Need to finish that work project, and wish you had the mental intensity to do it? Just take a synapse-regulating inhibitor, induce temporary autism, and you'll want to ignore your friends and do nothing but number-crunching for days. Autism-inducers could become as popular as Provigil among the geek set by 2020. Last night, in fact, a group German researchers announced they'd perfected the method for inducing autism. (They can also cure it.)
Over the past year, researchers have demonstrated several times that they can turn mice autistic by messing with brain chemistry -- and then "cure" them using the same techniques. The discoveries could lead to a scenario similar to the one in Vernor Vinge's novel A Deepness in the Sky, where people are given a brain treatment called "focusing" that essentially turns them autistic and makes them obsessive, detail-oriented workers.
It might also lead to recreational autism, where people who want to take a break from having messy emotions about other people decide to unplug and enter a state where human relationships are no more important than inanimate objects.
Read about how scientists can induce autism [PNAS] and how they can cure it [BBC News].
Link to article
Link to claim of inducing ,
link to "cure"
Finally a cure for neurotypicalism.
zing! :p
...i am ashamed i did not think of that....
Hopefully, this equation would be true with the pill:
Autism=Superhuman.
Won't it kind of be like steroids?
This isn't serious, is it? It sounds like quackery to me- the suggestion that "human relationships are no more important than inanimate objects" sounds more like an ugly stereotype than something on the level. This would be like if there were a pill to make you "temporarily gay"- I somehow doubt the gay community would be terribly high on the idea. And I'm not thrilled with this one.
[quote=io9.com]
It might also lead to recreational autism, where people who want to take a break from having messy emotions about other people decide to unplug and enter a state where human relationships are no more important than inanimate objects.
[quote=io9.com]
It might also lead to recreational autism, where people who want to take a break from having messy emotions about other people decide to unplug and enter a state where human relationships are no more important than inanimate objects.
ASD is all about having messy, confusing emotions about human relationships. With ASD: what you see is NOT what you get.
That might just be next on the agenda...
Interesting, no? I wonder if they've got any plans for clinical trials, or if they've started them already?
How's autism super-human? I think it's more like a different kind of human. After all, there are things NTs do very well, too.
my new fav theory of "different kind of human" is:
The Analog-Dominance-Brain Theory of Autism��
http://submariner-spirit.cocolog-nifty.c..._domi.html
developed by Ryu
Ahh... Brave New World. What will they come up with next? Talking mice?
well, we are not quite at that level of corporate fellatio, but...not so far off...
@ erkolos' first comment.