Skip to main content
Advertisement
  • Neurology.org
  • Journals
    • Neurology
    • Clinical Practice
    • Education
    • Genetics
    • Neuroimmunology & Neuroinflammation
  • Online Sections
    • Neurology Video Journal Club
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI)
    • Neurology: Clinical Practice Accelerator
    • Practice Buzz
    • Practice Current
    • Residents & Fellows
    • Without Borders
  • Collections
    • COVID-19
    • Disputes & Debates
    • Health Disparities
    • Infographics
    • Neurology Future Forecasting Series
    • Null Hypothesis
    • Patient Pages
    • Topics A-Z
    • Translations
  • Podcast
  • CME
  • About
    • About the Journals
    • Contact Us
    • Editorial Board
  • Authors
    • Submit New Manuscript
    • Submit Revised Manuscript
    • Author Center

Advanced Search

Main menu

  • Neurology.org
  • Journals
    • Neurology
    • Clinical Practice
    • Education
    • Genetics
    • Neuroimmunology & Neuroinflammation
  • Online Sections
    • Neurology Video Journal Club
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI)
    • Neurology: Clinical Practice Accelerator
    • Practice Buzz
    • Practice Current
    • Residents & Fellows
    • Without Borders
  • Collections
    • COVID-19
    • Disputes & Debates
    • Health Disparities
    • Infographics
    • Neurology Future Forecasting Series
    • Null Hypothesis
    • Patient Pages
    • Topics A-Z
    • Translations
  • Podcast
  • CME
  • About
    • About the Journals
    • Contact Us
    • Editorial Board
  • Authors
    • Submit New Manuscript
    • Submit Revised Manuscript
    • Author Center
  • Home
  • Latest Articles
  • Current Issue
  • Past Issues
  • Neurology Video Journal Club
  • Residents & Fellows

User menu

  • Subscribe
  • My Alerts
  • Log in

Search

  • Advanced search
Neurology
Home
The most widely read and highly cited peer-reviewed neurology journal
  • Subscribe
  • My Alerts
  • Log in
Site Logo
  • Home
  • Latest Articles
  • Current Issue
  • Past Issues
  • Neurology Video Journal Club
  • Residents & Fellows

Share

September 08, 2015; 85 (10) Reflections: Neurology and the Humanities

Autism

Saurabh Sinha
First published September 7, 2015, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1212/WNL.0000000000001913
Saurabh Sinha
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Full PDF
Citation
Autism
Saurabh Sinha
Neurology Sep 2015, 85 (10) 919; DOI: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000001913

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
Permissions

Make Comment

See Comments

Downloads
714

Share

  • Article
  • Info & Disclosures
Loading

I.

The electricity in my sister's brain doesn't work right; left

with deviations in gamma and alpha and theta beta

delta,

she spends her days beading jewelry, intricate like

archi

London tec

ture

woodworked

remnants of an empire

that, through water, commanded a world.

Looping plastic cords through tiny holes in plastic orbs,

she commands an empire

at her desk, crafting pulsating

matrix after matrixaftermatrix after matrix,

navigating her

monologue in the sea.

When she was younger, she banged her head against walls.

Neuroscience tells me that maybe there's an explanation in the gamma band—

the crumpled pieces of white paint from the kitchen wall falling,

the rain dance of her coagulation cascade precipitating

tonic

clonic,

contingencyplanning my mother and I in

convergence beneath the telephone, wired, wall-mounted,

silent—all of this

an avalanche excommunicated to a valley by 90 Hz neurillations

onal osc

in the wrong places.

II.

“I made this for you,” she says to me, my

older sister.

III.

The electricity in my brain doesn't work right.

At some coordinate, I am simply a boy suffused in heartbreak, licking

wounds left by a girl, “just like in the movies”; elsewhere,

I serve the Castilian Crown! I am partly Amerigo Vespucci,

by way of the Latin Americus,

charting cortico-cortical seas of

normal

saline!

Petaflops away though,

I am always underneath

a fixed plastic telephone on a white wall, years

ago, with

the slightest impression of my mother on the

other side of me, amidst a

synaptic monsoon.

