Temple Grandin on Visual Thinking and Animal Behavior

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wxewRynV3g

In the video “Visual Thinking and Animal Behavior,” Temple Grandin details the different types of minds and why she thinks it’s important for them to all work together. Temple is an Autistic Savant who has done extensive work bettering the lives of both Autistic people and Animals through creating a deeper sense of understanding of how they think. Temple details all the way her photorealistic mind works, including how she has a seemingly infinite database of images that she can recall and also manipulate, making “movies.” It was this ability that allowed her to visualize cattle chutes in her mind and design one that efficiently uses the animals natural behavior in order to maintain movement through the chute. Temple details how the animal mind and the autistic mind process similarly, both being visual thinkers and thus increasingly sensitive to how things look. Temple then outlines the other types of minds, including the pattern mind, verbal mind and auditory mind. She concludes her lecture by arguing that it is becoming increasingly important that the education system both stimulate and develop the visual and pattern minded people, and how the niche they fill in society is an important facet of development in all fields.

Temple repeatedly mentions her “huge internet trunk line” in her brain that allows her to easily access images in rich detail. This was proven in a study conducted where researchers compared her brain to the brains of 3 controls using functional magnetic resonance, regular magnetic resonance and diffusional tensor imaging. The myelinated neural pathways going back to Temple’s visual cortex were exponentially larger and more branched than the pathways of the controls. This links back to content we have covered in class by showing that her neural processing from to her visual cortex is both faster and more developed through the nature of her neural structure. Another interesting aspect is that they were far larger on her right hemisphere than her left, a fact that is consistent with the current understanding of autism. Most autistic people have much less development in their left hemispheres, explaining the lack of verbal and social development. Temples vesicles containing cerebrospinal fluid were also much larger in her left hemisphere, which indicates less development.

The rich visual development of Temple’s brain supports her argument that different minds need to work together. Her specialized mind provides a massive advantage to her work, and the more specialized people develop their ability in whatever field they excel in, the more valuable they are as a component of a team.

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