From Stuff.co.nz

Is this really such a big deal? What is the purpose of underwear (other than "decency" as the prudishly inclined may put it)? There's nothing unnatural about a human body (unless it's tampered with), so what's with society's obsession with keeping parts covered?

I wear underwear so that my pants won't be yellow in the front and brown in the back.

Your country doesn't have toilets?

Matthew is a busy man. After all he is a consultant.

Real men don't wear underwear

You just hurt many super heroes' feelings.

they hold the pad (also known as the sanitary napkin) in place. Pads with wings are the best.

I'd say B. Spears is not very sanitary then

Her lack of underwear indicates that she currently has no need for a pad and is thus safe to take home for the evening.

Is that what you get if you cross a pad with Red Bull?

I have made a new smily in response to your joke:

590925

"You hide your buttocks with your pants."
"Isn't it the other way around?"

Frankly, I do so because 1) unavoidable drippage after urination 2) I can't help but run up and down stairs rather than walk up them, and if you get on a harmonic with your wedding tackle, it can produce painful results.

Honestly though, if there was a solution to the drip problem, I would go commando. In lieu of that: boxer briefs -- the freedom of boxers with the kinetic protection of briefs.

I think I heard somewhere that the dress was originally invented so that women could discretely pee without having to take their clothes off. If the dress reached the ground, they could just stand up and let go without anyone noticing. Of course, this would not work if the woman was wearing underwear.

AE.

That's disgusting, and completely plausible. BUT what about toga's? Men and woman wore togas....

Better not, there may be a little white string lurking around somewhere. Better examine it a little more closely before you make that call.

I haven't worn underwear in years, no stains, apparently my sphincters are still functional.

The pee doesn't just go straight down. It runs down their leg if they try to pee standing up. Although there are techniques for women to use a urinal, it involves having their hands down their pants and hence negates your myth anyway.

Too. Much. Info.

But that was the condensed version.

You learn something new - I've just found out from wikipedia you have two up your bum.

I'll have to get my wife to try and find my other one sometime

Be sure she uses a high quality penetrometer

Now that was too much info.

Really? I guess you don't want to know she's already found my prostate gland

All while you're typing? Uber-kinky!

Impressive. I don't even know where mine is. Well, I know roughly where it is, but I couldn't pinpoint the exact spot.

Nothing like a tale of the legendary Male Anus Explorers before dinner!

Young girls wore toga's, grown women didn't.
Speculation is that one did not wear underwear under a toga.

I was lying of course, my wife wouldn't even go near the inside of my arse with a barge pole (that's a figurative not literal barge pole for those of an ASD nature).

Accredited Symbian Developer?

Autistic Spectrum disorders. People with ASD (especially those of us with Asperger's) tend to take everything they hear (and to a lesser extent, read) literally. It took me years to realize that when people say "How are you/how's it going" they're not really asking you how you are.

sorry to confuse you but yes they are. only ignorant people ask how you are without meaning it.

as for ASD my son's just been diagnosed (after 5 years of tests and undecidedness) but at the very high-end (mild form). but after this I've been questioning myself and my idiosyncracies and wondering whether I'm the same or not. My most recent case was I realised yesterday I can't use/have an aversion to cutlery with ceramic handles or with patterns on the handles - but I think that was just a bad memory from the past

Is there some kind of online test for ASD?

Perhaps it's a local custom, but people use it a lot here as a greeting. I once had a placement interview at the Anxiety Disorders Unit, and when I was met my the doctor, she greeted me with "how are you." I spent about 20 seconds trying to determine whether she was asking how I was in general, or if she was asking in a clinical capacity. She finally clicked to what the problem was and told me she just meant hello.

eehhhhmmm...how to say it...aren't you overreacting a bit? how is it logical that a person you have never met before is really interested in how you are doing?

just out of curiocity: what thought processes drove you to that conclusion (that maybe she is interested in learning how are you)?

Heh, everymorning my boss walks by my desk to her desk and says: 'hi, how's it going?' I still don't know if she means me, or the system. So I just say 'good morning' and ignore the rest. I suppose it's okay because it's been going on that way since we last rearranged desk about a year ago.

edit; here 'how's it going' can be a greeting as well.

