this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2024
40 points (90.0% liked)

Autism

6846 readers
160 users here now

A community for respectful discussion and memes related to autism acceptance. All neurotypes are welcome.

We have created our own instance! Visit Autism Place the following community for more info.

Community:

Values

  • Acceptance
  • Openness
  • Understanding
  • Equality
  • Reciprocity
  • Mutuality
  • Love

Rules

  1. No abusive, derogatory, or offensive post/comments e.g: racism, sexism, religious hatred, homophobia, gatekeeping, trolling.
  2. Posts must be related to autism, off-topic discussions happen in the matrix chat.
  3. Your posts must include a text body. It doesn't have to be long, it just needs to be descriptive.
  4. Do not request donations.
  5. Be respectful in discussions.
  6. Do not post misinformation.
  7. Mark NSFW content accordingly.
  8. Do not promote Autism Speaks.
  9. General Lemmy World rules.

Encouraged

  1. Open acceptance of all autism levels as a respectable neurotype.
  2. Funny memes.
  3. Respectful venting.
  4. Describe posts of pictures/memes using text in the body for our visually impaired users.
  5. Welcoming and accepting attitudes.
  6. Questions regarding autism.
  7. Questions on confusing situations.
  8. Seeking and sharing support.
  9. Engagement in our community's values.
  10. Expressing a difference of opinion without directly insulting another user.
  11. Please report questionable posts and let the mods deal with it. Chat Room
  • We have a chat room! Want to engage in dialogue? Come join us at the community's Matrix Chat.

.

Helpful Resources

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
40
Anyone figure out what the fundamental difference between autistic and NT brains is? (lemmy.world)
submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
21 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

We know that we behave and think differently. We generally have more difficulty with social situation and are hypersensitive to sensory input. But to me, these seem like impacts of a fundamental difference. For example, we have social difficulties in NT environments because something with our neurotype is different. What is that fundamental difference that manifests into the symptoms of autism?

So far, my best guess is that we don't have the filter that NTs have with sensory input. They can decide what sensory information to focus on, allowing them to process information they see as important in real time. Additionally, they seem to be better able to multitask. For us, since we don't have that filter and multi-core processor, it takes us longer to process sensory input.

The other thing is that since we are more sensitive to sensory stimuli, we can get overwhelmed much easier, which limits our ability to process the info.

These two together make it so that social situations are difficult to navigate. There's wayy to much information to process in real time for us, so we end up missing a lot of the communication that is going on. For example, a person will send a nonverbal cue of some sort, but since we're still focused on what they said and processing all the other surrounding stimuli, we miss it. Maybe much later, when alone and reviewing the interaction or discussing it with a friend, we might finally get to the nonverbal cue and realize we missed it.

What do you guys think? Am I on track? Are there other fundamental differences between neurotypes?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 36 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Are you familiar with the theory of predictive processing? If not, look it up esp. In relation to autism. Tldr: human brains do not process information to form an image of the world, but we predict what the world may look like at any given moment. We use our sensory input only to correct errors in our prediction. There are two thing at play with autism here. 1. We are aware of more errors than NTs (inability to sift critical errors from non-critical ones) 2. When human brains detect an error it can choose to believe the input or the prediction. NT brains assign higher value to normative rules (sometimes they value input more and other times the prediction (internalized belief)) While autistic brains give more value to sensory input. Anyway, this is what I know of the current state of neurological difference, but I'm no scientist.