To Infinity And...In Theory: The Fearless Avenger...Comic Books to Reality? #2

We all know who he is (well at least us comic book elites know who he is) Matt Murdock. The blind lawyer of Hell’s Kitchen. The man without fear, or as Spidey so affectionately calls him “Double D”. Daredevil.

Daredevil is an icon of Marvel Comics. Not just because he’s a blind badass who doesn’t have any actual superpowers whatsoever, but because he was one of their original comics from back when they were Timely. There’s a lot of history behind this rooftop jumping, mobster punching acrobat.

Did I mention he’s blind?

So how does he fight crime?

Why with echolocation of course. Using his batons he can produce sounds that echo off the surrounding area back to him. He perceives these sounds as visual wavelengths so to speak and is able to “see” what is in front of him. The amazing thing is, is that Daredevil isn’t alone. And I don’t mean there’s a deaf sidekick with perfect pitch out there for him.

I mean that human echolocation is real.

Way to go Marvel you did it again.

So what is echolocation? That’s exactly what we’re going to explore here at To Infinity and…In Theory today. We’re going to discuss some of the amazing creatures of this planet that employ it in order to survive as well. Another topic we’re going to talk about today that you may not think fits into this blog very well is Autism.

I assure you; by the end of this entry today you will understand the link between the two.

Meet the Real-Life X-Men

Believe it or not that picture above is the very face of autism, and yes, he is drawing that. His name is Stephen Wiltshire, and he is what is known as an Autistic Savant. Stephen has an incredible ability, one that would earn him a spot among the ranks of the X-Men if they were real, and a power that has earned him the moniker The Human Camera.

Okay, so it isn’t a name that will strike fear into the hearts of evildoers everywhere but he still uses his powers for good. Just watch the video below to see Stephens’s eidetic prowess in action.

And what about Kim Peek? We’ve all seen the Dustin Hoffman film “Rain-Man” but do people like that really exist? Turns out they do, and Kim Peek is the real deal. He has read over 12,000 books and can recall everything about them. His friends affectionately called him “Kimputer”.

Kim had a rare ability. He could read two pages at once by using his left and right eye at the same time, dedicating each one to a page. Because of this he could read two pages in less than 3 seconds and still be able to recall everything on them. Kim also fancied himself a trivia buff, having 15 areas of expertise ranging from geography to sports.

When Kim was born the doctor basically told his father to throw the boy away to an institution and forget about him. He said he’d never walk, talk, or think, let alone be able to read and comprehend. Something tells me that doctor should have lost his license. But then again, who’d have known he’d just delivered the next stage of human evolution unto the world?

(Watch Kim’s amazing brain in action here!)

So eidetic memories are really cool. And so are the people who possess the ability to hear a musical composition once and play it perfectly, and sometimes better than the original composer. Perhaps no story is greater than that of Leslie Lemke, an adopted savant who couldn’t even move in his early years. His foster mother May Lemke would have to tie him to her body in order to show him how ambulation worked. The other incredible aspect of Leslie, he was blind as his eyes were removed due to his disorder.

But boy howdy can that man slap the ivories.

Leslie was another case in which society had given up on a young man before digging beneath the surface to see what lay beneath. In fact, at one time or another, all of these remarkable individuals get written off as incompetent, mentally incapable, or burdens altogether. But the real question is, with gifts like these, why would somebody think they could never make something of themselves?

The sad answer to that question is a horrible disease, one given at birth, and that genetic nightmare is called Autism.

What is Autism?

Autism is a developmental disorder. It rears its ugly head within the first 3 years of life and afflicts the part of the brain dedicated to social and communication skills. To put it simply, autism rewires the brain from what we consider normal function, creating personality traits for the individual that makes it hard for them to function in society with the ease of say you or I.

Autism effects on average 1 in 68 children. There is no medical method for screening the disease and there is no cure, only therapy and paternal support can currently help with Autism. There are some medications but they are experimental at best and none have been proven to definitively work.

Autism has a spectrum. It can range from highly functioning with social disorders to all out wheelchair confinement and assisted living in the form of Downs Syndrome (the most extreme case of Autism). And not every child afflicted with it has the savant like abilities of Kim Peek and Stephen Wiltshire. In fact, only about 100 people out of the entire population of individuals living with autism (in the United States if statistics are accurate that would be several million people) are savants.