I'm going to answer those questions in reverse order.

The fact that she said to me "how are you." I don't know if she used the normal intonation to indicate that she was asking a question or not, as I don't pick things like that up unless I'm actively concentrating on doing so. At the time however, I was so nervous most of my concentration was devoted to stopping myself from throwing up (having to sit in a strange place with a lot of anxious people is not good when you have a phobia of being around other people).

Logic doesn't count for much when you're on the verge of having a panic attack.

not really as there are no set rules and the symtoms can't be taken individually, like my cutlery disorder

it took about 6 specialists in different areas and 5 years to decide that they couldn't decide for my son and instead waited another year, after which decided to put him on the spectrum based on a physical (poor fine/gross motor skills, balance) and emotional (immaturity), social (hard to interact with peers), poor short term memory, lack of understanding of idioms.

The first time I heard that as a greeting was when I was in the US last year. We weren't sure what the proper response was, so we tried different things. We ended up getting a very confused look when we tried "very well, and yourself?"
It isn't used as a greeting, but most conversations do open with "Hi x." "Hi y." "How are you?" "Fine, yourself?" "Fine." People get really confused if you don't answer with some variation of "fine".

I recently read a book, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which is about a boy with Asperger's Syndrome. I'm told it's a fairly good test to see how much you reconise of yourself in the main character. Not exactly on-line, but I also wouldn't have much faith in a self-test for a (any) mental disorder (even a fairly mild one).

Oh well.. Just wondered.

When people ask me "How are you?" I just say No.
Always good fun.

Anti-social much?

perhaps it's extreme shyness...

In the way that being psychotic is extreme weirdness maybe.

...so you believe there is something wrong with you?

Well, according to superheroes, overwear is under-rated.

Bear in mind that back then, most ground outside was just bare earth, and paved ground was extremely rare. And of course, society did not have such a squeamishness about personal hygene, although modesty was still desired.

When I went to the Mongolian steppes, I was introduced to a delightful piece of attire known as a 'toilet-coat'. This is a coat with a very spacious bottom-half that goes all the way to the ground. Mongolian Gers do not have an indoor toilet, and the steppe landscape is featureless and does not have any trees to hide behind. To solve the problem of modesty, the residents would take it in turns to borrow the toilet-coat and walk 10 minutes to the nearest hill that blocks the view, and while still wearing the coat, would just let loose (there's enough room in the coat to squat, men could go this way too, and even #2 was possible as well). Not only did it give you modesty, but during the winter (where temperatures can go as low as -50c), it would also keep your parts warm.

I just tried to look up the bit about dresses in Wikipedia to see if that was why they were invented. The article on dresses did not have any useful information, but I did find this little gem instead.

Do you mean this?

So basically, underwear is just one glorified sanity-pad holder.

AE.

No, not really. I have some mental disorders, but I don't see that as being wrong. For the most part, I still function more highly than most people.

I don't believe the line between having a mental disorder and a personality trait is black and white. I think it's a matter of degree..

It's also difficult for someone foreign and coming up against the colloquial English language to understand the meaning of such phrases. Unless you're familiar with them, they are often taken at face value.

Another one I had great difficulty with is "You did that, did you not?". I couldn't work out if I had to answer "yes" to the "You did that" part, or "no" to the "did you not" bit, and on more than one occasion had answered "yes, err no, umm I don't know" to it. It took me years to get over the irrationality behind the line and work out how it had to be answered.

I believe the correct answer is: "I didn't do it. Nobody saw me do it. You can't prove a thing."

Actually it's 'I deny everything!'

Not a problem, my dear fellow, if you answer in a complete sentence: yes, I did or no, I didn't.

EDIT:

That jogged my Blackadder memory:
BA: "Deny everything, Baldrick!"
M: "Are you private Baldrick?"
B: "No, I'm not! And Captain Blackadder did not shoot the delicious pigeon!"

Yeah, the moral of the story is: don't ask negatives. When I am asked questions like that, I will either answer in complete sentences or say "correct" or "incorrect", instead of "yes" or "no" or "right" or "left".

