Roll play activity

Santiago Leguizamon Castillo

Santiago Pérez Martínez
William Gómez Moscosa
Alan Jesús Lasso Reyes
Miguel Ángel Rodríguez

Book: Viaje al Centro del Cerebro - Josefina Cano

Chapter: La línea Invisible

Teacher Cristian Monroy

2022
Characters:

Alan Lasso: Scientific/Master - ruthsatz

William Gómez: autistic and prodigy

Santiago Pérez: apprentice

Script

Scientific: Today I will show you how this autistic differs from this child prodigy.

Apprentice: Ok, where will you start showing me their differences?

Scientific: Let's start with the fact that prodigies could be autistic, but it is believed that they
have resilient genes that slow down the deficiencies of autism.

Apprentice: It means that both an autistic and a prodigy, could I end up as the other?

Scientist : Yes, in fact, studying multiple cases of wonders, it was discovered that there were
autistic within their family tree, almost always close.
In 2016 I and my colleagues discovered a mutation in chromosome 1, only presents in
wonders as well as in autistic.

Apprentice: Is it only present these similarities?

Scientist: No, similarities are also present in their behaviors, for example the extraordinary
attention to details and a tendency to obsession. Let's look at an example of a prodigy with a
good memory taken from the book "the curious incident of the dog in the middle of the night"
by Mark Haddon.:

Prodigy: My name is Christopher John Francis Boone. I know all the countries of the world
and their capitals and all the prime numbers up to 7507. I am fifteen years old, three months
and two days old. My memory is like a movie. That's why I'm really good at remembering
things..., because my meria has an olfactory track that's like a soundtrack. And when people
ask me to remember something I can just hit "Rewind" and "Fast Forward" and "Pause" like
on a VCR. And there are no buttons, too, because it's all happening in my head.
Apprentice: Wow, being able to organize and "rewind" memories must be fantastic!

Scientist: Yes, this example shows us how far the human brain can go, but we should not
underestimate what autism can bring.

Apprentice: Are these symptoms so bad?

Scientist: Yes, some symptoms may be:

● Delay in language skills.

● Delay in movement skills.
● Delay in cognitive or learning skills.
● Hyperactive, impulsive or distracted behavior.
● Epilepsy or seizure disorders.
● Unusual eating and sleeping habits.

And although its name sounds like a single disease, it is a general name for learning and
reasoning problems, which can be mild or very severe.

Apprentice: Ohh wow, but does that mean it's a disease only altered by genes?

Scientist: That is the most important issue, but there is also an environmental factor, which
affects the neural circuits of these children, which can lead to an inactivation of some critical
periods for brain development.

Apprentice: That's like some kind of retardation or overdevelopment of the brain?

Scientist: It is something like this, the basal nucleus, in charge of the formation of the mental
maps and the learning of the first stages when you are a baby, ends when the mapping is done
and it is only activated when something new, important happens or we make an effort to
learn.

Apprentice: That means it is the one that allows us to learn effortlessly in our childhood!

Scientist: Likewise, and in the case of autistic and prodigies, this was not turned on or was
kept on for a long time in a premature way, and that is why they develop supersensitive and
hypersensitive brains that make them perceive the details of their environment that a normal
child would not perceive, that is, they receive an immense perturbation by so much acquired
information.
To illustrate another case, an autistic person can perform other mathematical activities more
easily than most:

Autistic: There were lots of people on the train, and I didn't like that, because I don't like lots
of people I don't know and I hate it even more if I'm crammed into a room with lots of people
I don't know and a train is like a room and you can't get out of it when it's running. And then I
tried to think of what I had to do, but I couldn't think because there was too much else going
on in my head, so I did a math problem to clear my head a bit.

Apprentice: This is very valuable and interesting information, thank you for the explanation.

Scientistic: That's all for now, thanks for your attention.