, I don't know if my walls have become too thick or if I never had the same emotional range as others in the first place.
- mfoy_ 11y ago
  But without those walls you'd be as dysfunctional as the author in his first few years of experiencing emotion. Having some measure of "thick skin" is part and parcel for existence as a social animal.
  - bung 11y ago
    Yes, that's my implication.
  - hosh 11y ago
    From a meditator's perspective, developing a thick skin is the wrong direction for practice. That kind of thing creates a kind of contraction. The social mask constrains the natural expression of the person to the point where the social mask becomes confused with the person's identity. That's the stuff of therapy and existential angst. What this guy is experiencing is not so much different from a meditator who has recently reawakened empathy, or a psychonaut whose psychedelic experiences open up to the world of emotions. "Coping" is no longer authentic, and is seen for the illusion that it is. For such people, the dysfunction is not in the awareness, but in that most people around you lack sufficient awareness -- yet think they are "normal".
mfoy_ 11y ago
It's hard to imagine what it must be like to go from feeling no emotions to feeling them all, like the colourblind glasses. It's relatively easy to imagine seeing the world in black and white and then having the colour switch flipped. I can't imagine the same for emotion... what a wild ride it must have been. It must have been so painful at first, especially when he realized that some of his "funny friends" had really been making fun of him...
- hosh 11y ago
  Ask someone who is an experienced psychonaut or meditator. These kinds of experiential shifts can, and does happen to people. In this guy's case, it was an awakening of empathy -- however, there are other kinds of awakening, other kinds of consciousness shifts that people are not normally aware of.
  - coffeemug 11y ago
    I have gone through some of these shifts and they made a profound impact on me. I'm still learning to integrate many of the things I learned into my life in such a way that I can function in a modern society and remain authentic. It's very, very hard. Can you give examples of the other shifts you're referring to? I realize many of them may not have names (or may not have names in the western culture), but it would be very meaningful to me if you gave it a shot.
    - hosh 11y ago
      Awakening of empathy is one of them. There is also tele-empathy which lets you sense people who you could not have possibly read through body language. Direct experience of "oneness" is another one. This can range from feeling the interconnections of everything, to feeling that all is One (monism), and there ever just the One. Seeing through your acquired self is another. That sense that the acquired self -- the socialized personality -- has never been real. People often come back from that one thinking "my ego died". (Well, it often resurrects ;-) Another is direct experience of Nothing (similar to the Oneness experience), where things somehow, mysteriously, spontaneously arises and passes. Also related is spaciousness. Then there's a host of parapsychological effects which might make you feel crazy. They don't feel as insightful as the examples that I listed, but they do break down the conventional beliefs most people have and think of as "normal". For example, clairvoiyance, clairaudience, etc. There are actually transpersonal psychologists holding Ph.D.s who specializes in counseling for spiritual emergence. There's a great thread on Quora related to that integration process. I'd find it right now, but my wife is waiting for me to go with her to the grocery store. ("Chop wood, carry water" You never thought you'd understand that koan, eh? :-D) Feel free to email me at talktohosh at gmail.com if you want to continue this conversation.
opendomain 11y ago
Please note that the results are not reproducible. This effectively putting a current the the subject's brain and can be dangerous if not administered by a doctor
- gohrt 11y ago
  Also, it can be dangerous if administered by a doctor
- okigan 11y ago
  maybe should say: This effectively putting a current the the subject's brain and can be dangerous EVEN IF administered by a doctor
- ams6110 11y ago
  It can be dangerous even if administered by a doctor, I'd think. Doctors do many things that you'd normally never think to do, e.g. administer substances that are essentially poisons but have certain effects that are thought to be worth the risk compared to doing nothing.
- mediocrejoker 11y ago
  You mean this treatment has not worked for anyone else? Or are you saying that people at home should not attempt to reproduce it. Those are two very different statements, and the first raises many more questions about the original article.
- emodendroket 11y ago
  Rats, I was planning on zapping myself this weekend.
- KingMob 11y ago
  I think you mean "not reproduced", not "not reproducible". Presumably they are studying it now, and it will be reproduced, if possible.
orik 11y ago
It's too bad John felt he needed to seek treatment to 'cure' his autism. I was diagnosed when I was 17, and I get to interact with a lot of other students on the spectrum every day at my school. There are a few students that believe autism is something to overcome, and that if they try hard enough perhaps one day they won't be 'autistic'. Most of us are comfortable with the fact that we're different.
- seanmcdirmid 11y ago
  Everyone is different, their problems effect them in different ways, they have different dreams for the future. Live with it or cure it is a decision all of us make with different premises and conclusions.
- calebm 11y ago
  "The Speed of Dark" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_Dark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_Dark) addresses this topic.
- sliverstorm 11y ago
  What works for you, may not work for someone else. I know some very successful autistics who leverage it to their benefit, and some very unsuccessful ones who are dogged by it.
- gohrt 11y ago
  Why do people ever do anything to improve their skills? Why not just accept whatever happens and sit back and enjoy it?
  - hosh 11y ago
    Some people are wired to seek out improvement. Why not accept that some people will try, and some people won't?
- hosh 11y ago
  If everyone feels different, there isn't a need to downvote @orik's voice on this. Let's take @orik's observation at face value -- that "most of us are comfortable with the fact that we're different". In that case, who is uncomfortable, the people who are autistic, or the people who are not? The dysfunction is in the people who feel uncomfortable and have difficulty accepting someone as they are. By the way, I am not autistic. I'm speaking as someone who has had a lot of experience working with intense emotions.
barney54 11y ago
This experiment is similar to what happens in the novel The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon. http://www.amazon.com/The-Speed-Dark-Elizabeth-Moon/dp/1501278843 http://www.amazon.com/The-Speed-Dark-Elizabeth-Moon/dp/15012...
- conceit 11y ago
  Is that Brian Griffin's new book?
billhendricksjr 11y ago
Reminds me of Flowers for Algernon, my grandfather's favorite book.
- mfoy_ 11y ago
  Terribly sad and beautiful book. Totally recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it already.
- kimar 11y ago
  I love that book and it was the first thing that came to my mind reading this story.
  - NikolaNovak 11y ago
    Ditto... the first half of the article was eerily similar; and it makes you ponder some of the very same questions (including, is ignorance bliss?)
- teamhappy 11y ago
  Reminds me of Larry David in Whatever Works. (I should read more.)
- virtualwhys 11y ago
  Absolutely wonderful book, but in no way does Charlie, a just-above-mentally-retarded adult, remind me of a business owner, married with children, who falls somewhere on the Autism spectrum. I mean, seriously, Charlie undergoes a beyond belief transformation as a result of his medical intervention, and later...(won't spoil it, read the book), while the person in the linked article has an emotional awakening of sorts, which itself could have very likely been influenced by a midlife crisis and general dissatisfaction in a marriage to a chronically depressed spouse.
nxzero 11y ago
Unclear how it made sense to provide such a potential life changing treatment to someone that was likely more than halfway through their adult life. Is this common to perform such potential profound treatment when there's a very real chance of it having a negative impact?
