Friday, December 5, 2014

A Personal Story About the Intense World

I think there is little doubt that autism runs in my family, and that the kind of autism we have is best described by the intense world theory. The dominance of positive feedback in our neural systems goes a long way toward explaining a large number of traits, including my being mildly bipolar. Another thing that happens to me on occasion also now makes sense in the light of the intense world theory. Every so often my skin becomes hypersensitive. Some times it is more intense than others. Often, my joints and muscles ache and my mind is racing -- I cannnot remain asleep for more than a half hour at a time -- and I become ravenously hungry, but then be able to satiate that hunger with, say, a handful of chips. Everything moves at top speed in me. After a few days, it will subside.

This makes perfect sense with the intense world theory of autism. When positive feedback dominates, the system in question cycles. This is true of any scale free network process, including neural networks. There are times when I don't feel very much; but most of the time the cycles are subtle enough that they are not all that noticeable. However, sometimes those cycles run amok, and the intensity increases and increases. There is eventually a crash back to normal, but the period of intensity can be a bit much.

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