Intense World Theory Interview for Homepage - Help!

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I will be interviewing Henry and Kamila Markram, originators of The Intense World Theory, for homepage. The interview questions are scheduled to go out to them today. Their theory is, in my opinion, the most radically accurate, positive, and neurodiverse of all autism causation theories.

Here is a link if you are unfamiliar with this theory...

http://www.frontiersin.org/human_neuros ... 4/abstract

Autism covers a wide spectrum of disorders for which there are many views, hypotheses and theories. Here we propose a unifying theory of autism, the Intense World Theory. The proposed neuropathology is hyper-functioning of local neural microcircuits, best characterized by hyper-reactivity and hyper-plasticity. Such hyper-functional microcircuits are speculated to become autonomous and memory trapped leading to the core cognitive consequences of hyper-perception, hyper-attention, hyper-memory and hyper-emotionality. The theory is centered on the neocortex and the amygdala, but could potentially be applied to all brain regions. The severity on each axis depends on the severity of the molecular syndrome expressed in different brain regions, which could uniquely shape the repertoire of symptoms of an autistic child. The progression of the disorder is proposed to be driven by overly strong reactions to experiences that drive the brain to a hyper-preference and overly selective state, which becomes more extreme with each new experience and may be particularly accelerated by emotionally charged experiences and trauma. This may lead to obsessively detailed information processing of fragments of the world and an involuntarily and systematic decoupling of the autist from what becomes a painfully intense world. The autistic is proposed to become trapped in a limited, but highly secure internal world with minimal extremes and surprises. We present the key studies that support this theory of autism, show how this theory can better explain past findings, and how it could resolve apparently conflicting data and interpretations. The theory also makes further predictions from the molecular to the behavioral levels, provides a treatment strategy and presents its own falsifying hypothesis.

I'm interested in seeing some examples of questions you guys would like answered. I want the questions to have a distinctly autistic flavor. This theory is both scientifically fascinating, and autistic friendly. It is about time it entered into popular autistic culture!

There's not a whole lot of time guys, so if anyone has suggestions, please speak up!

Kind of basic questions, sorry, but:

1. What are some discrete behaviors that are "programmed for" by certain molecular coding?

2. Can you give an idea of your proposed treatments?

3. Is the closing-off-to-painful-stimuli process reversible in any sense?

4. Do you find that your theory encapsulates/overlaps with theories on the origin/process of OCD, schizophrenia, ADHD, and other disorders?

5. Would the fact that some autists/Aspies on this site express that they have extreme empathy for others and others express that they can either turn empathy off or don't have it at all be examples of inundated by intense world but not yet closed off/closing off/closed off?

6. How does alexithymia fit into this? What do you say about the underdeveloped or lack of a self/other distinction in autists, is this part of it? [Personal addendum: I often feel emotional pain and realize later it has a physical source, like that I've been grinding my teeth and haven't noticed for weeks on end, or vice versa, I harm myself by cutting etc. and I feel I have to get rid of myself when the source of pain is not physical but emotional. Kind of heavy issue but wanted to know if the theory suggests any explanations/solutions for this.]

Also:

7. Is my personal (and from what I gather some others') experience with not knowing intuitively the "right" thing to do in social situations and having to "logic" my way through it (sometimes making a weird choice) accounted for by your theory? Do mirror neurons fit into it?

I have a challenging question for them. Perhaps it is a bit silly, but I really want it answered:

According your theory, many Autistics share similar hyper-perception, similar hyper-attention, similar hyper-memory and similar hyper-emotionality, right?
If so, then many Autistics should be able to communicate with each other extremely well, right?
If so, then why does the Autistic community have even more disagreements than most communities do?
Why aren't we seeing a much more harmonious Autistic community?


If I find other questions for them, I will post them to this thread.

this is always been what ive been taught or at least been taught by my doctor who DXed me in 1993.i have always acepted his as the truth.the way the theory of intense emotions reconciles it self with strenths in logical thinking is basic.ones emotions are to strong to tolerate so one disassosiates from them and the mind focuses on the rational

Are you sure they are not studying ADHD? I'm starting to spazz just reading about how hyper everything is. All of a sudden I'm totally hyped for X-TREME SCIENCE!

Lacking that, would they like to borrow a thesaurus?

Um...but seriously, folks, with all those hyper-symptoms, why are they postulating a hypo-thesis? Is that counterproductive, or are they trying to restore the balance: yin v. yang?

[crickets]

Wow, tough crowd. Ok, this troll is going back under the bridge now.

there are some people who purpose putting adhd on the autism spectrum.in a way adhd and dislexia are in the foothills of autism and some people purpose that theory

I'm personally a fan of the idea, but there are ASD people (diagnosed, according to their profiles) who do not relate to it, and say they experience hypo-emotionality and hypo-other-things. How do the researchers reconcile that with their intense-world hypothesis?

I am personally too it was exactly what I thought about myself long before I got dx'ed. Then I got confused by various claims. Anyhow it would be interesting if they talked a bit about how this idea was received in the autistic community and how they would explain this hypo thing. Too much = shutting off? Also what could be/is being done to support the theory.

i have never thought of myself as hyper emotional. i would ask if some things can be not uintense and others are. basically my question would be: can the intensities of symptoms be uneven?