- josinalvo 11y ago
  As it was experimental, I'd guess they did not know the size of the effect. If it gets out of the lab, though, I think an adult should always be able to make the informed choice, rather than being denied because he is too old. Your comment really pissed me off. The idea of having some doctor choose this for him is really a special kind of evil.
  - nxzero 11y ago
    Medicine is not the Wild West, in my opinion, the best most common example would be that most "medical" grade medicines require the approval of a doctor. To me, the idea that someone that's already well adjusted should literally be allowed to put there life at risk potentially is the very definition of malpractice. Lastly, age was not the factor, but the percentage of the fellows life already lived as "well" adjusted. To me, what's evil is the desire to make everyone the same for the sake of being the same.
    - josinalvo 11y ago
      > To me, what's evil is the desire to make everyone the same for the sake of being the same. No such desire here. In fact, I'd not be opposed to a treatment that made people autistic, or, for a (perhaps) more attractive proposition, synesthetic. As long as there is informed choice by an adult. You can want neurodiversity, and think it is a good thing. Maybe it is. But imposing it on others, for me, is not defensible. Now, setting diversity aside for a moment... > Medicine is not the Wild West... No. In general, we only allow people treatment when we think they have a disease(1). This idea has merits: for example, it seems "obviously better" to treat the hypocondriacs hypocondria than to allow them to take unnecessary surgery. But it also has problems: the definition of disease becomes a matter of consensus (i.e.: a political matter, even if the politics just happens amongst doctors - or worse, philosophers or politicians) and individuals are disallowed choosing what and who they want to be, by themselves. Perhaps the best way to go is to have a "waiting period", to force you to consider and seek alternative treatment before undergoing procedures that are dangerous. I dont know, and I fear this is one of those "really no good answer" questions. (1) This might be a circular definition, "disease" being a thing we can treat for
RangerScience 11y ago
I'm "spectrum" enough to have an opposite reaction to various drugs - Ritalin being the important one, here - and my experience is... similar, in some ways. I probably didn't notice other people's emotions a lot when I was younger, to the effect that now that I'm older, and do notice them, I frequently don't have any idea what to do with that understanding.
- hosh 11y ago
  From a meditator's perspective, there isn't anything to do other than to witness the underlying suffering, and giving space to the other person to be.
  - RangerScience 11y ago
    I have learned parts of that! But this is way broader than dealing with negative emotions - actually, it's other people's attraction that causes this state the strongest.
    - hosh 11y ago
      I know. :-) You should check out the practice in Tsultrim Allione's book, "Demon Feeding: Ancient Wisdom for Resolving Inner Conflict" some time.
  - ctrlalt_g 11y ago
    Do you have any reading recommendations for your practice?
    - hosh 11y ago
      Yep. Start with Vipassana. That by itself won't teach the psychology, but it does allow you to clearly experience and see the experiences arising and passing. (But I don't know if people on the autism spectrum needs it, or it would be helpful). Once you can clearly see it, hear it, smell it, feel it, there are a lot of surprising things you can find out just by observing it. Another practice I did for a while to really start examining intense, often unpleasant emotions within myself and others is this: http://www.amazon.com/Feeding-Your-Demons-Resolving-Conflict/dp/0316013137 http://www.amazon.com/Feeding-Your-Demons-Resolving-Conflict... At the end of the day, someone's suffering is their own. By "suffering" I am really talking about dukkha, the Sanskrit word better translated as existential anguish. This is something every person has. It is only when one can clearly see it that they can allow space for someone to work through it. By "witnessing", I am talking about something like practicing vipassana while in the presence of someone suffering. And believe me, that is not as easy as it sounds, neither for the practitioner, or for the person in deep suffering.
scott_s 11y ago
I'm surprised there was no protocol where he went to regular therapy to help him process the new emotions, and his new ability to read emotional cues in others. I suspect therapy may have helped with his understanding that he gained years later, which is that your perception of someone's emotions is not always correct.
- hosh 11y ago
  Sure. He would have had to catch up on years of emotional development.
- neurotech1 11y ago
  I agree. Depending on how TMS treatment is setup, it could stimulate a particular region of the brain, or a large section (frontal lobe). EEG biofeedback can also be focused on a small section of the brain (eg. prefrontal cortex). Its possible the situation in the article was a result of parts of the brain being "out of balance" and creating different emotions than what the person previously experienced. Even if TMS 'activated' the emotional areas of the brain (right frontotemporal) correctly, the person still may not be ready to use that brain region effectively. This is where therapy would likely help. Through research, its believed that Autistic Spectrum Disorders are the result of poor neuronal connectivity between certain regions of the brain. I'm not sure TMS would help with that. Disclaimer: I'm not a physician and this isn't medical advice.
  - KingMob 11y ago
    Former neuroscientist here. Emotions are not confined to the right frontotemporal area. There's multiple regions involved. It appears the TMS here was targeted on dorsolateral PFC, but keep in mind that there will be spreading effects, and presumably post-treatment effects, too, that can be quite widespread.
    - neurotech1 11y ago
      > Emotions are not confined to the right frontotemporal area. That is true. I should have been more specific. Just out of interest, do you believe that neuronal connectivity between regions of the brain are involved in ASD?
franciscop 11y ago
Maybe a more apt title would be "An experimental autism treatment gave me my son back".
- nadezhda18 11y ago
  I agree with you... though it wouldn't be that dramatic and thus less clic-baitish.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - duaneb 11y ago
    Really? Strikes me as equally dramatic: both are equally correct statements without added tone. I can understand preferring the glass half full, though.
    - nadezhda18 11y ago
      Getting something back is positive, losing something is negative. Negative is obviously more dramatic than positive.
      - duaneb 11y ago
        > Negative is obviously more dramatic than positive. I agree in the general case, but not everywhere. Shit like "Scientist cures cancer!" is equally dramatic and clickbaity in spite of being hugely positive.
        nadezhda18 11y ago
        I think you mix up dramatic and tabloid-ish
- tptacek 11y ago
  "Effective novel treatment has benefits for one patient" is a less interesting story than "Effective novel treatment has unexpected drawbacks for one patient". Benefits are exactly what every reader expects from an effective treatment.
mchahn 11y ago
A functionally autistic woman, Temple Grandin, wrote a fascinating book on autism. She offered a simple test for autism. Think of a church steeple (stop and do that). If you thought of a real steeple you had actually seen then you probably tend towards autism. If you thought of an abstract non-existing steeple then you don't tend towards it. I was at a gathering of employees in my company. There were about a dozen random people sitting around a table. I tested the whole group at once. Every single programmer answered with a real steeple and every non-programmer thought abstract. I know this doesn't represent a real study and chance was involved. But it matches something else she said. Functional autistics with jobs are predominantly programmers. She quoted a number, like 70%, but I don't remember for sure. I, a programmer, personally prefer human interaction on the web. Meeting in real-life, not so much.
- tome 11y ago