Holy crap topic switch!

Multiple ones. Approximate, all of them, but they reportedly get it right most of the time. Here is one, and another can be found here.

The quiz says No!

Same. I scored 12.

7 for me.

Joel, Asperger's Syndrome(AS) != ASD. Autistic Spectrum Disorder is not a specific disorder, but a blanket term that covers various high functioning autistic disorders (including AS). In other words, you can have ASD and not have AS.

As for thos AS tests, I scored 27 on the first one. On the second I has a "Aspie" score of 165 and a neurotypical score of 32. So both tests say I have AS (which isn't surprising ). The problem with these sort of tests is false positives. A lot of people who have ADHD with secondary anxiety disorder or OCD would also be given postive results by those tests. The first was short enough that a lot of other people would get false positives as well.

That was fun; amazingly enough (;)), I'm apparently 'neurotypical'.
I scored 5 on the first test, 35/161 on the second one, but that was influenced by having to answer "yes" to questions about wether or not I used to feel different or left out, since I was (due to spending large chunks of my childhood in hospital). Should perhaps have answered them as reflecting to my current situation, but considering the end result it should hardly make a difference.

EDIT: swapped the order of the tests, I did them in reverse order.

I got 25. Sounds like you guys are losers!

I agree with LennyLen here. The 90% accuracy the test claims is in the wrong direction. I could devise a test with 100% accuracy in that direction by just claiming everyone has it!

I got 81/128 on the longer test, and 13 on the shorter one. Seems I'm "neurotypical", but not by much . I might have been a little too hard on myself when answering the question about social relations, though.

Self-diagnosed Asperger's, you say?

I think most self-diagnosed people simply have what Wikipedia terms HFA, which to me is nothing more than a description of a nerd. And that's no disease, it's just a behavioral pattern to which nerds naturally adapt.

If that was by chance directed at me, no. I might have advanced nerditis, but not Asperger's .

Hahaha, sanity pad...

Someone please make a photoshop of this idea, I'm too lazy to do it right now.

Oh nice.
First link: 38
Second Link: 164, 32

I wonder if a fairly extreme score in one of these test (answered honestly) means anything.

I bet picollo would get a negative score..

26p. Huzzah, I beat Matthew! I didn't win though.

Wow! So that's three of you who could have an ASD disorder. How do you feel about that?

Ever since I was first introduced with "Aspergers" it just made sense. Of course the doctors seem to think its BiPolar, but then they don't seem to be to interested in actually doing more than seeing me every 2-4 weeks to top off my medication (medication that doesn't really help as much as I'd like even )

If you told me you could "cure" me, I'd ask you to go away. Honestly. My AS is on the mild side, and any disadvantages it brings are easily made up for. AS can really be a blessing though.

Take a look up at the stars one night. Yes, theyre pretty. Now look again. Do you see the grid of squares they make, or the hex-grid, or the series of interconnected dodecahedrons? See them? No? Suckers. It's not just the stars. Take any randomly distributed seemingly patternless system such as a patch of grass or leaves on a tree. They're filled with patterns of geometirc shapes, that most people are completely incapable of picking out. I can watch trees in the wind for ages, just watching all the patterns rearrange themselves (for anyon who's hallucinated on acid or cactus, the effect is very similar).

I also have a complete inablity to be bored. If there's "nothing to do" I can just amuse myself by finding text and rearranging all the letters in my head using a rather complex little mathematic system I designed as a child to see what parts of the text "equate" to other parts. Most people go WTF? when I tell them I do that, but to me its perfectly normal, and I was quite surprised when I finally learnt that it's something that I do, and not something that everyone does.

So how to I feel about AS? I love it. If you could take away my anxiety disorder though, I'd be grateful forever.

edit:

I'm not trying to put down psychiatry, but a lot of it is hit-and-miss. It's not uncommon for a diagnosis to only be confirmed once it's discovered which drugs you respond to. In part because so many disorders mimic each other and also because a lot of people have more than one disorder. My diagnosis vector was Depression, ADHD, Bipolarism with secondary OCD and then finally AS and AD.

You and me both. That and the so called "Social Phobia".

