Legendary Activist Temple Grandin Compares Her Mind to a Search Engine in a 2008 Interview

In the latest episode of the wonderfully animated lost interview series “Blank on Blank“, the legendary activist, author, inventor and professor Temple Grandin opened up about the way her brain works like a search engine and how she got into animal rights activism in a 2008 interview.

I was diagnosed with autism as a young child. I had all of the full-blown autism symptoms, no speech, screaming, just everything. I was definitely fully autistic. Now, my brain is visually indexed. I’m basically Totally visual. I mean, everything in my mind works like a search engine set for the image function. And you type in the keyword and I get pictures, and it comes up in an associational sort of way. I want you to give me some key words and don’t give me something common like house or car, because everybody can visualize that.

Here’s the entire interview from the Colorado State University Senior Scholars interview series.