Viraj's Weblog

Here's an interesting article where an autistic person explains some of his methodology. I find this stuff very fascinating.

It's rather amazing that damage to the brain can sometimes cause a person to achieve superior mental abilities. What is this telling us?

Let's look at another process in the body: muscle building. When you work out, you are actually damaging muscles. Working out doesn't build muscles, but rather they are built during the recovery period. It is the healing, recuperation, and the body's response that makes you stronger. Your body is stressed and it expects more, so it compensates by building muscles.

Another even more dramatic body response is bone healing. When you break a bone, the bone heals in such a way as to prevent the likelihood of it breaking in the exact same place again. It is stronger than it was before. This is why you will see a fattening of the bone after the fracture heals, a lump of extra bone mass.

Is it crazy to correlate these features to 'brain-building'? I don't think this is too far-fetched. If there is damage to the brain, the body may attempt to rebuild it in such a way as to make it less likely for the damage to occur again, i.e. it becomes stronger than it once was. Stronger in a way that perhaps we don't fully understand, to handle some stress that we don't understand. Maybe the area of the brain that was damaged has to do with mathematical calculations, musical ability, emotions, etc. Of course there is probably a threshold as to how much damage can be 'good' damage, similar to working out too hard and actually getting weaker (e.g. not recuperating, eating bad, etc.).

This can even be extrapolated to drugs. Drugs can inflict a sort of brain damage. I don't condone using drugs, but could it be that some musicians who used drugs received their talents by the damage caused to their brains? It's rather amazing to think about.