Corpus - conversations about medicine and life

Asperger’s works

9 November 2020 1 Comment

Grant Beaven

Let’s build a robot. A humanoid robot, one which might integrate. Where do we start? Two arms, two legs, can walk, can speak. It should have the values of an ordinary person. Integration is paramount – the robot’s ours, after all – so we’ll program it with care based on six human motivations:

Integrity: the robot will always seek its output zenith;
Discomfort/pain: a mechanism for guidance;
Grace/graciousness: the study and application of empathy will be in front of its robot mind;
Duty: the will of its owners will bind it, utterly;
Shame/anxiety: to ensure all other system parameters function at full power;
Hedonism – of course we want a happy-appearing robot!

And so, we have our creation. In fact, we have me. Asperger’s Syndrome has made a robot of me. I try so hard to be like you, I learn your systems, your ways, your technology slowly; I’m odd, I’ve gaps in ordinary knowledge, so I’m ever and remain slightly apart. The way a real robot would. But I’m nearly there. So close! Because I’m close, I’m hidden. And not by accident; I’ve hidden my lacks beneath layers of hubris. Integration’s my purpose. I don’t belong to myself, I belong to you. I mask. I camouflage my difficulties, and I reach the age of forty-two before someone officially confirms a neurological difference.

[Read more…] about Asperger’s works

The female “KISS” for desire

9 November 2020 1 Comment

Shalini Kumar Palathinkal

Did you know that among animals, especially rodents like mice and rats, the females decide when they are ready for some action? You know what I mean … wink, wink. That’s right, the female rodents decide when, and with which male, they want to mate to produce offspring. And this decision is made with the help of a particular type of neuron in the brain that is essential for maintaining fertility, called kisspeptin.

Thus, unlike in humans, the need for mating is prompted in most mammals only around the time of ovulation. This ensures the highest chance of fertilisation. Particularly in rodents, the female controls the initiation and timing of copulatory contacts with the male, triggering the mate preference and sexual motivation circuit in their brains. However, what controls the neural circuitry to drive the female rodents to be suddenly sexually receptive to the males, in comparison to when they are not, remains elusive. An international team of researchers led by Dr Julie Bakker from GIGA Neurosciences, University of Liege, Belgium in 2018 may have some answers to this intriguing question.

From bitterness to gratitude

5 October 2020 4 Comments

James Briscall

Life’s journey: (1) the path, which at times seems level yet at other times is very much a mountain climb; and (2) the darkness and the light along the way. (Image: James Briscall)

That first run was dreadful. I imagine I looked like Bigfoot, captured on that famous grainy video taken in the 1960s. I felt heavy, ungainly and uncoordinated. I was so embarrassed I used to get up at dawn so no one would see me stumbling along. For the first two months I could barely run, my back and feet hurt, and at times I collapsed onto the ground sobbing because the target of running five kilometres seemed an impossible dream. But every day I picked myself up – mentally, physically and emotionally – and continued to put one step in front of the other.

I remembered those days recently as I stood catching my breath after skiing to the far end of a high alpine plateau, immersed in the visual splendour of the winter playground, which stretched as far as I could see. I pondered my journey from the rolling hills of lowland England to the peaks and lakes of Southern New Zealand. The journey took me from being a competitive national rower in my teens, through being hospitalised and barely able to move, to regaining my health and becoming an engaged Dad sharing my love of outdoor pursuits with my children.

Still reading: turning the pages for health and wellbeing in teens

5 October 2020 3 Comments

Samantha Montgomerie

This digital world has a few tricks. It’s fast, lightning quick, bringing rewards with a few quick clicks. We skim and skip, casting for the tantalising bits. And if it ain’t got us hooked real quick, we give it the flick.

And this is the world where a large number of our teens are experiencing the only reading they will commit to for pleasure.

There is much to be lost if we give up on the idea that reading deeply matters. We need to make sure our young people find the time to be still, and to ensure they are still reading. We risk a lot if we stop fostering a culture where deep reading matters.

A loaded skip: moving in a pandemic

5 October 2020 3 Comments

M. L. E. Brown

In the past ten months, my husband, his sister, and I have moved my husband’s parents – first one, and then the other – into different wings of the same managed aged-care facility. We then had to sell their Northland home, built by my in-laws and only reluctantly abandoned after fifty-five years of married life. When settlement finally eventuated, we had a few frantic days to travel to Northland and clear out the house. All this has occurred during the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic. My husband’s job at Auckland Airport dictated strictly no close contact with either his father or his sister (as she was helping their father move into the retirement village). Auckland’s second lock-down was announced three days into the final push, my husband was recalled to work, and the whole thing ended in a terrific rush.

Having moved my own mother out of her home just before she died eighteen years ago, I know this is never an easy process for any family. Then, however, I didn’t have to wear PPE and masks, stay in motels, and refrain from hugging my parent when she was most distressed. I didn’t move my mother with any notion of not being allowed to visit her again, or aware that I’d be expressly excluded from attending her funeral. These were all realities my husband faced, and faces, with regard to both his parents in these uncertain times. Covid-19 has certainly added some unkind twists to all of our everyday situations.

They shoot horses don’t they?

7 September 2020 7 Comments

Doug Lilly

Many people think of the hospice as a place where people with cancer go to die. Back in 2014, when I frequently walked past the Otago Community Hospice building in Dunedin’s North East Valley on my way home, that was my impression. What a sad place that must be to work, I thought. Although I practically lived on its doorstep, I had only ventured into this daunting place once. My partner had asked me to drop off a gift to a friend who was a hospice inpatient. I agreed, but only to leave it at reception. I didn’t want to go any further, in case I encountered dying people.

Like most people, despite ‘bearing witness’ to thousands upon thousands of deaths (both real and imagined) through images in the news and in film and television, my exposure to the reality of death and the dying process was minimal. When I went to the funeral home to view my father’s body in 2003, I was so uncomfortable about real death that I could only manage to look at him for a matter of seconds. When my mother had a serious stroke a few years later, I spent time with her as she slowly deteriorated, surrounded by her children, grandchildren and extended family. I was not present when she died, but when asked if I wanted to see her body, I declined, remembering how traumatic I had found trying to view my father’s body years earlier.