#Differences in autistic brains and neurotypical brains

[curatedchaos2009]

Autistic People Have a Lower Syanptic Density Than Neurotypical People Do

So a study done at Yale School of Medicine found that autistic people have a lower synaptic density that neurotypical people do. On average, there is a 17% lower synaptic density across the whole brain compared to neurotypical individuals.

Basically, the researchers tested a bunch of autistic people to determine the severity of their autism, and also ruled out psychiatric disorders, etc. The participants also filled out self-report questionnaires about their own experiences living with autism, such as difficulty with social interactions or sensory issues.

Then, they used PET and MRI Scans to see their brains. Overall, they found that autistic people have, on average, a 17% lower synaptic density. They also found that the lower the synaptic density, the more autistic traits a person showed.

BUT

The study is flawed. The researchers had a really small sample size. The participants consisted of only 12 autistic adults, and 20 NT adults. This means the study could be unrepresentative of the general population.

[littlefankingdom]

A couple of days ago, I came across this post (that I reblogged I think) about how one of the tragedy of Bruce and Jason's relationship was that Jason doesn’t know/believe Bruce loves him while Bruce thinks Jason knows how much he loves him. And I have since realized it's the same with Dick during his earlier Nightwing years.

Bruce thinks Dick knows how much he loves him, so he doesn't try to prove it, because he thinks it's obvious. He doesn't reach out, because Dick needs space and he must already know how Bruce loves him anyway. However, Dick thinks Bruce doesn't love him, and he is waiting for Bruce to reach out to show that he does, and when he doesn’t, he thinks it means Bruce doesn't love him.

Bruce thinks he has communicated clearly to his kids that he loves them so much, but he actually hasn't. He communicated it in his way, but the message didn't translate to others. This is probably because he is neurodivergent and grew up secluded from others, with Alfred and Leslie who have learned to understand him, so he doesn't realize his way doesn't work with everyone.

[hanalyrata]

Stop infantalizing people who are neurodivergent. Stop treating people who are neurodivergent with the same rules as neurotypicals and expect them to "get" it. Stop pretending to be allies to neurodivergent people who when they show their actual symptoms that aren't just quirky "tee hee hee I'm so random" tiktok coded bullshit, turn on them when it displays as the actual mental health problem that it is.

It's exhausting, to be honest.

Also: It is not a flex to be more functioning than someone else who is ND either. It is not a flex to be further along in recovery from any mental health trauma. It is not a flex to have more understanding of your condition than someone else who is also ND because you've been able to access therapy and tools to work with it.

[pacifistcowboy]

imagining espio infodumping about ninja stuff to silver n he stops himself like “sorry, i’ve talked far too much. you probably don’t care about this” but then silver’s like “are you kidding? this is fascinating!” whilst hand flappin’ with excitement, n espio just kinda realises that he doesn’t have to mask in front of silver

[rachymarie]

Something something autism and things sounded better in my head

Something something schizospec and things sometimes sound worse in my head, but almost always sound even worse outside my head?

Much love to all neurodivergents out there who feel wrong out there for daring to be yourself

[generic-waffle]

Hey; instead of asking ai “how could humans face extinction in the next few decades”, what if we asked “how could humans solve the possible causes of our own extinction in the next few decades?”

[stargazostli]

today on my groupchat:

god vs clowns while someone grapples mortality and how insane their friends are and i am high and tired and autistic which is a very interesting combination

[marrow-bone]

Okay but this is like literally a thing. Autistic people do just straight up Know. It's possible to hide it from other autistics, but if you're pegged, you're pegged. It's like we can smell it.

Too ADHD to bother looking for the links but there are studies about how autistics can struggle with interacting with neurotypicals, but do just fine with each other more often than not. Neurotypicals just really got that 'don't know how to communicate' factor.

