In an interview on Public Broadcasting System last year, Oliver Sacks was asked several questions about Temple Grandin since he had written an extensive article about Temple in the New Yorker which was entitled `An Anthropologist from Mars.' Here is a brief excerpt from this interview:

Interviewer: She's a fascinating person and her sense is that her nervous system is more highly sensitive than someone who is not autistic; and that's part of the problem why maybe autistic people react the way they do to being touched, to bright lights, whatever--it's a hypersensitivity or ....

Oliver Sacks: Oh, absolutely. And she describes how, as a child, she said her ears were like microphones and turned up to full intensity; and I think the business of editing and focusing and establishing a background may be very difficult. I mean, we think wouldn't it be nice to be more intense, more sensitive to everything; but we need the controls and inhibitions; and there may just be too much for an autistic person.

This article appeared in a previous issue of The Sound Connection, 1999, Vol. 6, No. 2, page 7. The Sound Connection is the quarterly newsletter of the Society for Auditory Intervention Techniques (P.O. Box 4538, Salem, OR 97302, USA).