A brain disorder that spurs genius
Suraj Saraf

MANY celebrities have been diagnosed to ‘suffer’ from a sickness that is considered to be a brain disorder. Anyhow, science is still exploring the exact link between this sickness and their exceptional talent.

This stumping malaise of star performers is known as autism. This has been seriously attended to during only just over two decades. In fact, it has been considered as a disease only in recent times.

How interesting it is that by studying their lives, so many luminaries of history have been dubbed as having been autism patients and among them are virtually Who’s Who of history: boffins like Newton, Einstein, Descartes and Pascal, philosophers like Wittgenstein and Kant, literary stars like Tolstoy, Tennyson, Hemingway, Virginia Wolf, Coleridge and Dickens. Besides these, a host of other big ones were all autistic or had the Asperger syndrome.

The sickness is characterised by inability to communicate well and form long-term social relations besides being given to compulsive interest in some work. But in spite of their bizarre behaviour, they are people who generally go places in life.

They are usually loners, obsessively given to their work, which requires attention to details. They are more interested in a relationship with numbers or abstracts than with people. They have fantastic memories. They are workaholics and are so lost in their undertaking that they may be at odds with the world or even with themselves.

No wonder that media reports about them are invariably headed like "Portraits of autism — evidence of genius", "The method of creativity is madness", "Asperger syndrome could spur high achievement", et al.

Victims of autism: (From left) Charles Dickens had to remain busy or else he felt depressed; Newton remained so engrossed in his work that he often forgot to eat; Balzac would deliberately run into debts so that he would be forced to write to pay them.

A theory about the occurrence of autism is that the left half and the right half of the brain of a patient has insufficient coordination or power to pull together to observe an overall picture, but it may be beneficial in devoting undivided attention to the details of a work in hand.

However, a great deal yet remains to be known about the right and left hemispheres of the brain with the former having a much broader ‘searchlight’ than the latter.

According to the professor and director of Brain and Cognition in the University of California, Dr V.S. Ramachandran, while the left hemisphere is concerned with speech, language and semantics, the right hemisphere takes care of the more subtle aspects of language, such as nuances of metaphor, allegory and ambiguity. Any damage to either of the hemispheres could affect proper brain coordination. According to another version, an immense bundle of nerves — the corpus callosum — has been found to bridge the two hemispheres, enabling man for a balanced view of the world around.

Why do persons with psychiatric disorders or maniac depression become high achievers? Extreme mood swings or mania could provide creative people with depths of insight and emotional intensity that normal people could never achieve.

According to Dr Anthony Storr, consultant psychiatrist, Oxford University, genius tends to be born of ‘madness’. "Creativity should be linked with mental instability," says Dr Storr.

Citing the example of Dickens, Dr Storr maintains, "Dickens had to keep busy or be depressed. He wrote more than one book at a time. He was a journalist, actor, social reformer and, in between, he went for 15-mile walks. He never stopped being busy because if he did, he got extremely depressed."

About another famous writer Balzac, Dr Storr has this to say: "He was such a compulsive worker that he would deliberately run into debts, so that he would be forced to write specifically to pay them back. Dr Storr has pointed out that many geniuses in diverse fields have committed suicide or have sometime or the other contemplated so and many have remained celibate, as they were incapable of forming any emotional bonds.

According to Dr Storr, while severe mental illness normally rules out creative work, men and women of genius do tend to have a mental disorder. "Those who are at ease with themselves are just not motivated, so we should not be surprised that many creative people are disturbed. The most inventive are at odds with the world and themselves."

Researchers have pointed out that Newton, one of the most renowned scientists, was a "classic case" of autism. "He hardly spoke, was so engrossed in his work that he often forgot to eat, and was lukewarm or bad-tempered with the few friends he had."

A study on workaholics suffering from autism differentiates between those who are harmoniously passionate about their job and those who are obsessively passionate about it. "If someone cannot help themselves and they have to let their passion run its course at any cost, they have obsessive passion, neglecting the rest of their lives, causing conflict within themselves and with those around them. Those with harmonious passion are able to decide when to fulfil their passion and can fit it in with the rest of their lives. It seems to increase their self-confidence and personal growth."

Till about two decades back, it was believed that autistic persons had low IQs and limited language; they behaved bizarrely and were into special schools and residential homes. Later on, however, it was redefined as a life-long brain disorder, affecting primarily one’s communication skills and social abilities. And now research also underscores that the disorder is widespread.

Generally speaking, incidence of autism has been estimated to be about one in ten thousand among adults and one in seventy among school children.

In recent times some more research has been carried out into the causes of autism. One of the latest studies presented at the British Psychological Society Conference in March this year has evoked intense interest among the researchers. According to it, autism is not a single psychological condition but really a combination of two separate illnesses.

"In effect we are saying that there is no such thing as autism, but two separate conditions which — if they occur at the same time in the same child, give rise to symptoms that we associate with autistic individuals," says Prof Robert Plomin, Institute of Psychiatry, London. "That has tremendous implications for helping these children," he adds.

As such diagnoses depends on two observations. "First, the social component; autistic children do not understand that other people have minds of their own. They are tactless and not communicative. Second, is the non-social aspect. Such children are obsessive about an object and pre-occupied with details of places or events."

In the past, psychologists assumed these two sets of symptoms had the same cause. But a major study conducted by Dr Angelica Ronald and Prof Robert Plomin on 4000 pairs of twins has found this to be incorrect. Autism’s two sets of conditions are actually acquired quite separately.

"The two sets of symptoms are associated with two completely different sets of genes. Only when a person inherits extreme versions of both do they exhibit the symptoms of full autism."

However, particularly worrying is that for reasons still uncertain to scientists, as pointed out in the London Conference of Britain Psychological Society, the number of autistic children has risen sharply in recent years.

Most recent researches in America have provided new ammunition for opponents of the combined MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine for children by suggesting that there was a significant link between triple jab and increased reports of brain diseases. According to a report, the relative risk of autism in a child was five times higher after administration of MMR vaccine than for DTP (diptheria, tetanus and pertussis or whooping cough).

British groups campaigning for single vaccines say that this study justified their concerns. But the findings have been dismissed as flawed by the Department of Health and the government’s health protection agency.

Very recently two premier neurological research institutes of the country, the National Brain Research Centre, Manesar (Gurgaon), and the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences, Bangalore, had signed an agreement to initiate genetic studies on autism.

Dr Puentes, adviser to the World Autism Organisation, who was in India about four years ago to attend a seminar on autism by Action for Autism had strongly pleaded for integrated services for autistic people. He had also updated his Indian counterparts with research in the field.

Conceding that medical science had not been able to find a cure for autism, he had, however, pointed out that researchers had finally arrived at an internationally recognised and reliable diagnostic system. Even related genes had been identified but they could cure only 7 per cent of the affected children, he had said.