  > If you thought of a real steeple you had actually seen then you probably tend towards autism. If you thought of an abstract non-existing steeple then you don't tend towards it. What's the rationale for that?
  - mchahn 11y ago
    I have no idea. One would think the opposite, that programmers think in abstract concepts. I heard an interview with her on public radio (it was called in since she couldn't appear in person) and she seemed very intelligent and believable.
    - PhasmaFelis 11y ago
      Hmm. "Abstract thought" encompasses a few very different things. This Quora answer explains it better than I could manage, so I'll paste it here: https://www.quora.com/If-Aspies-often-have-difficulty-with-abstract-thinking-then-why-do-so-many-mathematicians-have-autistic-traits https://www.quora.com/If-Aspies-often-have-difficulty-with-a... "Abstract thinking" is a huge category and a lot of Aspies and people in the autism ballpark have trouble with some parts and are good at other parts. In particular, I think many of us are good at abstract thought that is formal. Not formal in the sense of wearing a tie or whatnot, but formal in the sense of being based on precisely described relationships. Take math. Math is a creative activity, just as much as painting or any other art. But math is a formal creative act. Like a painting, a mathematical proof can be beautiful, elegant, inspiring. Unlike a painting, a mathematical proof can be wrong. Or take computer programming. Again, writing a program is creative and a program can be beautiful. But a program is written in a very formal language: Any computer language has strict rules. On the other hand, many of us are bad at abstract thinking that is informal or, perhaps, a good word is mushy. How do we read a person's facial expression, body language etc? The same thing means different things at different times; there rules, but there are (usually) exceptions; and the rules aren't written.
theoh 11y ago
The extreme sense of feeling the emotions of others that is described in the article seems like something stronger than normal for typical people, but perhaps it's just relative to previous baseline of little insight into the emotions of others. Some research opposes the deficits of autism to the excesses of schizophrenia. Not sure it's totally relevant to this item, but seeing emotional meanings where they don't exist is a very schizotypal (positive schizotypy) phenomenon: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/how-is-creativity-differentially-related-to-schizophrenia-and-autism/ http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/how-is-c...
- jacobolus 11y ago
  Take someone used to wearing stiff-bottomed shoes, and tell them to walk around barefoot on the street or on a forest trail. They’ll suddenly be intensely aware of the temperature and texture of the ground. Stepping on a little pebble will cause pain from sensory overload of nerves which have been carefully shielded for years. (Most people in developed countries can try this experiment out first-hand.) For someone who is habitually barefoot, by contrast, walking around on very rough surfaces is no problem. Same kind of thing here.
  - krylon 11y ago
    That is a very good analogy! Thank you!
  - danieltillett 11y ago
    As some who used to walk around barefoot all the time as a kid, this effect is not due to habituation, but due to the skin on you feet becoming thick to the point that you are effectively wearing shoes. The more you wear shoes the thinner the skin gets. They other factor is you learn to walk differently such that you are more careful placing your feet on the ground to avoid sharp objects.
    - jacobolus 11y ago
      A big part of it is nerve/brain response, in my own personal experience, though sure, a different walking technique makes a difference too. I started wearing mostly thin soled shoes a few years ago: simple leather moccasins, $5 Chinese canvas shoes, Vibram Five Fingers. (I don’t typically walk around outside barefoot.) When I first started, if I walked barefoot, stepping on a tiny pebble was painful. Wearing thin-soled shoes itself let me very dramatically feel the ground in a way I didn’t when wearing stiff-bottomoed shoes. Now, a few years later, the effect is much reduced, even though the skin on the bottom of my foot is not noticeably more callused than before. I can notice how the ground feels if I pay careful conscious attention to it, but it’s not constantly in my mind as I walk around. I think the walking barefoot -> calluses idea is exaggerated in popular imagination. I have a friend who does significant amounts of barefoot trail running, and frequently run barefoot on pavement. His feet are also not obviously more callused than anyone else’s.
callesgg 11y ago
I often think about how strong the emotions that other people feel are. Situations can be turned upside down when trying to think from the perspective of a person with stronger emotional responses.
munificent 11y ago
> Later, people at work told me they’d liked me better the way I was before. Whenever you make a large change in yourself, you are going to alienate people in your life. This doesn't say anything about whether the change is good or bad. The set of people currently in your life is highly biased towards people who like you the way you are. If they didn't, they wouldn't be in your life. The more interesting question is after you make a change and get a new set of people, how do those people compare to your old set?
- NikolaNovak 11y ago
  Agreed. The change doesn't have to be quite as profound - and it's up to other people to choose how to react and proceed. Different quantitatively but I think similar qualitatively, my best friend (despite my warning) attended a high-intensity motivational/NLP weekend seminar a few years back. It is no exaggeration that he came out a completely different person, in the sense that the stimuli/response has radically changed. He was more emotional, open, intense, etc. My reaction initially was confused and highly negative; and eventually settled down on "The person I knew is in some ways gone; but let's give this new person a chance and see how we get along". Others, erm... did not react as positively :P
  - tangled_zans 11y ago
    That's quite interesting. I have a former friend who joined some sort of super happy cult a year or so back, and undergone a similar change literally over a course of a single week. It was quite... disconcerting to watch.
- draw_down 11y ago
  Sure. Plus, we have to live our lives the way that fits best for us, not the way that fits best for other people. Consider a person who is overly obsequious their whole life, goes to therapy, and learns to start looking out for themself instead of others. Well, anyone who was exploiting the person isn't going to like that change. And will probably say so.
kauffj 11y ago
I work with John's son, Jack, on LBRY (http://lbry.io http://lbry.io). The whole Robison family is full of people with interesting stories: - Jack went to trial as a teenager, facing 60 years (!) in prison for chemistry experiments (http://www.masslive.com/localbuzz/index.ssf/2009/06/actionreaction_how_one_teens_c.html http://www.masslive.com/localbuzz/index.ssf/2009/06/actionre...) - John showcasing a guitar that Jack's mother and Jack built for KISS (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXZi4UZjiiI&t=10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXZi4UZjiiI&t=10) - John's brother is Augusten Burroughs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusten_Burroughs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusten_Burroughs) I pointed Jack to this thread. I believe he went through same treatment as John at one point if people have questions.
- jackrobison 11y ago
  I didn't know HN was interested in the subject, very neat! I'll keep up on this thread, and if anyone wants to ask me a question via email you can reach me at jack@lbry.io
  - NikolaNovak 11y ago
    tremendously interested, for many reasons - general knowledge, personal empathy, and for many friends and family. Is there any good, reliable source of information on the treatment described? If it started in 2008, I'm surprised I have not seen it mentioned more recently. Are results as reliably dramatic as described? Many thanks for joining the discussion - much appreciated :-)
    - jackrobison 11y ago
