There are times when words fail me in conversation, or something I heard only moments ago simply falls out of my head. Those moments can make everyday life harder than it should be.
I wanted to understand how differences in the brain affect the way we process information. That curiosity led me to Temple Grandin and Richard Panek’s The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum.
Trying to cover everything the book says about autism would make this far too long. Instead, I’m keeping the parts that caught my attention and the notes I’ll want to revisit later.
A diagnosis only tells you so much
Autism was once blamed on parenting. Its place in the DSM also changed over time, from being treated as a symptom of schizophrenia to an independent spectrum. Greater awareness and the reclassification of people previously diagnosed with intellectual or language disabilities have also contributed to the rise in autism diagnoses.
A diagnosis matters because it can provide access to support. But meeting a set of criteria does not explain why a particular person struggles with a particular task.
What interested me was that scans of Grandin’s own brain showed some pronounced differences that seemed related to both her strengths and difficulties.
| Brain feature | Trait Grandin associates with it |
|---|---|
| Strong visual connections | Strong visual memory and object recognition |
| Weak auditory connections | Difficulty following speech and conversation |
| Smaller cerebellum | Difficulty with motor coordination |
| Larger amygdala | Intense anxiety and fear |
Her visual connections are strong, while her auditory connections are much weaker. This is not a story about her entire brain being better or worse. Very strong and very weak areas exist in the same brain.
I can understand written explanations but lose pieces when the same information is delivered verbally all at once. That does not mean my brain is the same as Grandin’s. It did make me realize how crude it is to roll everything a person can and cannot do into a single measure of ability.
Brain scans and genetic tests look at different things
The book covers research involving both brain imaging and genetics. I kept mixing them together, so here is the distinction I want to remember.
| Brain imaging | Genetic testing | |
|---|---|---|
| What it examines | Current brain structure, activity, and connectivity | DNA variants, deletions, and duplications |
| What it may reveal | Features related to information processing | Genetic factors that may be involved |
| Main limitation | It is hard to separate cause from effect | The meaning of a variant may be unclear |
| Can it diagnose autism by itself? | No | No |
Genetic testing examines the DNA a person was born with. Brain imaging shows the brain after years of development and experience. Genes do not tell us exactly how the brain works now, and a brain scan does not tell us exactly how it came to work that way.
There is no single “autism gene,” either. It would be comforting if an objective test could explain exactly why I am the way I am, but it is not that simple. Autism is still diagnosed primarily through developmental history and behavioral assessment.
Thinking in pictures and thinking in patterns
Chapter 7 was the most interesting part of the book for me. I already knew the rough distinction between people who think in pictures and people who think in words. The book splits visual thinking into two separate types.
| Thinking style | How it represents information | Fields mentioned in the book |
|---|---|---|
| Object visual thinking | Concrete images, colors, shapes, and textures | Design, making things, observation |
| Pattern or spatial visual thinking | Position, structure, and regularity | Mathematics, programming, music |
| Verbal and factual thinking | Words, facts, and lists | Writing, research, information organization |
An object visual thinker might picture a building almost like a photograph, down to its colors, windows, and materials. A spatial visual thinker, whom the book also calls a pattern thinker, is more likely to notice the placement of its columns, the relationships between its parts, and the rules behind the structure.
I do not see vivid mental images. I am much more likely to turn a system into a diagram or tree and sort out how its parts relate to one another. I am probably closer to a pattern thinker.
My short-term memory is not great, yet I have managed to keep working as a systems engineer. Maybe this way of thinking is why the job suits me. Chapter 7 helped me understand, at least a little, why I have been able to stay in this field.
Go out and explore, or stick to routines?
One part of the book initially felt inconsistent.
Grandin argues that autistic children should go out and encounter new experiences. Elsewhere, she says that predictable, repetitive work can be a good fit for autistic people. At first, that sounded like a double standard.
On a closer read, she is talking about different stages. Going out is about encountering things you do not know yet and discovering new interests. Routine is about having a stable way to keep doing something you have already found you are good at.
The book keeps returning to Grandin’s smaller cerebellum
Another thing I noticed was how often Grandin mentions that her cerebellum is 20 percent smaller than average. It appears often enough that I started thinking, here comes the cerebellum again.
She connects it to her inability to become a good skier despite years of practice. Perhaps finally having an explanation for a lifelong difficulty helped her step away from the idea that she simply had not tried hard enough.
At the same time, the link sometimes feels a little too neat: small cerebellum, therefore poor coordination. As Grandin herself notes, a brain scan cannot establish cause and effect that easily. When an explanation finally makes sense of something that has bothered me for years, I am probably just as tempted to treat it as the only answer.
And yet, the brain can change
If I focused only on the cerebellum and amygdala, I could come away thinking that the brain we are born with determines the rest of our lives. But the book also discusses neuroplasticity: the brain can physically change through experience.
The example that comes up several times is London’s taxi drivers. A longitudinal study followed trainees as they spent years learning the city’s complex street network. Only those who passed the licensing exam showed an increase in gray matter in the posterior hippocampus, a region involved in spatial memory. The trainees who did not qualify and the control group showed no comparable change.
Still, saying “the brain is a muscle, so training can fix anything” would be too simple. Some differences, such as Grandin’s smaller cerebellum, may be difficult to compensate for through effort. The taxi study also found a change in a specific region tied to a specific kind of training.
My own pattern thinking may not be entirely inborn either. I have been writing code since I was a student, and years of doing it may have strengthened that tendency.
The book also notes that changes associated with plasticity can recede when those circuits go unused for long enough.
Learning to work with my own mind
Reading this book cannot tell me whether I am autistic. It was never meant to be a self-diagnostic tool. It is about how Grandin studied her own brain and learned to live with what she found. From that experience, she also offers advice to other autistic people and their families.
Understanding why something is difficult can make it easier to stop blaming myself for not trying hard enough. At the same time, the parts of the brain we use often may continue to change in adulthood. I liked that the book made room for both accepting what is hard and developing what already works.
I am probably a pattern thinker. Familiar patterns are easy for me to understand, while a sudden change in assumptions can leave me struggling to catch up. Instead of forcing myself toward some imagined average, I can write down verbal information and turn it into structures and relationships. That seems to be how my mind works best.
