mapping my brain

 

Map-making. A personal neurodivergent perspective.

Neurodiversity is a way of mapping the differences in how human brains deal with sensory processing, motor abilities, social comfort, cognition, and attention or focus. It embraces everyone. Those who fall within the average range of experience (the norm: which therefore becomes established as the default normal in behaviour and assumptions) can be described as neurotypical. Those who lie outside of that range can be described as neurodivergent. Because neurobiology and neurocognition are complex, neuro divergence can present in many ways; but those who are neurotypical and those who are neurodivergent are all equally human, all fall within the diversity of expressions of what it is to be human. However, those who are neurodivergent may experience particular challenges, in part because of their own neurobiology, and in significant disabling (and, potentially, enabling) ways due to neurotypical assumptions and structures.

One of the ways I like to think of this is as a map of England. (It is a myth/lie that autistic people cannot handle non-literal concepts. If anything, it is neurotypicals who struggle with literal concepts, such that they need to reinforce their sentences by stating ‘literally’ this or that when they describe literal accounts.) Everyone who lives in England lives somewhere on the map. The majority, the typical person, live in urban settings. Society is largely designed to serve this population, not least because numbers present needs. But those who live in small towns, villages or hamlets can feel left behind, inadequately supported by public infrastructure.

In this analogy, neurotypicals live in cities. They have easy access to transport links between different places (smooth connections between different pieces of information, or experiences). There are motorways and inter-city train links, as well as ring roads and dual carriageways. Of course, in a city there are also many side streets and back lanes, but many people who live in cities fall into habitual patterns of only using the most direct routes. They can become entirely unfamiliar with streets just a block away from their preferred regular routes. Should that route be blocked, forcing them to adjust, they may discover things they had previously been unaware of.

There are many different neuro divergences, such as autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia, dyspraxia, or Tourettes (involuntary physical and vocal tics).

Autistics have a particular set of sensory processing and social comfort challenges. They have far more neural connections than neurotypicals, but these are also significantly weaker. (Neurotypicals have fewer, stronger connections.) In this map analogy, autistic live in rural areas. Here there is a vast network of small roads, lanes, single tracks, footpaths and bridle paths, but none of them can handle much volume. If a farmer is driving sheep along the lane, you are going to be stuck behind them for some time.

Some autistic people are hypersensitive to stimuli, while others are hyposensitive. This can be as true of emotions as of external sensory issues. Our emotions can be like mountains: very big, and majestic, but with few (and sometimes eroded) footpaths to navigate them.

Neurotypicals sometimes differentiate between high-functioning and low-functioning autism, but this is unhelpful. The demands of being an autistic person in a neurotypical landscape are untypically draining, even if some of us can navigate visits to a major city, sometimes, if not all of the time. The distinction that high/low functioning attempts to draw is between autistic people who do not have additional learning disabilities, and those who do (or whose autism is misunderstood in this way, such as selective mutism being mistaken for cognitive impairment rather than coping mechanism). Other learning disabilities can co-exist with autism, just as they can be found among the neurotypical population.

Those that are not autistic are allistic. Allistic people can be neurotypicals, or neurodivergent in ways other than autism. So, someone with ADHD is allistic, but someone with AuDHD (where autism and ADHD meet and overlap) is not.

ADHD relates to specific challenges in the areas of attention or focus, (sometimes) hyperactivity, and impulsivity. People with ADHD have more (weaker) neural connections than neurotypicals but not as many as autistic people. On our map, they live on the suburban fringe between the city and the countryside, with access to some of the larger mainstream transport (connection) routes, but arguably with choice paralysis. Those with AuDHD occupy the space between the suburb/villages and the most rural/remote communities. At times, the autistic challenges and ADHD challenges conflict, causing internal turmoil.