      My fathers newest book - Switched On - is all about TMS and his experience. The research is being led by Alvero Pascual-Leone at Harvard medical, he's got a lot of material published. How it pertains to autism is very new, I'm not sure what the team has published yet. The finding that I thought was most significant is that TMS provides an instrumental test for autism - although there's a ways to go before it becomes the means of diagnosis. An autistic person has measurably different neuroplasticity than a non autistic person, this low level biological distinction has the potential to take subjectivity out of diagnosis. And it is a big step towards a low level understanding of what autism is, how it can pan out to be a gift or a disability (not mutually exclusive), and how the challenges many autistic people face work on a fundamental level.
hughperkins 11y ago
I think the premise for the story - applying magnetism to the brain curing autism tomorrow - seems suspect, and don't really believe it.
- kolbe 11y ago
  The guy still writes as if he has autism, too. I think the placebo is just strong, and the confidence he's gained is what changed his life.
vehementi 11y ago
> but instead she said matter of factly, “You won’t need me anymore.” What? There was no follow up on this. Why would anyone say that - how does this even make sense at a basic level? Was there no follow up question by him?
- emodendroket 11y ago
  Well, I imagine an entire article could have been written about just that but he had to work within the constraints of the piece to convey a multi-year odyssey. I'd guess that was a summary of what his wife said and not the whole discussion.
- felideon 11y ago
  Sounds like something a depressed person would think, no matter how irrational it sounds at face value.
epx 11y ago
I had a slightly similar experience while taking antidepressants. The anxiety went completely away. That made me drive more recklessly (my parents and my wife began to dread taking a lift) and I contemplated getting a mistress. Of course, I did compensate for that, once I took note of the effects. But actually a certain level of anxiety is a good tool, and I went out of medication as soon as possible. I talked about my suspected Asperger syndrome with the psychiatrist, and she said "I could medicate you for that, but are you really sure you want to change?".
graeme 11y ago
Is the way he describes intensely feeling others emotions normal? When I was younger, I was awful at reading people. Very shy with others as a result, because I was missing most of the data. I eventually decided to learn how to read body language. I did some training to recognize expressions, focussed on one skill at a time, and viewed every conversation as practice. I improved to the point that people comment that I'm surprisingly good at reading them. But the emotions don't hit me the way this author describes. I just....see them. Granted, I've also practice stoicisim and mindfulness, which explicitly trains you to not worry about things like someone insulting you (or hearing a comment that might be construed as insulting). But, I've wondered if something is going on. When I was younger, before learning to read people, I read descriptions of Aspergers and it sounded much like me. Now when I read them it sounds not very much like me, because a significant component of those symptom descriptions involve poor social skills. Thoughts?
- the__prestige 11y ago
  Curious: did you train yourself to recognize expressions, or did you do some course?
  - tangled_zans 11y ago
    I'm guessing it was on his own as there's not many any courses on emotions worth a damn. That said, coursera did an amazing course on emotions recently by an Italian AI researcher, Jordi Vallverdú. I think it's been taken offline now, unfortunately.
- angli 11y ago
  It's possible that it's more acute for him because he's not used to it, the same way someone who's lived at high altitude for years doesn't feel out of breath. Most people, I think, are affected by the presence of sad people in some way - we can control or get used to it but the raw material is still there.
  - incongruity 11y ago
    This would be my expectation as well. If we likened this emotional sensitivity to one of the senses, almost every sense has a diminished response, over time, to persistent levels of the stimuli. Our eyes adjust to bright or dim light, our sense of smell can quickly adapt to filter out smells that first seem quite awful, we quickly climate to a range of hot or cold water, etc. etc. So, it seems plausible that neurologically the same sort of sensitivity and then regulation could be at work for someone who had been essentially blind to emotions and then had their visibility switched on suddenly.
cookiecaper 11y ago
The author's life was radically changed by a procedure that runs a magnet over his brain. It appears to have induced a severe bout of depression and anxiety that negatively impacted his performance at work and cost him 2 marriages. He seems to believe that this "treatment" worked, though the empirical evidence would hardly suggest that. Does he believe that he was reading emotions instead of descending into anxious paranoia just because the doctors told him the first thing is what would happen? The unfortunate thing here is that doctors have probably recorded his case as a success. I've found that the emotions we read out of people are often exaggerated from their true thoughts. It's easy to feel like there's some harsh judgment occurring when, in fact, there isn't. Someone should've told the author this, and not to take his new "emotional superpower" too seriously.
- lnanek2 11y ago
  Yeah, unfortunately for the author, it sounded a lot like that to me as well. I've cared for people overly anxious and it sounded like he would have improved a lot with some sedative or just knowing when to take a calm down break.
StanislavPetrov 11y ago
Not to be insensitive, but what did he really expect? Experimenting with your brain in order to change your perceptions and though processes are bound to lead to major disruptions in your life.
foobarbecue 11y ago
"Seeing emotion didn’t make my life happy. It scared me, as the fear I felt in others took hold in me, too." Reminded me of an excellent death metal track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUVPIknZ9ao https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUVPIknZ9ao Lyrics include: The thing that scares me most / Is the fear I see in others / And the thing that really frightens me to the core / is when I see that fear in you
flagelate 11y ago
I read the entire article. It's better to be emotionless... at least sometimes.
rusabd 11y ago
reminds me this sci fi story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowers_for_Algernon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowers_for_Algernon ``The operation is a success, and within the next three months Charlie's IQ reaches 185. However, as his intelligence, education, and understanding of the world increase, his relationships with people deteriorate''
jveld 11y ago
Emotional beauty is a multiplayer game. It's created when people use their time and energy to break the script and let the people around them know that they are valued. It's not something that's easy to just receive passively - in order to experience it frequently one needs to be bold and sensitive. Above all, one needs to be patient. I grew up in an environment where nobody every expressed themselves. I was also given the impression that I was the smartest person in town. This is not a combination that makes for deep human connections. But I was fortunate enough to have the friendships of several very charismatic people over the years. Their ability to make instant connections with basically everybody around them seemed magical, and remained mysterious for years. But as I watched them and gradually opened myself, I found that skilled observation wasn't enough. Not only did I need to be open to others and willing to say what was on my mind, I also had to drop my pretensions and try to engage people on their own terms, even if those terms were things I would have previously found silly, like tarot or fireplace ceramics. When I've been successful at this (which isn't all the time, but it happens more and more), I've made new friends and learned all kinds of weird and interesting things. Even though the same period has contained some of the roughest periods of my life, I can honestly say that I've never been happier to be alive, and it's the beauty I find in small, everyday human connections that keeps me going.
phazelift 11y ago
The perfect story for a movie, amazing, thanks for sharing.
daveheq 11y ago
Is losing your marriage an acceptable risk to try an autism cure?

