Friday, June 4, 2010

A Matter of Brain Chemistry?

The other day Bruce at NW Ohio Skeptics sent me a link to a very interesting article in Scientific American entitled, "People with Asperger's less likely to see purpose behind the events in their lives." According to a recent study,
Bethany T. Heywood, a graduate student at Queens University Belfast, asked 27 people with Asperger’s syndrome, a mild type of autism that involves impaired social cognition, about significant events in their lives. Working with experimental psychologist Jesse M. Bering (author of the "Bering in Mind" blog and a frequent contributor to Scientific American MIND), she asked them to speculate about why these important events happened — for instance, why they had gone through an illness or why they met a significant other. As compared with 34 neurotypical people, those with Asperger’s syndrome were significantly less likely to invoke a teleological response — for example, saying the event was meant to unfold in a particular way or explaining that God had a hand in it. They were more likely to invoke a natural cause (such as blaming an illness on a virus they thought they were exposed to) or to give a descriptive response, explaining the event again in a different way.

In a second experiment, Heywood and Bering compared 27 people with Asperger’s with 34 neurotypical people who are atheists. The atheists, as expected, often invoked anti-teleological responses such as “there is no reason why; things just happen.” The people with Asperger’s were significantly less likely to offer such anti-teleological explanations than the atheists, indicating they were not engaged in teleological thinking at all. (The atheists, in contrast, revealed themselves to be reasoning teleologically, but then they rejected those thoughts.)
Interesting! Maybe my brain chemistry led me to philosophical Taoism. Maybe Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu were aspies too. Ya never know!

2 comments:

  1. It's often speculated that autism/Asperger's involves a different way of using the amygdala. And the amygdala is responsible for religious/theological/emotional thinking, so it makes sense that you would be less likely to use that type of thinking.

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  2. I too think it may be my Aspergers that led me down this path.

    Although I do wonder about the how it fits with the spontaneity side of it because that certainly isn't an Aspie trait. This bothered me so much that when I was diagnosed with Aspergers I started investigating other philosophical paths to see if they may be more of a fit with Aspergers. That was short lived because it is with philosophical taoism I feel most at home intellectually - it is the practicality I struggle with :-)

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