Department of English and Technical Communication, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, MO, USA.
Prog Brain Res. 2013;205:295-318. doi: 10.1016/B978-0-444-63273-9.00015-0.
Silas Weir Mitchell's novel, When All the Woods are Green (1894), acknowledges the medical use of mindblindness (agnosia) but also casts it as a developmental disorder, bringing it provocatively close to how current neuropsychologist, Simon Baron-Cohen and his followers use the term in relation to autism. This chapter traces the mindblindess metaphor in the works of Mitchell and Baron-Cohen to show how mindblindness informs the larger paradigms by which they theorize the brain. This analysis suggests that Baron-Cohen, and thus much current thinking about autism spectrum conditions, is influenced by Victorian-era cultural assumptions and neurosexism, a connection that calls for scrutiny of Baron-Cohen's current models of the brain and theories of autism. This chapter also demonstrates the extent to which Mitchell used fiction and advocated writing as neuroaesthetic tools and thus bridged in his work cognitive science and aesthetics--a connection that current scholars of neuroaesthetics are now theorizing.
西拉斯·威尔·米切尔的小说《当所有的树林都绿了》（1894 年）承认了精神盲（失认症）的医学用途，但也将其视为一种发育障碍，这与当前的神经心理学家西蒙·巴伦-科恩及其追随者在自闭症方面使用该术语的方式极具启发性。本章追溯了米切尔和巴伦-科恩作品中的精神盲隐喻，以展示精神盲如何为他们理论化大脑的更大范式提供信息。这一分析表明，巴伦-科恩，以及当前关于自闭症谱系障碍的许多思考，受到了维多利亚时代文化假设和神经性别歧视的影响，这种联系呼吁对巴伦-科恩当前的大脑模型和自闭症理论进行仔细审查。本章还展示了米切尔在多大程度上利用小说并倡导将写作作为神经美学工具，从而在他的作品中弥合了认知科学和美学之间的联系——这是当前神经美学学者正在理论化的联系。