560 points by salgernon 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

Is what he described different from popular view that autistic personal has a problem because they are incapable of handling their sense of emotions from others so they choose to avoid social interaction?

bung 11y ago

> It took me five years to find a new balance and stability. In that time, my sense that I could see into people’s souls faded. I wondered how that would go, we all go through years of social interaction and have to build walls. Nowadays, I don't know if my walls have become too thick or if I never had the same emotional range as others in the first place.

mfoy_ 11y ago
But without those walls you'd be as dysfunctional as the author in his first few years of experiencing emotion. Having some measure of "thick skin" is part and parcel for existence as a social animal.
- bung 11y ago
  Yes, that's my implication.
- hosh 11y ago
  From a meditator's perspective, developing a thick skin is the wrong direction for practice. That kind of thing creates a kind of contraction. The social mask constrains the natural expression of the person to the point where the social mask becomes confused with the person's identity. That's the stuff of therapy and existential angst. What this guy is experiencing is not so much different from a meditator who has recently reawakened empathy, or a psychonaut whose psychedelic experiences open up to the world of emotions. "Coping" is no longer authentic, and is seen for the illusion that it is. For such people, the dysfunction is not in the awareness, but in that most people around you lack sufficient awareness -- yet think they are "normal".

mfoy_ 11y ago

It's hard to imagine what it must be like to go from feeling no emotions to feeling them all, like the colourblind glasses. It's relatively easy to imagine seeing the world in black and white and then having the colour switch flipped. I can't imagine the same for emotion... what a wild ride it must have been. It must have been so painful at first, especially when he realized that some of his "funny friends" had really been making fun of him...

hosh 11y ago
Ask someone who is an experienced psychonaut or meditator. These kinds of experiential shifts can, and does happen to people. In this guy's case, it was an awakening of empathy -- however, there are other kinds of awakening, other kinds of consciousness shifts that people are not normally aware of.
- coffeemug 11y ago
  I have gone through some of these shifts and they made a profound impact on me. I'm still learning to integrate many of the things I learned into my life in such a way that I can function in a modern society and remain authentic. It's very, very hard. Can you give examples of the other shifts you're referring to? I realize many of them may not have names (or may not have names in the western culture), but it would be very meaningful to me if you gave it a shot.
  - hosh 11y ago
    Awakening of empathy is one of them. There is also tele-empathy which lets you sense people who you could not have possibly read through body language. Direct experience of "oneness" is another one. This can range from feeling the interconnections of everything, to feeling that all is One (monism), and there ever just the One. Seeing through your acquired self is another. That sense that the acquired self -- the socialized personality -- has never been real. People often come back from that one thinking "my ego died". (Well, it often resurrects ;-) Another is direct experience of Nothing (similar to the Oneness experience), where things somehow, mysteriously, spontaneously arises and passes. Also related is spaciousness. Then there's a host of parapsychological effects which might make you feel crazy. They don't feel as insightful as the examples that I listed, but they do break down the conventional beliefs most people have and think of as "normal". For example, clairvoiyance, clairaudience, etc. There are actually transpersonal psychologists holding Ph.D.s who specializes in counseling for spiritual emergence. There's a great thread on Quora related to that integration process. I'd find it right now, but my wife is waiting for me to go with her to the grocery store. ("Chop wood, carry water" You never thought you'd understand that koan, eh? :-D) Feel free to email me at talktohosh at gmail.com if you want to continue this conversation.

opendomain 11y ago

Please note that the results are not reproducible. This effectively putting a current the the subject's brain and can be dangerous if not administered by a doctor

gohrt 11y ago
Also, it can be dangerous if administered by a doctor
okigan 11y ago
maybe should say: This effectively putting a current the the subject's brain and can be dangerous EVEN IF administered by a doctor
ams6110 11y ago
It can be dangerous even if administered by a doctor, I'd think. Doctors do many things that you'd normally never think to do, e.g. administer substances that are essentially poisons but have certain effects that are thought to be worth the risk compared to doing nothing.
mediocrejoker 11y ago
You mean this treatment has not worked for anyone else? Or are you saying that people at home should not attempt to reproduce it. Those are two very different statements, and the first raises many more questions about the original article.
emodendroket 11y ago
Rats, I was planning on zapping myself this weekend.
KingMob 11y ago
I think you mean "not reproduced", not "not reproducible". Presumably they are studying it now, and it will be reproduced, if possible.

orik 11y ago

It's too bad John felt he needed to seek treatment to 'cure' his autism. I was diagnosed when I was 17, and I get to interact with a lot of other students on the spectrum every day at my school. There are a few students that believe autism is something to overcome, and that if they try hard enough perhaps one day they won't be 'autistic'. Most of us are comfortable with the fact that we're different.

seanmcdirmid 11y ago
Everyone is different, their problems effect them in different ways, they have different dreams for the future. Live with it or cure it is a decision all of us make with different premises and conclusions.
calebm 11y ago
"The Speed of Dark" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_Dark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_Dark) addresses this topic.
sliverstorm 11y ago
What works for you, may not work for someone else. I know some very successful autistics who leverage it to their benefit, and some very unsuccessful ones who are dogged by it.
gohrt 11y ago
Why do people ever do anything to improve their skills? Why not just accept whatever happens and sit back and enjoy it?
- hosh 11y ago
  Some people are wired to seek out improvement. Why not accept that some people will try, and some people won't?
hosh 11y ago
If everyone feels different, there isn't a need to downvote @orik's voice on this. Let's take @orik's observation at face value -- that "most of us are comfortable with the fact that we're different". In that case, who is uncomfortable, the people who are autistic, or the people who are not? The dysfunction is in the people who feel uncomfortable and have difficulty accepting someone as they are. By the way, I am not autistic. I'm speaking as someone who has had a lot of experience working with intense emotions.

barney54 11y ago

This experiment is similar to what happens in the novel The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon. http://www.amazon.com/The-Speed-Dark-Elizabeth-Moon/dp/1501278843 http://www.amazon.com/The-Speed-Dark-Elizabeth-Moon/dp/15012...

conceit 11y ago
Is that Brian Griffin's new book?

billhendricksjr 11y ago

Reminds me of Flowers for Algernon, my grandfather's favorite book.

mfoy_ 11y ago
Terribly sad and beautiful book. Totally recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it already.
kimar 11y ago
I love that book and it was the first thing that came to my mind reading this story.
- NikolaNovak 11y ago
  Ditto... the first half of the article was eerily similar; and it makes you ponder some of the very same questions (including, is ignorance bliss?)
teamhappy 11y ago
Reminds me of Larry David in Whatever Works. (I should read more.)
virtualwhys 11y ago
Absolutely wonderful book, but in no way does Charlie, a just-above-mentally-retarded adult, remind me of a business owner, married with children, who falls somewhere on the Autism spectrum. I mean, seriously, Charlie undergoes a beyond belief transformation as a result of his medical intervention, and later...(won't spoil it, read the book), while the person in the linked article has an emotional awakening of sorts, which itself could have very likely been influenced by a midlife crisis and general dissatisfaction in a marriage to a chronically depressed spouse.

