Trackbacks

• No trackbacks exist for this entry.

Comments

• 3/6/2010 11:20 AM Beth Zoeller wrote:
  Charly is a story of a man with low cognitive abilities due to some sort of brain injury that resulted after an extremely high fever as a child. He is given the opportunity to undergo a surgery which increases his cognitive abilities to that of a genius, only to find that it will not last and he will return to the level he had previously been in.
  
  The Charly we initially meet in the movie is like many of the children we will interact with as school psychologists. Charly was below average in his cognitive abilities and he is reported to be mentally retarded by the two doctors overseeing the research study. This made me curious as to what Charly’s adaptive skills deficits may be as he must have at least two for the diagnosis of mental retardation.
  The Vineland-II, is a rating scale system used to determine if there is an adaptive skill deficit. It looks at the following domains:
  • Communication (receptive, expressive, written)
  • Daily living skills (personal, domestic, community)
  • Socialization (interpersonal relationships, play and leisure time, coping skills)
  • Motor skills (fine, gross)
  • Maladative behavior index (internalizing, externalizing, other)
  
  I think it would be interesting to complete a Vineland scale on Charly, based on the information provided in the film. However, as I do not have the test readily available to me I will just look at each of the domains. From the information provided through the film, it would seem that Charly had a deficit in communication, as he was not able to produce written communicationm however he did appear to be able to speak and understand those around him. Charly did not appear to have deficits in the area of daily living skills. Charly maintains his own home, his hygene, and prepares his own simple meals (i.e. cereal). Socialization is a tough area for me to determine. Charly has “friends” both at work and at school, however he seems unable to recognize that his “friends” from work are not really his friends and only wished to entertain themselves though humiliating him. However, Charly did have a positive relationship with his teacher. Charly appeared to have a motor skills deficit. He had difficulty in both fine and gross motor skills. He was noted to have an exaggerated gait in his walk and had difficult with fine motor tasks such as holding a pencil. I did not see any maladaptive behaviors, Charly was not noted to have any internalizing or externalizing problems that I recall.
  Overall it would appear that Charly had deficits in the area of communication and motor skills, and possibly in socialization as well. However, Charly was extremely high functioning and highly motivated to improve himself. He seemed to take great pride in his job and his friends, and was amazingly positive about life (until later in the movie) I can only hope that in the future I will get the opportunity to work with kids like Charly, who are motivated to improve themselves and make the most out of life.
  Reply to this
• 3/9/2010 1:56 PM Aurora Nuno wrote:
  The movie Charly is about a man named Charly Gordon who has an intellectual disability, mental retardation. In the beginning of the film, Charly is presented as an individual who exhibits childlike behaviors and lacks some appropriate social, judgment, and cognitive skills. Charly’s communication and self-care were fair, but his social skills were poor. For example, at the bakery where he worked, Charly was often the target of cruel jokes by a group of men that he considered to be good friends even though he was not aware that these individuals enjoyed making fun of his condition. Moreover, Charly attended classes with Ms. Kinian as an attempt to improve his learning ability. Despite his disability, Charly was able to function somewhat in daily life.
  The main focus of the movie involves an experiment in which the intellectual functioning of Charly and a mouse named Algernon is compared. Through preliminary studies, Algernon is found to be quicker at problem-solving than Charly. Algernon was a mouse that previously had deficient learning skills, but his level of intellect improved after undergoing brain surgery. In order to determine if the same results would occur with humans, Charly was selected to have the surgery.
  After the surgery, Charly becomes angry, which disturbs his overall emotional functioning. Throughout time, Charly’s cognitive skills improve vastly, but his emotional intelligence is slower in development. For instance, Charly’s disruption of emotions is seen when he tries to force Ms. Kinian to make love. His limbic system was obviously impacted after the surgery, specifically the amygdala, which is responsible for emotional responses…maybe the pituitary gland was impacted as well. Also, Charly seemed to be more sensitive to his surroundings and interactions with others, which was not demonstrated before the surgery. On another note, an improvement in Charly’s frontal lobe must have occurred since he went from low average to gifted/talented intelligence. In the end, Charly discovers that the effects of the surgery were only temporary, so he knows that he will go back to how he once was. I found it interesting when Charly sees himself in the waiter at a restaurant who is presented as having some type of intellectual deficiency in which it appears that Charly understands how his life will become. Charly’s participation in the experiment provided him a brief glimpse of the struggles he previously encountered and would most likely encounter again.
  Reply to this
• 3/10/2010 3:38 PM Colin Normington wrote:
  The movie, Charly, pertains to Neuropsychology in that the mentally challenged main character Charlie undergoes an experimental surgery that temporarily improves his I.Q. The movie does not go into specifics on the surgical procedure but based on our studies it would seem likely that it involved operating on the cerebral cortex, which is the seat of higher mental processes. Because Charlie did not seem to be suffering from auditory processing or visual processing disorders it does seem likely that the surgery would involve the occipital or temporal lobe. The areas that Charlie seemed to display the most deficits in pre-surgery were with planning and decision making, such as in the scenes where the rat is able to finish the maze before Charlie. This leads me to believe that any corrective surgical procedure would have to have involved the frontal lobes. Just as in the case of Phineas Gage where damage to the brain led to changes in personality, repair of damaged parts of Charlie’s brain could theoretically lead to changes in his personality as portrayed in the film.
  Reply to this
• 7/7/2010 11:30 PM Deficit History wrote:
  Fascinating read. Very interesting! This one is really an attractive piece……..worth to be chosen for the hot content list………………keep it up……
  Reply to this

Leave a comment