In a recent post about some of the (many) little known reasons why autism diagnoses are increasing, I dangled a bit of bait for another topic about autism. I said, "What do nectarine farming and mirrors have to do with autism?"
If you've ever owned a deciduous fruit tree like a peach or apple or plum, you may know that in order to allow the tree to put its energy toward good fruit, you have to thin the set on the branches. I've watched my dad, a nectarine farmer, time and time again spend hours pulling off the tiny beginnings of fruit so that the tree's resources would go into a couple of really fat, juicy pieces of fruit instead of a dozen weenie, sour, blah pieces. Just last week I saw one of our family aprium trees with thousands of tiny green apriums littering the ground, and my dad was just about to burst with the promise of what remained on the tree.
Before I get into the science of the brain here, may I remind you that I was a liberal arts major? Like, I think I had one science class in college. So my knowledge here is sketchy at best, and based on several articles I've read on the subject.
After the brain has formed, it develops a network of neurons that have little branches--some that send and some that receive communication. They work together to understand what's going on, what the body needs, and communicating that to the brain. Basically. That connection between the senders and receivers is called a synapse. Now, when Baby Brain is making all these synapses, it generally makes way more than it needs. The ones that don't get used gradually get pruned over time--they aren't used, they stop working, they die off before they become permanent.
What happens in an autistic child's brain is that not enough pruning goes on, and the child's brain retains way too many synapses. So the child is taking in far more neurological information than necessary, causing different kinds of chaos in the child's brain function and behavior. You know how one of the hallmarks of an autistic child is that they can't look you in the eyes? Imagine that Jack Nicholson suddenly walks up to you and grabs the back of your head and locks eyes with you. WHOA. Intense doesn't really even cover it. Guess what? This is what looking someone in the eyes feels like to an autistic child ALL THE TIME. Every single time. Yeah, I wouldn't want to have that kind of intensity all day long, either, whether it's Jack Nicholson or Chris Pratt or Mickey Mouse.
And that's just ONE example of how intense it is to have too many synapses. It's one reason autistic kids are rigid--it's so much more comforting to create something you don't have to constantly process. You know that thing, and it feels SOO good to just experience and BE in that one thing. It's why autistic kids have meltdowns. They're totally overwhelmed. It's why they cover their ears--it's like listening to Count Bassie and Nirvana and Wagner all at once. It's why they have texture issues. Etcetera.
It's also one of the reasons autistic kids are so intelligent. They have the capacity for so much smart. The problem is they are overwhelmed with just keeping their world organized enough to function, so we often don't get to really see what their intelligence looks like.
Does that make sense?
On to mirrors. All of us are equipped with what are called mirror neurons. When we see other people smile, frown, grimace in pain, etc., a very small part of our brain says, "I recognize that" and responds with a teeny-tiny dose of that same reaction. It "mirrors" what others experience. Empathy. It's how we get along in society. Go back to Psych 101. When someone ahead of you about 20 feet is walking toward you, without even realizing it, you each pick which side of the sidewalk you're going to walk on so that you don't collide with each other. You notice that someone seems bored with your conversation, so you wrap up the topic and change the subject. It's how we navigate each other. But autistic kids have malfunctioning mirror neurons. They are literally blind to these social cues. They don't know you're bored, that you are offended by their bluntness, that you are sad or angry. What I've found amazing is that when I tell my girl, "What you said really hurt my feelings." She is often immediately responsive to me, and the whole pitch of our conversation changes. Over time, she has learned to connect things like my tone of voice or posture to my saying, "that hurt my feelings," and her neurons are learning to compensate and send signals to her brain. She's no expert, but she is learning!
So that, my friends, is what nectarines and mirrors have to do with autism!
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