The brain finding a way to get to what people need, which is interaction and emotional wholeness. What did ...? S-O-N-rise. Walt kind of showed him how to do it and he took to that. JAD: We spoke to Temple Grandin, the well-known author and autism advocate. I mean, I was actually worried that he was becoming schizophrenic. It was 10th grade. ROBERT: Who was amazed? OWEN SUSKIND: I still can't -- I still can't watch. So we go from Helen Keller to the pet store parrot. "No one ever said that to me.". Juicervose! It's what it sounds like: 'echo' -- what it sounds like 'echo.'" You're saying that when -- when everybody was acting out the Disney movies suddenly you could hear them better? I could hear them respond better. JAD: So if a lot of these kids start out with the same set of symptoms, but they end up in vastly different places, no one knows why, then as a parent, you really have no idea what is going to happen. Like you're hit with a -- with a bullet. WALTER SUSKIND: All the efforts of what we're trying to do and have been doing for all this time is to -- one of our favorite movies is the Jungle Book, because Mowgli's -- it's his quest with his animal sidekicks to get him to the man village. It's Gilbert Gottfried's voice. Deep brain stimulation is one treatment possibility for Parkinson’s disease, essential tremor and dystonia, as their causes are located in or near the basal ganglia region. And so he's -- he sees, like, an opening. Now we just heard that Owen, when he watches Disney movies, he feels comforted, and that somehow the movie seems to dial down his autism. He was about six years old, and he had this -- this big mop of black hair. We cried. Like, they had no idea if the Owen they knew was in there, or if he was just kind of lost to them. In the last couple years, tDCS has been all over the news. When he looked at us, we cheered. This is Candice, currently calling from her bicycle. We're gonna kill your parents.". JAD: So it might be that, while Owen was sort of forensically examining these moments of Disney movies, it was the Disney music that was binding those moments to feelings so we could know like, "Oh, when a person looks like that, that's when they're happy. There's so much hope in that, and as he progresses you feel so good about it. There goes the apple! And then all of a sudden I hear him say back, "I love the way your foul little mind works. But he believes that one of the reasons you see it so much, is that all these success stories seem to say to parents like him that as hard as it can be -- and it can be really, really hard -- you're not trying hard enough. KELSEY PADGETT: Yeah, there was this -- we went to this one classroom where there was this one boy who really stood out. I still think about that whole scenario all the time. You're just tumbling, you don't know where your body is. This is how I sound. And then I hear Owen clear his throat. RON SUSKIND: At which point I'm, like -- I grab Owen by the shoulders and I'm like, "Just your voice! And that is not the norm. JAD: Did you feel like he chose that phrase for a reason? And all the anecdotes you're hearing? Like, sensory overload in a way. I mean, despite everything that they had been told about autism, Owen was in there, and somehow these Disney characters were in there with him. When I was a little kid, I wanted to feel the nice feeling of being held, but there was just too much overwhelming stimulation. It's a really unique school for children with autism, other developmental delays. I mean, that's -- that's the sad facts for many of these families. Cornelia's like -- I said, "Does he seem to want more juice?" Like, sensory overload in a way. And we're in the kitchen, and he seems to kind of look back and forth between the two of us in, like, there's something he wants to say. Yeah, there was this -- we went to this one classroom where there was this one boy who really stood out. WALTER SUSKIND: I'm not sure. "No one ever said that to me.". Where are you?" So at night, I was usually up with him all night thrashing around. You're just tumbling, you don't know where your body is. RON SUSKIND: I didn't know the next line. And as the questions kept coming, we ran into inevitably a counter-reaction to Ron's story. Making things even more confusing ... TEMPLE GRANDIN: Do you take a child one when they're two or three ... TEMPLE GRANDIN: You can have two kids that look real severe. After Owen's Disney basement sessions had really taken off, and the Disney therapy as it were seemed to be working, and Owen was getting better and better and better. GIL TIPPY: So that's the challenge, right? And we're like, "That cannot be our -- that cannot be our son.". First of all, he says that in the last few decades our whole notion of what is happening in the mind of a child with autism has totally changed. We're more concerned about false pessimism. It's as if we were being thrown out of an airplane, right? DAVID ROYKO: Fascination with spinning wheels, with ceiling fans, the whole -- the whole package. He stopped sleeping, he stopped eating. ROBERT: In any case, Walt has his ninth birthday and his friends come over. It's typical. Now, keep in mind this was 1994. Your email address will not be published. RON SUSKIND: Wants to become human to get her man, Eric. ROBERT: As we were talking, it was hard not to wonder how independent will Owen be. No, autism, it destroys lives, is what it does in our definition of it. RON SUSKIND: We'd go down in the basement and start playing out scenes. CORNELIA SUSKIND: There are two kids in this class who are ED kids, emotionally disturbed kids, so they're not -- they're not on the autistic spectrum, and socially they're very on target. But he's not really responding. So they make the move. And off on his own. Those neon green things in the image are microglia, the brain’s immune cells, or, as we describe them in our episode, the janitor cells of the brain. And