While I Was Reading Obama's Speech........

As zl at AspieWeb.net pointed out, go to Whitehouse.gov, scroll down to The Agenda and click on Disabilities----at the bottom of this page is a section on autism.

I spent Tuesday night thinking about gyri and sulci, "circles" and "furrows" in Latin, and not just because I was absorbed in studying the analysis, rhetorical and otherwise, of President Obama's inauguration speech in yesterday's Times. (Though let me tell you, I have been having a hard time not hearing Ciceronian echoes in the periodic sentences that can so readily be rendered with non modo........sed etiam.)

Gyrus also means the outward bulge produced by "the mechanical tension along the tethered axons" in the cerebral cortex, while a sulcus is used to denote the "valley" between weakly connected regions. An article in the February 2009 Scientific American (h/t to mc for pointing me to it!) argues that recent studies about the brain's convolutions in the cortex----"a two- to four-millimeter-thick mantle of gelatinous tissue packed with neurons sometimes called gray matter that mediates our perceptions, thoughts, emotions and actions"---point to a new understanding about autism as well as schizophrenia and other conditions:

New research indicates that a network of nerve fibers physically pulls the pliable cortex into shape during development and holds it in place throughout life. Disturbances to this network during development or later, as a result of a stroke or injury, can have far-reaching consequences for brain shape and neural communication.

Authors Claus C. Hilgetag and Helen Barbas review the history of the study of the brain's structure, with a nod to phrenology and to research about how physical forces shape biological structures---how, in the developing cortex,

.....the axons grow ever more taught, stretching like rubber bands. Late in the second trimester, while neurons are still emerging, migrating and connecting, the cortex begins to fold. By the time of birth the cortex has more or less completed development and attained its characteristically wrinkled form.

The authors note that genetics are a factor in brain structure as "comparisons of brain shape have demonstrated that brains of closely related people are more similar to one another than are brains of unrelated people." Referring specifically to brain structure in autism, they continue:

People diagnosed with autism also exhibit abnormal cortical convolutions. Specifically, some of their sulci appear to be deeper and slightly out of place as compared with those of healthy subjects. In light of this finding, researchers have begun to conceive of autism as a condition that arises from the miswiring of the brain. Studies of brain function support that notion, showing that in autistic people, communication between nearby cortical areas increases, whereas communication between distant areas decreases. As a result, these patients have difficulties ignoring irrelevant things and shifting their attention when it is appropriate to do so.

While I would prefer not to refer to individuals on the spectrum as "patients," I found this account of the wiring/"miswiring" of the brain of interest in regard to my own interactions with my son, who can be as absorbed in an arrangement of black ballpoint pens or in placing a line of crackers on an orange plate as I have been in studying President Obama's speech (hodie conferimus spem timori praeponentes, et concordiam mentis discidio discordiaeque*). To this day, Charlie has difficulties identifying line drawings of objects, tending to focus on a small part, on one color; he reads out individual letters, and pauses and halts when asked to read the whole word. On the other hand, what might seem "irrelevant" to some can be of great important to him---trying to understand his perspective on the world and response to its stimuli is my daily task.

Some, of course, would say that I've got a tendency to focus on the irrelevant---I won't tell you how long I spent thinking about how best to translate "we have chosen" in the President's speech. But "hope" and "fear" and "unity of purpose," and about how "the world has changed, and we must change with it" (mundus mutavit, et nobis una mutandum est )---these were easy.

* Yes, this is the sentence beginning "on this day, we gather......"

Photo by kimberlyfaye.