Oh, oddly enough, I happen to take entire social situations from start to end through my head. Every word, every movement, every feeling. I'd rather have what you have though

Then theres what happens when I'm really into something. I totally zone or blank out, yet I'm still reading or watching what I'm "doing". Maybe it has to do with recall, but often I can't actually remember physically reading entire passeges, but I remember the story/plot/whatever. In fact, I don't remember seeing anything when I zone out, I sorta go into the thing I'm doing. It's all rather fun, but it can sometimes take a while to get into "the zone" as I like to call it.

Then theres times when I get a little crazy I suppose they are just halucinations, but how often can you actually controll them as you would a musical instrument? Infact, thats basically what it is for me, just entire songs, typically Classical/Orchestral music. I'll "make" entire musics in my head, with a multitude of instruments, and I actually HEAR it. I wish that happened more often to tell you the truth. Though before I get to that point, I usually just recall entire "pop/rock" songs in my head, all the lyrics, instruments etc. Thats nice too, even though afterwards (or outside of "the zone") I couldn't actually tell you the lyrics or the name of the song in most cases. And no, its no dream. At least not as if I'm sleeping.

edit:

Don't I know it. And I'd have said "Its all hit and miss". Its no science thats for sure. Until we totally map the brain, its electrochemistry, it'll always be hit and miss imo.

I'm not trying to put down psychiatry, but some psychiatrists pull their diagnosis from their anus.

When I was younger I was diagnosed with ADHD... I don't have ADHD at all and never have. There wasn't anything wrong with me, I just didn't like school.

Ahaha. Yeah, back in the 80s and early 90s ADD and ADHD was something of a fad, and almost everyone got tagged with it. And the funny thing is, its easy to tell when a person doesn't have it, once you're put on the meds for ADD or ADHD, it just makes you have the actual symptoms iirc.

Well, Social Phobia is the type of AD I was referring to. I did start to develop Panic Disorder which nearly blew up into Agoraphobia, and this is when I finally made the decision to seek psychiatric help (at age 27). Luckily, Christchurch has one of the best Anxiety Disorders Units in the world (Or so I'm told. They still haven't clicked to the fact that they should have placement interviews in the client's home!!! Well, in their defence, they probably want to, but no doubt there are budget constrainsts), so within no time I was placed on an eight-week group CBT course which helped to eliminate the Panic Disorder before it set in. The Social Phobia was far more ingrained into me though, and is probably likely to never go away (though I can control it to a large extent now).

I have read a LOT of material on AS and Bipolarism over the years, and while I've heard of what you describe in the first paragraph from both groups (I do that myself), but what you describe in the second I've only seen attributed to AS. Interesting.

edit:

Yup. Ritalin is a methamphetimine analogue.

Funnily enough, when they put me on it, my sleeping problems went away. It didn't do any of the desired effects however, so they stopped treatment.

That second group usually only happens durring certian times. See I probably do have BiPolar, since my mood/personality likes to change depending on the time of year and/or if I've had a "stress crash" (or just change when ever it feels like sometimes), and the Meds I'm on now actually help to some extent with the main BiPolar symptoms.

And while BiPolar fits pretty well with my symptoms, imo, AS fits better, and AS I hear can mimic BiPolar, as BiPolar can mimic ADD (etc). Its all the same imo, shades of gray. We'll see if the doctors will agree with me at some point.

edit, one thing though, that kinda makes me think that the music bits are all just halucinations, the one thing I'm on is a glorified tranqulizer (Seroquel), and makes the music go away, along with my horrible nightmares (so, even though the seroquel makes me groggy as hell, its still worth it.. been having the same damn dreams and nightmares for up to 20 years (depending on the dream), I hate those dreams).

Well, I scored 27 and 98/102. I do see patterns alot, but I don't do any novel mental excercises either. I used to experience severe anxiety but learned some mental tricks to avoid it in my teens.

These tests are pretty much meaningless though. Even if you try to answer them truthfully, the result will depend on how your day is going to that point.

I can use my head as a music player. As I listen to music, I gradually memorize pieces of it; the more, particularly when concentrating, the better I can recall them. I have a ton of music from old console games lodged in my head that often play in the background, among many other things.