Footnotes

  • Listen to Saurabh Sinha read this poem, available on the iPad® and Android™ devices.

  • © 2015 American Academy of Neurology
View Abstract

Letters: Rapid online correspondence

No comments have been published for this article.
Comment

REQUIREMENTS

You must ensure that your Disclosures have been updated within the previous six months. Please go to our Submission Site to add or update your Disclosure information.

Your co-authors must send a completed Publishing Agreement Form to Neurology Staff (not necessary for the lead/corresponding author as the form below will suffice) before you upload your comment.

If you are responding to a comment that was written about an article you originally authored:
You (and co-authors) do not need to fill out forms or check disclosures as author forms are still valid
and apply to letter.

Submission specifications:

  • Submissions must be < 200 words with < 5 references. Reference 1 must be the article on which you are commenting.
  • Submissions should not have more than 5 authors. (Exception: original author replies can include all original authors of the article)
  • Submit only on articles published within 6 months of issue date.
  • Do not be redundant. Read any comments already posted on the article prior to submission.
  • Submitted comments are subject to editing and editor review prior to posting.

More guidelines and information on Disputes & Debates

Compose Comment

More information about text formats

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
Author Information
NOTE: The first author must also be the corresponding author of the comment.
First or given name, e.g. 'Peter'.
Your last, or family, name, e.g. 'MacMoody'.
Your email address, e.g. higgs-boson@gmail.com
Your role and/or occupation, e.g. 'Orthopedic Surgeon'.
Your organization or institution (if applicable), e.g. 'Royal Free Hospital'.
Publishing Agreement
NOTE: All authors, besides the first/corresponding author, must complete a separate Publishing Agreement Form and provide via email to the editorial office before comments can be posted.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.

Vertical Tabs

You May Also be Interested in

Back to top
  • Article
    • Footnotes
  • Info & Disclosures
Advertisement

Cutaneous α-Synuclein Signatures in Patients With Multiple System Atrophy and Parkinson Disease

Dr. Rizwan S. Akhtar and Dr. Sarah Brooker

► Watch

Related Articles

  • No related articles found.

Topics Discussed

  • Autism

Alert Me

  • Alert me when eletters are published

Recommended articles

  • Clinical Implications of Neuroscience Research
    Neocortical interneurons
    Functional diversity and clinical correlations
    Eduardo E. Benarroch et al.
    Neurology, July 15, 2013
  • Reflections: Neurology and the Humanities
    The case of the locked house
    The finished mystery
    Robert J. Joynt, Peter A. Kempster, Andrew J. Lees et al.
    Neurology, August 11, 2014
  • Reflections: Neurology and the Humanities
    The case of the locked house
    The unfinished mystery
    Robert J. Joynt et al.
    Neurology, September 09, 2013
  • Articles
    Recurrence risk of epilepsy and mental retardation in females due to parental mosaicism of PCDH19 mutations
    L.M. Dibbens, R. Kneen, M.A. Bayly et al.
    Neurology, April 25, 2011
Neurology: 100 (22)

Articles

  • Ahead of Print
  • Current Issue
  • Past Issues
  • Popular Articles
  • Translations

About

  • About the Journals
  • Ethics Policies
  • Editors & Editorial Board
  • Contact Us
  • Advertise

Submit

  • Author Center
  • Submit a Manuscript
  • Information for Reviewers
  • AAN Guidelines
  • Permissions

Subscribers

  • Subscribe
  • Activate a Subscription
  • Sign up for eAlerts
  • RSS Feed
Site Logo
  • Visit neurology Template on Facebook
  • Follow neurology Template on Twitter
  • Visit Neurology on YouTube
  • Neurology
  • Neurology: Clinical Practice
  • Neurology: Education
  • Neurology: Genetics
  • Neurology: Neuroimmunology & Neuroinflammation
  • AAN.com
  • AANnews
  • Continuum
  • Brain & Life
  • Neurology Today

Wolters Kluwer Logo

Neurology | Print ISSN:0028-3878
Online ISSN:1526-632X

© 2023 American Academy of Neurology

  • Privacy Policy
  • Feedback
  • Advertise