Bicameral Mind and Autism

Discussion of Julian Jaynes's second hypothesis - that before the development of consciousness, humans operated under a previous mentality called the bicameral mind.
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JBrubaker
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Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2011 10:31 am

Bicameral Mind and Autism

Post by JBrubaker »

Recently I happened across a study concerning a statistically significant relation between the size of the corpus callosum and autism. The study notes also that a reduced size of the CC is prevalent among schizophrenics, ADHDs, and Tourette's Syndrome. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3229274/

The corpus callosum, along with the anterior commisure, links the two hemispheres of the brain; Jaynes and others hypothesize that the intercomunication between Wernecke's Area and its comparable area in the opposite hemisphere allows for the pre-conscious mind to "hear" the gods, and later, in the conscious mind, for the two hemispheres to comprise the I-Me discourse.

Now if the CC is greatly reduced in size among a significant number of autistic persons, one may hypothesize that the intercommunication between Wernecke's Area and its complement are significantly reduced as well. The result is that the autistic person has difficulty hearing the gods, or becoming capable of carrying on a conversation with oneself. Therefore, it may be that the mind of an autistic person is trapped within one hemisphere, unable to effectively build narratives of planning, of abstract reasoning, problem solving - all the characteristics of a conscious mind.

I realize that an objection to this thesis would be that there are demonstrations of people who have had one hemisphere completely removed, and still retained a life of interior consciousness, but I would counter that the person already led such a life previously, and with the removal of the hemisphere, simply recreated the mind-space within the remaining hemisphere.

Just throwing this out - comments?
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