he says, "Not good. So it might be that the world is just coming in too loud. In the Radiolab world, information sounds like music and science and culture collide. Okay, we had a child who was diagnosed as incurably ill or hopelessly ill, something called autism. So Owen knows how to work the remote. CORNELIA SUSKIND: You still can't watch it? And I'll say, "Why are you crying?" After Owen's Disney basement sessions had really taken off, and the Disney therapy as it were seemed to be working, and Owen was getting better and better and better. People say things unexpectedly, they do things unexpectedly. CORNELIA SUSKIND: Well, just -- I mean, I just remember, you know, you and I driving home in silence with Owen in the back. JAD: And a certain point, Owen who's got the remote, he starts rewinding the movie back a little bit to re-watch a scene. I don't use that in my lectures, YouTube videos. I mean, right then you were in a very bad spot, and you couldn't tell me or mom or anyone. And you know, Ben is never going to be able to live independently. A case in point, his son Ben. CORNELIA SUSKIND: And then after the party, he's out in the hammock in the yard, and he's kind of crying a little bit. What I do say is "full recovery," which is essentially the same thing. Using this approach, the researchers stimulated certain brain cells known as interneurons, which then synchronize the gamma activity of excitatory neurons. As you turn the knob, there is a satisfying “click”, accompanied instantaneously by the sensation of an increasing current flow, as you increase your … CORNELIA SUSKIND: But we talk -- we talked to him about, you know, about everything. WALTER SUSKIND: Oh, yeah. Juicervose!" They're all heroes in my mind here. This is Radiolab. Straight from MIT’s research files, this image shows microglia who have gotten light stimulation therapy (one can only hope in … And if you're the parent of that boy, what do you do if your child is falling away from everything you know? That's Raun Kaufman of the Autism Treatment Center of America. ROBERT: I can hear you pretty well. ROBERT: And as we were thinking about all this and asking ourselves, you know, well if this works with Disney movies, which are very emotional and clear, what do you -- how do you do this with paper clips or bus schedules? Now we just heard that Owen, when he watches Disney movies, he feels comforted, and that somehow the movie seems to dial down his autism. Notions of what could be up the road or what should be now, if they pop into my head, which is rare. But we talk -- we talked to him about, you know, about everything. And I'm looking up through the crease, sort of up my arm, and I talk to him as Iago. We knew even less about autism than we know now. He's 23 now. Like [CLEARS THROAT], like that. And as soon as they arrived in Washington ... We start sort of noticing something's amiss. CORNELIA SUSKIND: You know, it was just terrifying. Just play the movie.". And they basically torment and terrorize him for six months of that school year, unbeknownst to us and unbeknownst to the school. TEMPLE GRANDIN: When I was a little kid, I wanted to feel the nice feeling of being held, but there was just too much overwhelming stimulation. In a kind of frenzy to pay for all the therapists. And ... WALTER SUSKIND: Birthdays was -- I don't know, they were just kind of strange days for me. You'd talk to him -- I'd pick him up and he would talk to himself in the car, and he'd be, "No!" I was so surprised by my family. TINA MCCOURT: There goes the apple! At this year’s European Association of Neurosurgical Societies (EANS) Annual Meeting, Brainlab – in partnership with Boston Scientific Neuromodulation – presents its latest offering in Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) procedures. Wow, you are so blessed!" And she just stayed with the boy and really, like, tried to be there with him, but there was nothing she could do. However it works, Simon Baron-Cohen thinks it's at least plausible. Maybe you should describe this. Like [expletive] in his pants. When positive stimulation (anodal tDCS) is delivered, the current causes a depolarization of the resting membrane potential, which increases neuronal excitability and allows for more spontaneous cell firing. Or something under his breath. ROBERT: This is Owen's older brother Walt again. I think that's completely false. And I will smile and I'll put out my hand and I'll shake their hand, and I'll say, "I am so excited for you! So there you go. Maybe. RON SUSKIND: Peter Pan. You know, we just saw over the months that Owen was really out of sorts. And what is it? And that's -- that's what caused him to do what he did. It doesn't take us long that, you know, we start what we called the basement sessions, where we'd say, "Well, let's see how far this can go.". It took us 900 friggin' hours, but he just looked at us for three seconds. I mean I'm, you know, I'm his protector. Ron and his wife Cornelia ... ROBERT: And their two sons, Walt and Owen. And I push the puppet up through the crease in the bedspread. Radiolab believes your ears are a portal to another world. You stay with him on the path. It's not juice. And Walter starts jumping in the bed, crying and laughing and jumping. And he sent us to a center. Listen to Bringing Gamma Back, Again, an episode of Radiolab, easily on Podbay - the best podcast player on the web. And now me her and our other two friends John and Julie who also go to school, are all going to move and live at LIFE in Hyannis. You know, loud sounds hurt my ears, like the volume control on touch and hearing was way, way, way turned on. You know, in the real world there's no opportunity to rewind the movie. And he explains that they did this over and over and over, hour after hour, until one day his son turned his head ... ... and he actually looked at us. Well, we're going into Owen's room for what is his last night in the crib.