Neurotribes, by Steve Silberman

"The curious fascination that many autistic people have for quantifiable data, highly organized systems, and complex machines runs like a half hidden thread through the fabric of autism research."

"..... His patient's imaginations occasionally anticipated developments in science by decades....."


"....designers of spaceships themselves must be autistic......"

"Hildegarde fix your hair.. It won't be long before the caller can see your face over the wires."


"Before I attempt any construction, I test run the equipment in my imagination . I visualize my designs being used in every possible situation...... Doin this enables me to correct mistakes enforce construction."


"... Then Mark started to hurt himself. He would bang his forehead against the wall so hard that he bore a perpetual bruise above his eyes. With his powerful little arms he strained against the cage of his crib until it splintered. .."


"...Gloria came to feel like a prisoner in her own home. On a good day she might eke out enough alone time to brush her teeth."


"....though the Rimlands were high sociable people, they gradually found themselves almost completely isolated."


"....the fatigue and frustration experienced by the disturbed child in trying to deal with his environment when he was not cognitively equipped to do so..... Imagine the child's reaction to the futility of living in an incomprehensible world run by what must appear to him to be demanding, ritualistic, arbitrary and inconsistent psychotics - us!"


"Researchers at the university of Edinburgh discovered in 2015 that genes associated with autism are also associated with higher levels of cognitive ability -- particularly problem solving tasks requiring nonverbal, hands on intelligence."


"their 1979 paper on the Camberwell study, Wing and Gould reported, The behavior pattern described by Kanner could be identified reliably, but the findings of the present study bring into question the usefulness of re-garding childhood autism as a specific condition." From the perspective of the MRC's mission of advising the government on guidelines for service provision, this was particularly true because it was obvious that there were more of these people, of all ages, struggling to get by without help or any explanation for their difficulties, than there were children with Kanner's syndrome."


"While she was trying to think of a better term, she a phrase of Winston Churchill's echo in her mind: "Nature never draws a line without smudging it." This seemed particularly true of autism."


"...adding that because Joe was autistic, he might not seem to be listening to his directions. The doorman's eyes lit up. "Like Rain Man!" he said. She watched as the two men crossed the street into a world that had been transformed in a very short time. One film did that. One film did more for autism than all of us working together worldwide had been able to do in twenty-five years," she says. But Rain Man was just the beginning."