On the far left side of the spectrum is Asperger’s Disorder. Asperger’s Disorder is a form of Autism that was featured on the television show “Parenthood.” A little boy that was affected by it had difficulty communicating properly and behaving like we’ve grown accustomed to well-behaved children acting in public. It wasn’t his fault. A part of his brain was rewired, taking away his ability to make the sort of social connections you or I can when approached with a given situation.

But sometimes, it isn’t always a bad thing.

As we see in the video above, Max (the boy with Asperger’s) runs for class president. Not only does he run on the pro-vending machine platform, but he explains how his detail oriented illness will actually be his “greatest strength” in performing his duties as class president. The truth is, he’s right.

People with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) have a tendency to be extremely meticulous. That is why they are drawn to fields such as mathematics and history, because the facts and the details don’t change, they remain constant and they are able to draw upon those easily because of it. So while they may not be able to look you in the eye, they can tell you everything about every president since George Washington, right down to the underwear he wore while crossing the Delaware, (my money’s on Commando) provided that information, ya know, is available to be gleaned.

So now that we’ve talked about Autism and what it is, a Savant and what they can do, and some of the amazing individuals living with this horrific disease, let’s talk about some real life superpowers. Not all brain boosts given to these child progenies are of the photographic memory kind. Some of them are able to develop a method of coping so extreme and incredible it can literally only be described as Superhuman.

But first we need to talk a little bit about the amazing ability we’ll be discussing.

Click Until it Hertz

To say that dolphins are the pinnacle of evolution may still yet be an understatement. In fact, it’s akin to Shakespeare’s quote “To guild refined gold, to paint the lily, to throw perfume on the violet…is ridiculous and wasteful excess.” There is really no way to make these majestic creatures better. Which is probably why when humans need to make themselves better, they turn to this kind of perfection.

They’re intelligence undersea is unquestionable. They have been known to protect swimmers from sharks, are capable of group problem solving, and have an extremely unique ability that humans would love to transfer to ourselves.

Echolocation.

So how does it work? It’s quite incredible really and only recently have scientists truly been able to pinpoint the origin of this awesome task. Dolphins don’t have vocal cords like humans do, instead they have vocal folds. They are able to produce a clicking sound capable to making sounds at a much higher frequency then humans are capable of hearing. This sound or “click” bounces off of objects in the ocean and returns back to the origin (dolphin or whale) thereby being interpreted from sound into picture allowing them to “see” what’s in front of them. The Dolphin Communication Project explains it wonderfully in the passage below.

“Well to answer that question, I'll provide a not-so-quick overview of the echolocation process: A dolphin produces these click sounds using a structure in its head called the phonic or sonic lips. Humans, like nearly all mammals, produce sounds using their vocal cords. Dolphins do not have functional vocal cords; what's left of their vocal cords, called vocal folds, lost their ability to produce sound millions of years ago during their evolution from land animals. Instead, these phonic lips were evolved from what was once the dolphin's nose. Evolution has provided dolphins with a single opening at the top of its head through which it breathes - this opening is called a blowhole. The phonic lips (the former nostrils) are tucked just underneath the blowhole in the nasal cavity. By sending pressurized air past these lip-like structures, they are sent into vibration, and click sounds are produced. There are a series of nasal sacs in the dolphin's head that allows them to shuttle air back and forth across the phonic lips. Scientists studying dolphin echolocation were, for many decades, completely baffled as to how a dolphin managed to produce these clicks. No-one was sure exactly where in the dolphin's head these clicks were originating. The scientists thought possibly the clicks came from down in the larynx, in the nasal cavity, or maybe even from their blowhole. Thanks to a few relatively recent studies, scientists are now reasonably sure that the phonic lips are the source of clicks, although it is still a mystery as to exactly how pushing air across these lips results in the clicks themselves. Our best guess is that the lips (the former nostrils) slap against other fatty bodies in the dolphin's nasal cavity, which then transfer the sounds through the dolphin's head and out into the water. Since dolphins have two sets of phonic lips (having evolved from each of the two nostrils), they are able to produce two sets of click sounds simultaneously. This means that they can produce two sets of click sounds simultaneously, as well as whistle sounds which are produced in the larynx. Dolphins are great multi-taskers when it comes to sound production!” – TheDolphin Communication Project

When you think about it, it’s imperative that dolphins, whales, and other toothed crustaceans developed this ability. In many ways it’s more important than vision. Think about it. When you dive down to the bottom of lake, no matter how clear it is, at a certain depth light no longer reaches. Well dolphins have to swim down to the levels where light has difficulty reaching in order to hunt. Without the ability to use its eyes to see it has to develop a new method of tracking lunch.