As for how it is heard, it is different than "real" sound. The experience is fainter, somehow (how much varies), but can have significantly more "depth" than the real thing at times, thanks to the processing capabilities of the brain. (though it requires a bit of concentration) Going by my experience, I'd say it is experienced in the same manner as things are during dreams, though not as intensely.

Things play automatically, shifting from time to time, as well as according to what I associate with the current situation. Though I can consciously change the track, apply various different effects (half-arsed dynamics processing, equalization, distortion, etc.), as well as use my mind as a synth.

It not only goes on while I am awake, but during my dreams as well. Then, however, it is not only music from real-life, but also (often rather weird) compositions automatically made by my brain, seemingly in real-time, more or less in accordance to what goes on in the dream.

Apart from the occasional, relatively brief pause, the only times it is wholly silent is when I am concentrating on making it so, very deeply relaxed, or listening to "real" audio.

And as for me, I have been diagnosed with both AS and Tourette's.

If only the good "music player" mode didn't come along with equally bad things...

I have always been able to whistle songs, if its playing, I can pretty much get a song down while its playing, though I'll only remember bits of it afterwards, unless I concentrate intently on remembering the rest, which takes an insane amount of concentration (which is really really hard for me to do...)

I got 6 on the first test, 76 on the other (making me neurotypical). which is odd given I ticked most of the boxes for HFA.

On the pre-questionnaire for the aspie one I was trying to figure out what it meant for 10 minutes and still couldn't figure it out, so I got the wife in and she couldn't either, anyone?

'Please imagine you work in a big open plan office. On your way home after work, you realise you forgot something and go back. As you approach the open office door, you see one of your colleagues. He explains the new computer system to another employee, an older woman who will retire next week. How much would what you saw change your opinion of your collegues altruism?'

What's telling someone who's retiring about a new system got to do with your view of his altruism. the only thing it makes me think is that bit of information has nothing to do with being nice and only relevant if she wasn't retiring.

well, I see it as being nice since shes retiring, if she wasn't, it'd be something you'd have to do, where as you could probably wiggle out of it since its not really worth the effort to train someone who's leaving.

but that's got nothing to do with altruism as he wasn't thinking of her welfare. If he was going out of his way to explain what it was because she was old and still working there, and he thought she might not understand, then I'd understand.

Neil, this is how I interpreted it. If she's retiring next week, then some people would just say "I'm not going to help her, she's leaving anyway." So not only is he staying behind to help her, his actions won't benefit himself or the company.

Exactly what I tried to say Lenny

From my point of view I'm very altruistic but I probably wouldn't tell her about the system unless she asked because I'd figure she wasn't interested and would rather go home because it was late.

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Oooh, Premium!

Just what I want to see straight after breakfast.

Yikes, it's noon already and I still haven't had mine. I kinda forgot that those pains in your stomach mean eat something.

My sister had an idea for a female product just like that, but when her and her husband researched it they found it had already been done (as the picture proves).

I took the persons offer to help as not being altruistic at all. Number one it was a waste of time because the woman was leaving and probably didn't care anyway. Number two I thought he was just sucking up to the boss by offering to stay late. So his/her actions negatively effected my outlook toward that person.

Maybe I've just been around more cut-throat office politicking than most...

I believe the reason they asked that question is because most people with AS are generally naive when it comes to sensing other peoples motives. While I have a good understanding of office politics, I'm oblivious to it unless I'm actively looking for it. People with AS also tend to be very trusting which can make us easy to manipulate. I think most people who have AS would have said that they assumed the person was doing it to be nice.

My answer was that I would not have read anything into the situation one way or the other, which is true. I really wouldn't care.

I don't see how what she felt about the situation reflects on his altruism (or lack of it).

Except it'll most likely make her life easier for the last week.

Hmm, mind music player... Doesn't everyone have that shit?
Atleast the one that decides to play the song you hate most all the time.
I have to focus to switch to a good song, but it's damn hard and as soon as I relax the sucky song pops back.
I wonder if I get depressed because that song kept coming to me or if the song comes to me because I'm depressed... Nah, definitely the former, it comes even when I'm happy.

