Last Poly Voice Extractor

[Spogg]

It seems quite common that the proverbial "like riding a bicycle" requires the "training wheels" to be bolted back on again occasionally for us autistic folks.

But trog, I think this is part of just being human! I focus on stuff and go into great depth and learn, then if I return to it some months later I think “WTF?? Jeez I must be losing it”.

Our brains seem to compress data in a very lossy way, progressively over time, and pathways get overwritten. In the end we can often see the tags but they lead to a very corrupt low quality version of the original memory. This leaves us vulnerable to false memory syndrome when we try to, or are persuaded to, fill in what’s no longer stored.

Once when I was on a training course at Siemens, I asked a technical question about a Video recorder we used to sell. This Sirecord X used to be this teacher’s speciality and he had extensive training himself from Grundig, who manufactured it. He looked at me blankly and said “I’ve no idea. I don’t teach it now so it’s all forgotten”. He was known to be the most technically able teacher and later went on to run the whole school.

Sue collects Lorna Bailey teapots. Recently she was excited to take delivery of her latest acquisition only to find she already had the exact same one in her collection.

I’ve had and seen many similar examples over the years, so I don’t think it’s anything unusual (unfortunately). But writing stuff down is a Very Good Idea!

Cheers

Spogg

[deraudrl]

Sue collects Lorna Bailey teapots. Recently she was excited to take delivery of her latest acquisition only to find she already had the exact same one in her collection.

Amazon earned my eternal customer loyalty when they started putting "You purchased this item on..." at the top of their listings. Otherwise my book and video budgets would have to be much larger.

[trogluddite]

But trog, I think this is part of just being human!

Oh yes, no-one's memory is perfect - we'd probably all be insane if it were possible - and your description of the processes involved is spot on, IMHO. However, those processes of reinforcement and overwriting can have systematic problems which mean that they're sub-optimal more often for some people than for others. For example, in dementia, it's common that memories seem to get erased in reverse time order - childhood memories remain easy to access, yet people who have been known for years in adulthood might not even be recognised. And our perceptual and attentional systems, which determine which experiences get flagged for long-term storage, are all different too.

To give an extreme (and thankfully rare) example; when I'm over-exposed to noise, especially the babble of many people speaking at once, it can overload my speech circuits, and they go off-line. I don't just get "stuck for words"; I'm unable to comprehend them at all, only dimly aware that I should be able to, and the implicitly learned motor-memories needed for producing speech aren't available either. I become functionally aphasic, and it's sometimes been mistaken for me having had a stroke or a seizure. Those just aren't the kind of memories which are supposed to become inaccessible, except maybe in the most extreme "fight or flight" circumstances of something like a terrible accident.

It's rather embarrassing when, as someone who is known as a "clever clogs" coder, I discover that I've temporarily forgotten how shoe-laces are supposed to work, or arrive back from a walk in the countryside unable to tell anyone where I've been because I don't have the faintest idea. And it's a very fascinating insight into just how specialised some brain areas can be when I write something, only to discover that I can't read what I've just written until some other neural link stops returning 404 errors!

[Spogg]

Once again I must thank you for giving more insight into what goes on with your condition. It’s fascinating for me, and I hope others here. And I hope you get some benefit from talking about it too.

I realise now that maybe it was a bit crass of me to kinda dismiss what you described as being normal. But I only had your original words to go on, not realising the extent and reach of your memory behaviour.

One thing I’ve noticed, and I don’t know if it applies in your case, is that if I focus on something which has become habitual, my performance of the task is often reduced or disrupted. It can even become stressful. One severe example is that a few years ago Siemens insisted we have one-on-one driving instruction and evaluation for half a day from an advanced driving school. She gave me very good advice but ever since, I’ve been far more nervous as a driver to the point now where I really dislike it. I actually feel less safe as a result, and certainly less confident.
This is one of the reasons I hate Mindfulness meditation, and I wonder if your experiences are due to some quirk of attention control interfering with performance…

Cheers

Spogg

[trogluddite]

I wonder if your experiences are due to some quirk of attention control interfering with performance…

That's some very insightful wondering! Yes, indeed attention control is very much related - there's a big overlap between autism and what they call the "primarily inattentive" form of AD(H)D. The name sounds like it describes people who just can't concentrate, but it's usually the case that they can - so long as there is only one thing to concentrate on (to use a PC analogy - I think of it as having a "single-threaded" brain). When I say to people that I have trouble multi-tasking, I don't mean juggling home chores, work, and relaxation; I mean that I can't take in a word that they're saying at the same time as making them a cup of tea (unless they find stone cold coffee + cocoa with ten sugars an acceptable substitute!)

And worse performance when paying too much attention - oh boy, yes; it affects even my sensory perception. For example; the "instantly forgotten" walks that I mentioned aren't so much "forgotten" as "never recorded" - it happens when my mind is pre-occupied with thinking about something else, and my body just seems to go onto "autopilot". When I'm not so distracted, I often find myself stalling whenever I have to step over an obstacle like a puddle - my brain just won't tell me whether it's a distance that I can step over. When I eventually give in and go for it anyway, it's not uncommon that I could easily have stepped three times as far - or that I don't even come close to reaching the other side! Yet when walking "on autopilot", with barely any conscious awareness of my surroundings, I usually come home without so much as a splash of mud on me!