So how does this ability transfer over to humans? Well I assure you, nobody was bitten by a radioactive flipper before gaining these powers. For a better understanding of how human echolocation works we need to go talk to the man who teaches it. Daniel Kish.

Seeing Sounds

That’s Daniel Kish. You may be asking, “uhhhh, what’s up with the guy riding a bike? I thought this was about echolocation?” It is, and so is the picture. See that isn’t just any guy riding a bike. That’s a blind man riding a bike. And he doesn’t just ride a bike, he mountain climbs, hikes, runs, and does all sorts of other things you and I do with the assistance of our eyes.

So how does he do it?

Echolocation of course!

So obviously it doesn’t work the same way in humans as it does in dolphins. We don’t have phonic lips or an extended open cavity for sound to reverberate in (well…maybe some of us do…). Not to mention if the frequency dolphin’s use is above human hearing, how is sonar useful for humans?

See in those of us fortunate enough to still have our sight we have an ability too. It’s called “echo suppression.” Every sound wave produces an echo if it has a dense surface to bounce off of. The sound waves intensity depends on the density of the object it’s interacting with. If we didn’t have this suppression ability every time somebody talked to us it would be muddy and unintelligible.

But not in the blind.

When we take in an ocular image, certain parts of the brain go to work deciphering that image. When a sense is cut, in this case sight, the other senses have a tendency to pick up the slack. This heightened state of sensory abilities is what makes the blind more apt at learning this trait.

The reason Daniel Kish is so important to this topic and this blog entry isn’t because he’s autistic, (because he’s not) and it isn’t because he’s disabled (because he’s also not) it’s because he teaches this skill. That’s right. Daniel Kish is accredited to teach the blind to “see”.

You may remember one of his students from National News coverage a few years back. Benjamin Underwood. A young African American teenager blind from infancy due to retinal cancer. Although the cancer eventually claimed the young man’s life (a week before his 17^th birthday, oh how my heart weeps, sincerely) he showed the world that we are so much more than what society calls our “disabilities.” Check out the documentary on him below. *Warning! For those with weak stomachs he does remove his prosthetic eyes and it can be a little unnerving.*

They aren’t the only ones. Ellen Boudreaux is another example of this incredible ocular sonar ability. She is an autistic savant like Stephen Wiltshire and Leslie Lemke but unlike them she has multiple abilities. Not only does she have perfect pitch like Stephen, and the incredible music prowess of Leslie, but she has two other savant abilities that blow everyone away.

When Ellen was eight years old her mother made her listen to a recording on the answering machine, “the time lady.” Ever since that day Ellen has had a perfect internal clock, knowing every passing minute, second, and hour without even ever having the actual concept of passing time explained to her. Furthermore a newspaper reporter at one point tried to stump Ellen’s musical knowledge by asking her to play an obscure jingle. She pulled it off without a hitch. Every…single…one. Her penchant for remembering songs almost rivals that of Smart Phone apps like Shazaam or Rhapsody.

While we may not fully understand how it is these remarkable individuals are capable of doing these amazing things, there is one thing that’s clear. Nobody that was mentioned in this article is or was a burden. Nor are they stupid. Just because an autistic individual doesn’t appear to be functioning on your intellectual level doesn’t mean there’s nothing going on in there.

The Native Americans had a much different view on mental disabilities then we ever have. They would make the individual the Shaman (spiritual leader) of the village. The individual was said to be “close to the Gods” because hearing the voices of their creators was so powerful it hurt their minds and now they were in tune to the nature of the world.

Too often we write these awe inspiring individuals off, calling them “retarded” or “idiots” not realizing that they understand and comprehend. What you say to them soaks in, and it hurts.

They’re people, just like you and me.

Just…better.

-Ryan Sanders

I truly hope you enjoyed reading this today as Autism is a personal interest of mine. I have nothing but respect for anyone afflicted with the illness and I view them all as wonderful additions to an otherwise dull world. Thank you so much for reading and if you have any questions or comments post them below. Feel free to share this around on Facebook and Twitter so that everyone else can see just how truly incredible these people are. Follow any of the links speckled throughout this article today to learn more about the topics discussed. As always, Happy Learning!