It has happened from time to time that I hear sounds as if they were real, a short burst of crystal clear sound of something random. Awesome stuff, I wish I could control it.

Interesting. The question I got was about a woman explaining the computer system to an attractive new male employee. My answer was that it really wasn't my business, that I would be curious if there was an ulterior motive but that I really couldn't begin to say how it would affect my opinion of said woman without knowing how helpful/altruistic she normally was. Which the short story doesn't tell.

If it were me doing it, that would have been correct. Which would give me a slight bias to interpreting the behavior as altruistic.

You know... all these things got me thinking. My former girlfriend had many of these symptoms, but I don't think she was diagnosed at the time (she was seeing a psychiatrist though). I wonder what I'd have done if I'd realised this back then... might have been a bit more forgiving when she stopped answering e-mails and text messages...

I thought the key aspect to that was that she was retiring. If I'm quiting work altogether, I don't give a damn about the last week. If your my boss, you'll be lucky to see my @ss around. I'll be skipping work to get the Winnabago ready for the cruise down to florida....

Maybe its just me, but you still have a job to do. Just because you put in a notice or are retiring, doesn't mean that they can't fire you for missing work or not performing your duties. In fact, I'll bet many Boss's will be on the look out for ways to take away a retirees pension.

Maybe I care too much about image to do something like that.

tomasu.AS_score -= 50;

But seriously, I know what you mean. While I don't care much about my physical image, or being part of the latest fad, I have a lot of professionl integrity, which is important to me.

Oh its not physical image... Its what people think of me, or really, looking bad. The core of my Social Phobia and anxiety.

edit: It developed later in life.. I started out shy, but once I hit puberty, everything started going wrong
edit2: of course it wasn't just puberty. Life started getting really hectic (divorse, moving, etc) around when I was 8...

Sorry, I was deliberately taking what you said out of context in an attempt at humour. I thought removing the last half of your sentence would make that obvious, but I guess not.

That's the core of all Social Phobia. The Phobia Society of America define Social Phobia as "an excessive, unreasonable fear that some particular action will be noticed by others in public. Examples are fear of public speaking; stage fright; fear of urinating in public bathrooms, signing one's name, or being watched while eating. Panic may be experienced if the person attempts the feared beghaviour."

If I can get my scanner working, I have some excellent Patient Treatment Manuals for Social Phobia, Panic Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. A lot of the material they have is advantageous to anyone with low self-esteem, whether or not they have social phobia.

Yeah, I saw it, I just chose to comment anyhow

edit,

I wish someone would have explained that sooner I assumed it was just afraid of any social situation and people.

edit2, been diagnosed with it for 2+ years, and didn't know what it really meant. Nice.

From that short story I'd say the guy was maliciously telling the woman about the computer system to show how she wasn't needed anymore anyway..

Am I the only one who saw it that way?

Probably. You know what they say about people who see the worst in every situation

That's particularly funny considering Johan's following post.

Only on Allegro.cc can a discussion about underwear mutate into a discussion about Asperger's Syndrome.

[takes tests]

1st test: 13
2nd test: 94, 121

In my case, I was brought up in a foreign country. Me and my family are English, but we lived in the Netherlands, and everyone around us spoke Dutch. Until I was 6, I was sent to various Dutch nurseries/schools. It is said that many of the social skills are learned in the Kindergarten sandpit. However, if you speak a different language to everyone else, this becomes much harder as you cannot share worldviews with your peers, so I made up my own worldview. I did manage to become bilingual by the time my parents had the sense to move me to an English school. I'm good at figuring things out, so with reduced personal interaction, my intellectual-level had time to become more developped. I did pick up the missed social-skills over the years, but have (initially) relied heavily on my intellectual level when interacting with others.

Is this an effect of AS, or is this something else unrelated. Do you see these patterns or just immagine them?

I think that as well as taking hallucionogens, it is possible to get to this state of mind purely by meditation. I once met a girl who claimed she had done such a thing (but then again, she also claimed she could dry a wet towel with nothing but her naked body in temperatures of -25c).

