The boy who felt too much : how a renowned neuroscientist and his son changed our view of autism forever / Lorenz Wagner ; translated from the German by Leon Dische Becker.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wagner, Lorenz, author.

Contributor:

Edward Potts Cheyney Memorial Fund.

Standardized Title:

Junge, der zu viel fühlte. English

Language:

English

German

Subjects (All):

Autistic children--Family relationships.

Parents of autistic children.

Germany.

Markram, Henry.

Parents of autistic children--Germany--Biography.

Autistic children--Family relationships--Germany--Biography.

Autistic children.

Fathers and sons.

Brain--Research.

Brain.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

222 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Crows Nest, NSW : Allen & Unwin, 2019.

Language Note:

Translated from the German.

Summary:

An international bestseller, the story behind Henry Markram's breakthrough theory about autism, and how a family's unconditional love led to a scientific paradigm shift. Henry Markram is the Elon Musk of neuroscience, the man behind the billion-dollar Blue Brain Project to build a supercomputer model of the brain. He has set the goal of decoding all disturbances of the mind within a generation. This quest is personal for him. The driving force behind his grand ambition has been his son Kai, who suffers from autism. Raising Kai made Henry Markram question all that he thought he knew about neuroscience, and then inspired his groundbreaking research that would upend the conventional wisdom about autism, expressed in his now-famous theory of the Intense World Syndrome. When Kai was first diagnosed, his father consulted studies and experts. He knew as much about the human brain as almost anyone but still felt as helpless as any parent confronted with this condition in his child. What's more, the scientific consensus that autism was a deficit of empathy didn't mesh with Markram's experience of his son. He became convinced that the disorder, which has seen a 657 percent increase in diagnoses over the past decade, was fundamentally misunderstood. Bringing his world-class research to bear on the problem, he devised a radical new theory of the disorder: People like Kai don't feel too little; they feel too much. Their senses are too delicate for this world.

The inspiring family story behind the radical new autism theory. Kai is different. Kai, the doctors will eventually realise, is autistic. Of course, like everyone on the spectrum, Kai isn't just autistic - he's so much more than that. Kai is Kai. Doctors used to find one case of autism among every five thousand people. Today, according to a study by the US Department of Health and Human Services, the ratio is one in fifty-eight. Scientists speak of an epidemic. Kai may be different, but he is not alone. Henry, Kai's father, is one of the world's most famous neuroscientists, the man behind the billion dollar Blue Brain Project to build a supercomputer model of the human brain. Nevertheless, when his son began withdrawing, Henry was as helpless as all the other parents. He asked himself the same questions they did: What is autism? How can I help my child? He researched for fifteen years. His findings would upend everything we thought we knew about autism. They would offer us a whole new vantage from which to consider all disorders of the mind. If Henry had just been a scientist, even a great one, he would have failed. He only succeeded thanks to Kai, the boy who changed everything.

Notes:

"Originally published as Der junge, der zu viel fühlte in 2018 by EuropaVerlag GmbH & Co., KG, Berlin"--Title page verso.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Edward Potts Cheyney Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

9781760529437

1760529435

OCLC:

1129132733

Publisher Number:

99984104419