nxzero 11y ago

Unclear how it made sense to provide such a potential life changing treatment to someone that was likely more than halfway through their adult life. Is this common to perform such potential profound treatment when there's a very real chance of it having a negative impact?

josinalvo 11y ago
As it was experimental, I'd guess they did not know the size of the effect. If it gets out of the lab, though, I think an adult should always be able to make the informed choice, rather than being denied because he is too old. Your comment really pissed me off. The idea of having some doctor choose this for him is really a special kind of evil.
- nxzero 11y ago
  Medicine is not the Wild West, in my opinion, the best most common example would be that most "medical" grade medicines require the approval of a doctor. To me, the idea that someone that's already well adjusted should literally be allowed to put there life at risk potentially is the very definition of malpractice. Lastly, age was not the factor, but the percentage of the fellows life already lived as "well" adjusted. To me, what's evil is the desire to make everyone the same for the sake of being the same.
  - josinalvo 11y ago
    > To me, what's evil is the desire to make everyone the same for the sake of being the same. No such desire here. In fact, I'd not be opposed to a treatment that made people autistic, or, for a (perhaps) more attractive proposition, synesthetic. As long as there is informed choice by an adult. You can want neurodiversity, and think it is a good thing. Maybe it is. But imposing it on others, for me, is not defensible. Now, setting diversity aside for a moment... > Medicine is not the Wild West... No. In general, we only allow people treatment when we think they have a disease(1). This idea has merits: for example, it seems "obviously better" to treat the hypocondriacs hypocondria than to allow them to take unnecessary surgery. But it also has problems: the definition of disease becomes a matter of consensus (i.e.: a political matter, even if the politics just happens amongst doctors - or worse, philosophers or politicians) and individuals are disallowed choosing what and who they want to be, by themselves. Perhaps the best way to go is to have a "waiting period", to force you to consider and seek alternative treatment before undergoing procedures that are dangerous. I dont know, and I fear this is one of those "really no good answer" questions. (1) This might be a circular definition, "disease" being a thing we can treat for

RangerScience 11y ago

I'm "spectrum" enough to have an opposite reaction to various drugs - Ritalin being the important one, here - and my experience is... similar, in some ways. I probably didn't notice other people's emotions a lot when I was younger, to the effect that now that I'm older, and do notice them, I frequently don't have any idea what to do with that understanding.

hosh 11y ago
From a meditator's perspective, there isn't anything to do other than to witness the underlying suffering, and giving space to the other person to be.
- RangerScience 11y ago
  I have learned parts of that! But this is way broader than dealing with negative emotions - actually, it's other people's attraction that causes this state the strongest.
  - hosh 11y ago
    I know. :-) You should check out the practice in Tsultrim Allione's book, "Demon Feeding: Ancient Wisdom for Resolving Inner Conflict" some time.
- ctrlalt_g 11y ago
  Do you have any reading recommendations for your practice?
  - hosh 11y ago
    Yep. Start with Vipassana. That by itself won't teach the psychology, but it does allow you to clearly experience and see the experiences arising and passing. (But I don't know if people on the autism spectrum needs it, or it would be helpful). Once you can clearly see it, hear it, smell it, feel it, there are a lot of surprising things you can find out just by observing it. Another practice I did for a while to really start examining intense, often unpleasant emotions within myself and others is this: http://www.amazon.com/Feeding-Your-Demons-Resolving-Conflict/dp/0316013137 http://www.amazon.com/Feeding-Your-Demons-Resolving-Conflict... At the end of the day, someone's suffering is their own. By "suffering" I am really talking about dukkha, the Sanskrit word better translated as existential anguish. This is something every person has. It is only when one can clearly see it that they can allow space for someone to work through it. By "witnessing", I am talking about something like practicing vipassana while in the presence of someone suffering. And believe me, that is not as easy as it sounds, neither for the practitioner, or for the person in deep suffering.

scott_s 11y ago

I'm surprised there was no protocol where he went to regular therapy to help him process the new emotions, and his new ability to read emotional cues in others. I suspect therapy may have helped with his understanding that he gained years later, which is that your perception of someone's emotions is not always correct.

hosh 11y ago
Sure. He would have had to catch up on years of emotional development.
neurotech1 11y ago
I agree. Depending on how TMS treatment is setup, it could stimulate a particular region of the brain, or a large section (frontal lobe). EEG biofeedback can also be focused on a small section of the brain (eg. prefrontal cortex). Its possible the situation in the article was a result of parts of the brain being "out of balance" and creating different emotions than what the person previously experienced. Even if TMS 'activated' the emotional areas of the brain (right frontotemporal) correctly, the person still may not be ready to use that brain region effectively. This is where therapy would likely help. Through research, its believed that Autistic Spectrum Disorders are the result of poor neuronal connectivity between certain regions of the brain. I'm not sure TMS would help with that. Disclaimer: I'm not a physician and this isn't medical advice.
- KingMob 11y ago
  Former neuroscientist here. Emotions are not confined to the right frontotemporal area. There's multiple regions involved. It appears the TMS here was targeted on dorsolateral PFC, but keep in mind that there will be spreading effects, and presumably post-treatment effects, too, that can be quite widespread.
  - neurotech1 11y ago
    > Emotions are not confined to the right frontotemporal area. That is true. I should have been more specific. Just out of interest, do you believe that neuronal connectivity between regions of the brain are involved in ASD?

franciscop 11y ago

Maybe a more apt title would be "An experimental autism treatment gave me my son back".

nadezhda18 11y ago
I agree with you... though it wouldn't be that dramatic and thus less clic-baitish.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- duaneb 11y ago
  Really? Strikes me as equally dramatic: both are equally correct statements without added tone. I can understand preferring the glass half full, though.
  - nadezhda18 11y ago
    Getting something back is positive, losing something is negative. Negative is obviously more dramatic than positive.
    - duaneb 11y ago
      > Negative is obviously more dramatic than positive. I agree in the general case, but not everywhere. Shit like "Scientist cures cancer!" is equally dramatic and clickbaity in spite of being hugely positive.
      - nadezhda18 11y ago
        I think you mix up dramatic and tabloid-ish
tptacek 11y ago
"Effective novel treatment has benefits for one patient" is a less interesting story than "Effective novel treatment has unexpected drawbacks for one patient". Benefits are exactly what every reader expects from an effective treatment.

mchahn 11y ago

A functionally autistic woman, Temple Grandin, wrote a fascinating book on autism. She offered a simple test for autism. Think of a church steeple (stop and do that). If you thought of a real steeple you had actually seen then you probably tend towards autism. If you thought of an abstract non-existing steeple then you don't tend towards it. I was at a gathering of employees in my company. There were about a dozen random people sitting around a table. I tested the whole group at once. Every single programmer answered with a real steeple and every non-programmer thought abstract. I know this doesn't represent a real study and chance was involved. But it matches something else she said. Functional autistics with jobs are predominantly programmers. She quoted a number, like 70%, but I don't remember for sure. I, a programmer, personally prefer human interaction on the web. Meeting in real-life, not so much.