I've tried Yoga on several occasions. While I find it deeply physically relaxing, I've never managed to alter my mental state of mind. You're meant to clear your mind. There's just too much going on in my mind at once, and clearing it is impossible. The best I've managed to do in that respect is to think about clearing my mind.

I've never taken any hallucinogens (and have no intention of doing so), but one thing I do like to do is to read someone's account of an experience with magic-mushrooms/LSD/etc. and try to reverse-engineer the experience - that is, I try and immagine what it's like and what's going on inside the head (it helps if you are truly aware that different people percieve the world differently and you have experience at knowing just how other people's thought-processes are organised and imagining how things go on inside their heads). Also, on my Compter-science course, I learned a bit about Neural Networks, which are similar to how the brain works, and suspect that taking LSD is a bit like randomly rewiring the connections between the neurons.

If by that, you mean recall music that you've remembered, I can do that as well, although I prefer to listen to actual music instead of immaging it. Just out of curiosity, can most people 'listen' to music they remember? I always thought they could. Something else I like to do is to try and immagine what a Techno/Rave remix of an 80's song would sound like.

AE.

It appears to be. I've read other accounts from people with AS who do the same thing. Pattern recognition skills are usually greatly enhanced in people with AS, so the two are no doubt related.

Somewhere on this site is an excellent explanation of how LSD interects with the brain. Sorry, but I'm too lazy to find it

So does that mean that LSD in small doses can temporarily induce AS in someone that doesn't have it? Does that also mean that Autism can be induced with greater doses of LSD? I personally think the former is possible, but doubt the latter, as the two states of mind seem completely different.

AE.

It can mimic some of the effects.

I doubt it.

The way I mean it, is it actually FEELS like its playing, I can actually HEAR it as if it is playing. And clearer than if it were playing from my computers. My mind creates the instruments and vocals, and lets me hear them. Most times I can't remember more than a few lines of a song at any one point normally. But once I get the music, the entire music is there, every note, voice, instrument, and sometimes effects like being in hall's etc.

Now, it could very well seem like a halucination, but people with AS (which it isn't confirmed I have...) have a brain that works differently from the norm. Things are wired up differently. Someone with severe Autism will have very severe issues with sensory input, most times all the senses are multiplied 1000 times, causing a huge overload. People with AS, its the same, but way less severe, and tends to focus on a single sense (I think).

Very possibly, I've not talked to "most people" I would assume its much like you can "listen" to your own thoughts. However my "music" is much more than that, times I can controll, and mix symphonies, and it all sounds as clear and vibrant as if I was standing in the middle of a Concert hall. Infact, it sounds more vibrant... Its a very nice experience to say the least. For me, audio and sound are a huge part of things, a good movie with bad music/sound to me, is an "ok" movie, a "ok" movie with GREAT music and sound is better than Good movie, I just enjoy them much more if the music and sound are top notch. A Great movie with Great sound/music can't be beat.

Its one reason I like anime so much, often times the plot or animation of a show won't be the best, but the sound track is great, and I'll end up liking the show quite a bit.

Ever get that goose bump like shiver from excitement, head to toe? I do, and good music can trigger it Its like getting a little shot of adrenalin or some other nice drug. If only it happened more often

That almost sounds like the effects of hallucinogens. Apparently, the brain automatically filters out as much superfluous information as it can, but with a hallucinogen, the brain is overloaded with all sorts of information it wan't previously.

AE.

Um, its more like someone is screaming in your ears, shining a halogen into your eyes, and rubbing your skin with sandpaper, 24/7. Not much "halucinating" going on for a Autistic person.

A halucination implies that there was something there you were halucinating, like a voice, or your dead grandma, or whatever.

I tend to do the same exact thing. I also end up doing it with numbers, like I look at the clock and figure out how the numbers compare, often thinking up complex formulas, then a completely new one next time I look at the clock.

I was professionally diagnosed with AS a couple years ago, but the negative symptoms of it seem to be going away for me (I force myself into social situations, and now I am not nearly as uptight about them as I used to be).

In that case, giving an autistic person a halucinogenic drug would be a complete disaster.

AE.