Many of the social problems associated with autism are related to these kind of effects too - it's simply not true that we're born asocial. For example; If I make a conscious effort, I can observe and comprehend body-language and eye-contact reasonably well. The problem is that it's not done automatically as a "background task". I'm effectively blind to them unless I make a conscious effort to focus on them, and I get no "gut feeling" reaction to the way people are interacting with me. But doing that means that I can't process the words I'm hearing so well, nor formulate what I'd like to say - I can process content or context, but not both at the same time. I know full well that staring blankly into space gives the impression that I'm not listening, but ironically, it usually means that I'm listening very hard indeed because I'm so captivated that my brain's "single-thread" is dedicated to processing the words that I'm hearing. Hence why so many of us love digital communication using text - it levels the playing field by making the non-verbal social cues unavailable to everyone else, too, and there's no problem with long pauses to employ "offline" processing rather than "real-time" multi-tasking.

I realise now that maybe it was a bit crass of me to kinda dismiss what you described as being normal

Honestly, don't worry about it; I really appreciate your comments. I learned long ago to judge people by how open they are to learning rather than by their (usually endearing) instinct to find common ground, or "politically correct" shibboleths. The traits of autism are all just extremes of mental processes that every human possesses - it's just that we're statistical outliers in multiple traits which interact in ways that magnify each other. There's even such a concept as the "broader autism phenotype" (BAP) to denote sub-clinical expression of these traits - a lot of people have one or two of them, or just experience them to a lesser degree. Where one draws the line at which it becomes a diagnosable "disability" is a vexed question, of course - how severely one's everyday life is affected depends as much on the environment as the cognitive traits that are present. I wouldn't claim for a moment that my experience is comparable with that of an autistic person who is entirely non-verbal, for example.

As my rather lengthy posts demonstrate, there often isn't a snappy way to describe these things. In our little online enclaves, we do have a little jargon of our own that we use, but trying capture the effects of autism in soundbites using "relatable" language isn't easy without making it too "relatable". Having grown up with them, we also accept them as our personal "normal", so might use very understated, or even flippant, language to describe things which might elicit a far stronger reaction from someone who's not used to them (when my brain gets confused whether my real body or the other one in the mirror is the one that it lives in, it usually just makes me giggle!) We can even be unaware of them ourselves for decades; when I underwent my assessment, I was rather shocked at first to learn that by most people's standards, my sensory perception has rather a lot in common with an LSD "trip" - but I'd just learned as a toddler which information wasn't to be trusted. I gained a lot of insight into why I've always been so clumsy and why conversations about such things often stop dead when I chip in!

PS: I feel the same way about mindfullness meditation. I'd go so far as to say that I find it rather too difficult not to be mindful! I have no doubt that it's very effective for some people, but it does seem to have become rather a faddish thing - it would do many people's mental health the world of good to stop expecting a "one-size-fits-all golden bullet", IMHO. Likewise for medications and cognitive-based therapies, I'd say - a lot of autistic people find that CBT can be counter-productive unless the counsellor accepts that their model of cognition is based on the maxima of the bell-curves of humanity's infinite variety.

[tulamide]

That reminds me a lot of my own condition, which is Global Anxiety Disorder, coupled with a clinical depression. GAD basically lets you live in constant - but unrealisitc - fear, up to panic attacks. Normal people have a working anxiety system that warns them of an existing danger. My system is totally screwed up and triggers warnings without any relation to actual events. When these warnings are triggered (fear, sweating, fugue, etc.) my brain isn't able to work on a rational, logical level. Instead, all thinking is grouped around the fear.

For example, over-exposing to noise, many people speaking at once, as you mentioned. It doesn't have the same drastic chemical effects for me. But it triggers my fear and suddenly I am unable to talk on any other level than that of a 6 year old (a guess). I'm known for my elegant formulations with a rich vocabulary (in German), but as soon as fear kicks in, my brain is blocked from most words. They are still there, but I can't access them. Long pauses, stutter, and half-sentences that weren't finished are the result.

There are other examples, like my brain needing to be constantly active, but I don't want to go into too much detail. I just think, that from my own perspective, I can understand some of your symptoms. And even just writing this post already triggers a warning, so I have to stop here. But reading more of yourself was really interesting and important for me.

[Spogg]

I just want to say thank you so much, to both of you, for sharing what I imagine is so difficult to discuss.

I’ve always had an interest in conscious states and so the opportunity to read this stuff is pure gold for me.

And who would have thought that drawing synthesisers on a PC would lead me to such insights?

Cheers

Spogg

[HughBanton]

I'll second that. Fascinating, thanks guys, it's of particular interest to me too.

[trogluddite]

I'm really happy to hear that people are getting something from reading these posts - I realise they're not everyone's cup of tea, and way off-topic!

@tulamide
Yes, as you say, we each have our own slightly different version of strangeness, but there is certainly a lot of overlap there. It was chronic anxiety and severe depression that eventually led to my autism diagnosis - it took literally decades of unsuccessful treatment for those before it was realised that something more profound lay behind them. GAD was even suggested at one point, but that doesn't really fit for me, as the anxiety is much more context-sensitive than that (and kind of rational, given that my social "blindness" really does cause all sorts of strange situations).

As I've said before, coming here to the forums, and losing myself in FlowStone schematics and Ruby (a 50 hour plus session over the weekend!) aren't just fun recreations for me. They're a sanctuary that I escape to, where my condition isn't a problem, it's an asset; and all the better for being such a generous and understanding little corner of the internet (spambots excepted!)

[RJHollins]

Thanks for being part of the 'Sanctuary Strangeness Forum'.

I feel a sense of enjoyable calm, just following the various threads.