tome 11y ago
> If you thought of a real steeple you had actually seen then you probably tend towards autism. If you thought of an abstract non-existing steeple then you don't tend towards it. What's the rationale for that?
- mchahn 11y ago
  I have no idea. One would think the opposite, that programmers think in abstract concepts. I heard an interview with her on public radio (it was called in since she couldn't appear in person) and she seemed very intelligent and believable.
  - PhasmaFelis 11y ago
    Hmm. "Abstract thought" encompasses a few very different things. This Quora answer explains it better than I could manage, so I'll paste it here: https://www.quora.com/If-Aspies-often-have-difficulty-with-abstract-thinking-then-why-do-so-many-mathematicians-have-autistic-traits https://www.quora.com/If-Aspies-often-have-difficulty-with-a... "Abstract thinking" is a huge category and a lot of Aspies and people in the autism ballpark have trouble with some parts and are good at other parts. In particular, I think many of us are good at abstract thought that is formal. Not formal in the sense of wearing a tie or whatnot, but formal in the sense of being based on precisely described relationships. Take math. Math is a creative activity, just as much as painting or any other art. But math is a formal creative act. Like a painting, a mathematical proof can be beautiful, elegant, inspiring. Unlike a painting, a mathematical proof can be wrong. Or take computer programming. Again, writing a program is creative and a program can be beautiful. But a program is written in a very formal language: Any computer language has strict rules. On the other hand, many of us are bad at abstract thinking that is informal or, perhaps, a good word is mushy. How do we read a person's facial expression, body language etc? The same thing means different things at different times; there rules, but there are (usually) exceptions; and the rules aren't written.

theoh 11y ago

The extreme sense of feeling the emotions of others that is described in the article seems like something stronger than normal for typical people, but perhaps it's just relative to previous baseline of little insight into the emotions of others. Some research opposes the deficits of autism to the excesses of schizophrenia. Not sure it's totally relevant to this item, but seeing emotional meanings where they don't exist is a very schizotypal (positive schizotypy) phenomenon: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/how-is-creativity-differentially-related-to-schizophrenia-and-autism/ http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/how-is-c...

jacobolus 11y ago
Take someone used to wearing stiff-bottomed shoes, and tell them to walk around barefoot on the street or on a forest trail. They’ll suddenly be intensely aware of the temperature and texture of the ground. Stepping on a little pebble will cause pain from sensory overload of nerves which have been carefully shielded for years. (Most people in developed countries can try this experiment out first-hand.) For someone who is habitually barefoot, by contrast, walking around on very rough surfaces is no problem. Same kind of thing here.
- krylon 11y ago
  That is a very good analogy! Thank you!
- danieltillett 11y ago
  As some who used to walk around barefoot all the time as a kid, this effect is not due to habituation, but due to the skin on you feet becoming thick to the point that you are effectively wearing shoes. The more you wear shoes the thinner the skin gets. They other factor is you learn to walk differently such that you are more careful placing your feet on the ground to avoid sharp objects.
  - jacobolus 11y ago
    A big part of it is nerve/brain response, in my own personal experience, though sure, a different walking technique makes a difference too. I started wearing mostly thin soled shoes a few years ago: simple leather moccasins, $5 Chinese canvas shoes, Vibram Five Fingers. (I don’t typically walk around outside barefoot.) When I first started, if I walked barefoot, stepping on a tiny pebble was painful. Wearing thin-soled shoes itself let me very dramatically feel the ground in a way I didn’t when wearing stiff-bottomoed shoes. Now, a few years later, the effect is much reduced, even though the skin on the bottom of my foot is not noticeably more callused than before. I can notice how the ground feels if I pay careful conscious attention to it, but it’s not constantly in my mind as I walk around. I think the walking barefoot -> calluses idea is exaggerated in popular imagination. I have a friend who does significant amounts of barefoot trail running, and frequently run barefoot on pavement. His feet are also not obviously more callused than anyone else’s.

callesgg 11y ago

I often think about how strong the emotions that other people feel are. Situations can be turned upside down when trying to think from the perspective of a person with stronger emotional responses.

munificent 11y ago

> Later, people at work told me they’d liked me better the way I was before. Whenever you make a large change in yourself, you are going to alienate people in your life. This doesn't say anything about whether the change is good or bad. The set of people currently in your life is highly biased towards people who like you the way you are. If they didn't, they wouldn't be in your life. The more interesting question is after you make a change and get a new set of people, how do those people compare to your old set?

NikolaNovak 11y ago
Agreed. The change doesn't have to be quite as profound - and it's up to other people to choose how to react and proceed. Different quantitatively but I think similar qualitatively, my best friend (despite my warning) attended a high-intensity motivational/NLP weekend seminar a few years back. It is no exaggeration that he came out a completely different person, in the sense that the stimuli/response has radically changed. He was more emotional, open, intense, etc. My reaction initially was confused and highly negative; and eventually settled down on "The person I knew is in some ways gone; but let's give this new person a chance and see how we get along". Others, erm... did not react as positively :P
- tangled_zans 11y ago
  That's quite interesting. I have a former friend who joined some sort of super happy cult a year or so back, and undergone a similar change literally over a course of a single week. It was quite... disconcerting to watch.
draw_down 11y ago
Sure. Plus, we have to live our lives the way that fits best for us, not the way that fits best for other people. Consider a person who is overly obsequious their whole life, goes to therapy, and learns to start looking out for themself instead of others. Well, anyone who was exploiting the person isn't going to like that change. And will probably say so.

kauffj 11y ago

I work with John's son, Jack, on LBRY (http://lbry.io http://lbry.io). The whole Robison family is full of people with interesting stories: - Jack went to trial as a teenager, facing 60 years (!) in prison for chemistry experiments (http://www.masslive.com/localbuzz/index.ssf/2009/06/actionreaction_how_one_teens_c.html http://www.masslive.com/localbuzz/index.ssf/2009/06/actionre...) - John showcasing a guitar that Jack's mother and Jack built for KISS (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXZi4UZjiiI&t=10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXZi4UZjiiI&t=10) - John's brother is Augusten Burroughs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusten_Burroughs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusten_Burroughs) I pointed Jack to this thread. I believe he went through same treatment as John at one point if people have questions.