I can answer that from the linked description: different Autistics would have different combinations of strengths - with four strengths that's already a lot of combinations, plus you have to consider that most combinations would be oppositional to each other you're unlikely to have a completely harmonious community. (thinking of say aspies who have hyper-emotionality versus aspies without hyper-emotionality - you have nuclear fallout right there). Plus actual brain characteristics (genotypes) and behavioural results (phenotypes) can be quite variable.

For example (in a most basic sense) let's say there are two aspies who are both strong in hyper-memory. Does this mean they should get along?

Well, they have the same genotype - but their phenotypes could be oppositional. One of them could have an amazing memory for christian principals, whereas the other could have an amazing memory for atheistic principals.

....these guys would be highly unlikely to get along harmoniously.


But good question anyway, I'd be interested to see how they answer it.

I sent my questions in a PM and forgot to also post them here, but if I remember them more exactly I will post them up.

Well, I went ahead and submitted the following questions, but will consider submitting further questions as they come up. I needed to get them something to work with by this afternoon. I hope you guys feel I came up with some stimulating inquiries...




Questions for Henry and Kamila Markram


1. The Intense World Theory sheds light on the mystery of autism causation, and offers fascinating yet refreshingly simple insights. Despite this theory's comparative simplicity, it may nevertheless baffle those with a limited understanding of neuroscience. How would you explain Intense World Theory to the layman?

2. Describe the evolution of Intense World Theory from inspiration to publication.

3.  Many members of the autistic community have embraced Intense World Theory, claiming it to be an accurate reflection of their own experiences, and a radical departure from the outdated and socially stigmatizing disease models of the past. Why has it taken so many years for the scientific community to draw a conclusion which autistics themselves find to be quite obvious? What prevented Intense World Theory from emerging years ago?

4. Intense World Theory has been widely embraced by supporters of the Neurodiversity movement. Were these sociological implications foreseen in early development, and if so, can their influence be found in the published text?

5. How does the alternative cognitive style of the autistic mind prove beneficial or detrimental to autistic self-advocacy?

6. Disregarding social and ethical implications, do you believe an autism cure is a scientific possibility? Why or why not?

7. Do you believe autism causation research may benefit from a governing social conscience, or will such a conscience corrupt scientific objectivity?

8. "Unraveling the Paradox of the Autistic Self," by Michael V. Lombardo and Simon Baron-Cohen, states that "neural evidence provides a key clue that an ‘egocentric’ response in the brain (i.e., Self = Other) is actually the result of an impairment in self-referential coding of information." Do you believe an elusive sense of self is a universal autistic characteristic? Does Intense World Theory account for this impairment?

9. Intense World Theory proposes that the root cause of autism is  "hyper-functioning of local neural microcircuits, best characterized by hyper-reactivity and hyper-plasticity." Does this mean that savantism may be a universal, though not always objectively recognizable, autistic characteristic?

10. Do you believe Intense World Theory will endure the test of time, and the findings of future research? Will it have longterm scientific and sociological impact?
    Predict the legacy of Intense World Theory.

"The severity on each axis depends on the severity of the molecular syndrome expressed in different brain regions, which could uniquely shape the repertoire of symptoms of an autistic child."

- "Axis" refers to hyper-emotionality, hyper-perception, etc.

- Each Autistic child would have each "axis" expressed in varying strength, thus giving them a unique presentation of Autism.

Eg. One child with the molecular syndrome expressed very severely in the amygdala (the emotional region of the brain) could have very strong hyper-emotionality, whereas another child who had the molecular syndrome expressed more strongly in the anterior cingulate cortex (the brain region which controls attention), but only very weakly in the amygdala, would be likely to have very strong hyper-attention but not particularly pronounced hyper-emotionality.

//

In regards to all this, I think that the most important thing in the interview is to try and make certain it is conducted in "laymans terms" (simple non-technical language) so that everybody can understand what's being said without needing to be a student who has studied neuropsychology in university like myself.

I believe the published study actually accounts for this. I'll have to check. I want to say that they speculate that overactivity in certain regions results in underactivity in others, but don't quote me on that.

hahahaha beat me to the punch.

The questions you have are good I think. I think the most challenging thing will be to make sure the interview doesn't get too bogged down with technical terminology. Most of the questions you've listed here are still probably too academic in their wording - if you can try and simplify the language of the questions themselves it would probably be beneficial.

I'm glad you included the question about savantism. If you had time, and could then take it one step further, I think it would be interesting to explore the concept of emotional savantism (which they seem to imply exists as they include hyper-emotionality as an axis). If there are autistic people with emotional savantism, then this would totally blow the whole "autistic people are emotional robots, have no empathy" stereotype and occasionally used diagnostic criterion out of the water.

How far could emotional savantism be taken? Could it actually be that some autistic people are able to sense the emotional atmosphere the minute they walk into a room without even knowing any of the context before-hand or looking at any of the people in the room? Could it almost be like a 6th sense?

^ The bolded above was actually discussed by Tony Attwood (who believes this to be so) when he volunteered to come and talk at our most recent women and girls meeting three days ago.