jackrobison 11y ago
I didn't know HN was interested in the subject, very neat! I'll keep up on this thread, and if anyone wants to ask me a question via email you can reach me at jack@lbry.io
- NikolaNovak 11y ago
  tremendously interested, for many reasons - general knowledge, personal empathy, and for many friends and family. Is there any good, reliable source of information on the treatment described? If it started in 2008, I'm surprised I have not seen it mentioned more recently. Are results as reliably dramatic as described? Many thanks for joining the discussion - much appreciated :-)
  - jackrobison 11y ago
    My fathers newest book - Switched On - is all about TMS and his experience. The research is being led by Alvero Pascual-Leone at Harvard medical, he's got a lot of material published. How it pertains to autism is very new, I'm not sure what the team has published yet. The finding that I thought was most significant is that TMS provides an instrumental test for autism - although there's a ways to go before it becomes the means of diagnosis. An autistic person has measurably different neuroplasticity than a non autistic person, this low level biological distinction has the potential to take subjectivity out of diagnosis. And it is a big step towards a low level understanding of what autism is, how it can pan out to be a gift or a disability (not mutually exclusive), and how the challenges many autistic people face work on a fundamental level.

hughperkins 11y ago

I think the premise for the story - applying magnetism to the brain curing autism tomorrow - seems suspect, and don't really believe it.

kolbe 11y ago
The guy still writes as if he has autism, too. I think the placebo is just strong, and the confidence he's gained is what changed his life.

vehementi 11y ago

> but instead she said matter of factly, “You won’t need me anymore.” What? There was no follow up on this. Why would anyone say that - how does this even make sense at a basic level? Was there no follow up question by him?

emodendroket 11y ago
Well, I imagine an entire article could have been written about just that but he had to work within the constraints of the piece to convey a multi-year odyssey. I'd guess that was a summary of what his wife said and not the whole discussion.
felideon 11y ago
Sounds like something a depressed person would think, no matter how irrational it sounds at face value.

epx 11y ago

I had a slightly similar experience while taking antidepressants. The anxiety went completely away. That made me drive more recklessly (my parents and my wife began to dread taking a lift) and I contemplated getting a mistress. Of course, I did compensate for that, once I took note of the effects. But actually a certain level of anxiety is a good tool, and I went out of medication as soon as possible. I talked about my suspected Asperger syndrome with the psychiatrist, and she said "I could medicate you for that, but are you really sure you want to change?".

graeme 11y ago

Is the way he describes intensely feeling others emotions normal? When I was younger, I was awful at reading people. Very shy with others as a result, because I was missing most of the data. I eventually decided to learn how to read body language. I did some training to recognize expressions, focussed on one skill at a time, and viewed every conversation as practice. I improved to the point that people comment that I'm surprisingly good at reading them. But the emotions don't hit me the way this author describes. I just....see them. Granted, I've also practice stoicisim and mindfulness, which explicitly trains you to not worry about things like someone insulting you (or hearing a comment that might be construed as insulting). But, I've wondered if something is going on. When I was younger, before learning to read people, I read descriptions of Aspergers and it sounded much like me. Now when I read them it sounds not very much like me, because a significant component of those symptom descriptions involve poor social skills. Thoughts?

the__prestige 11y ago
Curious: did you train yourself to recognize expressions, or did you do some course?
- tangled_zans 11y ago
  I'm guessing it was on his own as there's not many any courses on emotions worth a damn. That said, coursera did an amazing course on emotions recently by an Italian AI researcher, Jordi Vallverdú. I think it's been taken offline now, unfortunately.
angli 11y ago
It's possible that it's more acute for him because he's not used to it, the same way someone who's lived at high altitude for years doesn't feel out of breath. Most people, I think, are affected by the presence of sad people in some way - we can control or get used to it but the raw material is still there.
- incongruity 11y ago
  This would be my expectation as well. If we likened this emotional sensitivity to one of the senses, almost every sense has a diminished response, over time, to persistent levels of the stimuli. Our eyes adjust to bright or dim light, our sense of smell can quickly adapt to filter out smells that first seem quite awful, we quickly climate to a range of hot or cold water, etc. etc. So, it seems plausible that neurologically the same sort of sensitivity and then regulation could be at work for someone who had been essentially blind to emotions and then had their visibility switched on suddenly.

cookiecaper 11y ago

The author's life was radically changed by a procedure that runs a magnet over his brain. It appears to have induced a severe bout of depression and anxiety that negatively impacted his performance at work and cost him 2 marriages. He seems to believe that this "treatment" worked, though the empirical evidence would hardly suggest that. Does he believe that he was reading emotions instead of descending into anxious paranoia just because the doctors told him the first thing is what would happen? The unfortunate thing here is that doctors have probably recorded his case as a success. I've found that the emotions we read out of people are often exaggerated from their true thoughts. It's easy to feel like there's some harsh judgment occurring when, in fact, there isn't. Someone should've told the author this, and not to take his new "emotional superpower" too seriously.

lnanek2 11y ago
Yeah, unfortunately for the author, it sounded a lot like that to me as well. I've cared for people overly anxious and it sounded like he would have improved a lot with some sedative or just knowing when to take a calm down break.

StanislavPetrov 11y ago

Not to be insensitive, but what did he really expect? Experimenting with your brain in order to change your perceptions and though processes are bound to lead to major disruptions in your life.

foobarbecue 11y ago

"Seeing emotion didn’t make my life happy. It scared me, as the fear I felt in others took hold in me, too." Reminded me of an excellent death metal track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUVPIknZ9ao https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUVPIknZ9ao Lyrics include: The thing that scares me most / Is the fear I see in others / And the thing that really frightens me to the core / is when I see that fear in you

flagelate 11y ago

I read the entire article. It's better to be emotionless... at least sometimes.

rusabd 11y ago

reminds me this sci fi story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowers_for_Algernon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowers_for_Algernon ``The operation is a success, and within the next three months Charlie's IQ reaches 185. However, as his intelligence, education, and understanding of the world increase, his relationships with people deteriorate''

jveld 11y ago

Emotional beauty is a multiplayer game. It's created when people use their time and energy to break the script and let the people around them know that they are valued. It's not something that's easy to just receive passively - in order to experience it frequently one needs to be bold and sensitive. Above all, one needs to be patient. I grew up in an environment where nobody every expressed themselves. I was also given the impression that I was the smartest person in town. This is not a combination that makes for deep human connections. But I was fortunate enough to have the friendships of several very charismatic people over the years. Their ability to make instant connections with basically everybody around them seemed magical, and remained mysterious for years. But as I watched them and gradually opened myself, I found that skilled observation wasn't enough. Not only did I need to be open to others and willing to say what was on my mind, I also had to drop my pretensions and try to engage people on their own terms, even if those terms were things I would have previously found silly, like tarot or fireplace ceramics. When I've been successful at this (which isn't all the time, but it happens more and more), I've made new friends and learned all kinds of weird and interesting things. Even though the same period has contained some of the roughest periods of my life, I can honestly say that I've never been happier to be alive, and it's the beauty I find in small, everyday human connections that keeps me going.

phazelift 11y ago

The perfect story for a movie, amazing, thanks for sharing.

daveheq 11y ago

Is losing your marriage an acceptable risk to try an autism cure?