[drchucktingle]

As an autistic person, did you struggle to make and keep friends? And have you found friends through the writing world? I ask because my mom always said i needed to find my people. I did finally find them (they are neurodiverse trans nerds, haha), but not until i was like 30. And i wonder if its true of other autistic people too. So i guess my question is: did you find your people, and when?

thank you this is good question. i have always had a LOT of CLOSE BUDS even from a very young age. i would actually say that i am unusually socially adept in my way and that it is partially BECAUSE of my autistic trot. LETS TALK ON THAT FOR A MOMENT

'BUT CHUCK YOU SAID YOU ARE ON THE SPECTRUM AND AUTISTIC BUCKAROOS CANNOT BE SOCIALLY ADEPT' some say. and sure it is UNUSUAL overall, technically speaking, but there is also an important reason we talk about this as a spectrum of buckaroos and not a monolith

when buckaroos ask me what it is like to be autistic i try to explain like this: there are certain cues and markers from the outside that serve as a sort of identification checklist but because of masking they are not always correct. instead i see it as question of WHAT IS IT LIKE INSIDE YOUR BRAIN?

internally my brain is different. its taking in way more information all the time, including the stuff that neurotypical buds block out, and that can become overwhelming. it is hard to navigate because i do not have that automatic neurotypical 'here is what is important here is what is not' function

so yes i can be easily distracted and zone out as i watch the patterns and fractals spin off. and yes i can miss certain things in social situations. in many autistic buckaroos this makes large groups overwhelming and the OUTPUT of behavior matches what we typically know as signs of autism

FOR ME however, same thing is going on inside, but i have managed to HARNESS that information. even from very young age i see that everyone is DOING THE HUMAN ACT but instead of rejecting that and shutting off i think 'well okay i am just going to do THIS because thats what they actually want'

in other words, most neurotypical buds say one thing that has a kind of spiraling social-cue-related OTHER MEETING (they do this ALL the time) and instead of rejecting that i have trained myself to be REALLY REALLY good at knowing the hidden meaning. it is EMPATHY but on a sort of LOGIC BASED level

and because i have always been pretty good at that, people like to trot around me and say 'wow this is a good friend they understand me'. now for ME that can be a little exhausting and there are things i need to do and stims and all that to release the effort, but overall it is worth it to me

OTHER THING is that i was a successful CREATOR AND ARTIST BUCKAROO from an early age which is socially seen as 'cool' especially when you are trotting around in your youth. it is not particularly FAIR but it is true that some level of fame makes buds treat you well even if you are 'weird'.

of course it can be a sort of FAKE 'treating you well' but as an autistic buckaroo it is still more of a chance than you might otherwise get. this timeline has sort of carved out a very special little sliver of social grace for the token odd artistic weirdo to have a seat at each cool kids table

ANYWAY that is the trot of my life. it is a unique trot that i dont get to talk on much but since you asked THERE YOU GO. every chance i get to say 'I LOVE BEING AUTISTIC' and talk on HOW MUCH IT HAS IMPROVED MY LIFE i try to take a moment and do that. when i was young i had few autistic heroes

and OF COURSE it can be difficult and overwhelming and we need to have space for those stories and voices, but i want young buckaroos who get this diagnosis to know there are ALL KINDS of stories and trots on the autism spectrum. MINE IS PRETTY DANG COOL and maybe yours will be too. LOVE IS REAL

[transmutationisms]

Do you know much about how antipsych applies to autism?

autism is one of very few psych diagnoses that has a semi organised tradition of actual self advocacy and a communal tendency to reject and criticise the proffered treatments (ABA, various other forms of abuse). autistic advocates have also played huge roles in developing and articulating the neurodivergency paradigm—arguing that autism is not a 'disease' in need of a cure, but simply a way that some people are, as a result of value-neutral variation that all human minds display.

i don't actually love the neurodivergency paradigm because i don't think the 'neurotypical' exists or is a useful benchmark against which to compare oneself; also, many proponents of this framework are explicitly hostile to deconstructing their very monolithic understanding of each psych diagnosis, and they tend to continue viewing these diagnoses as 'real' biological conditions that simply need to be destigmatised. i don't think this destigmatisation is truly possible as long as we still believe that autism or anything else truly is a distinct, identifiable 'brain difference', even if we're construing it as a neutral variation instead of a pathology. these categories are made up; what unites two people with autism is not necessarily anything to do with their brains, it's a function of (and disgnosed by) external behaviours and the failure to perform social normality. every single person varies biologically (again, there is no 'neurotypical') and varies as much within psychiatrically delineated categories as much as across them.

but anyway i digress: autism is probably the psych diagnosis with the single most organised critique of psychiatry right now. there are of course self advocacy groups for other diagnoses but i haven't really seen any break through with their critique the way that like ASAN have for example. historically i think one thing that has made autism friendly ground for this is that it's the rare psych dx that isn't legal gatekeeping for a drug (compare autistic self advocacy to adhd 'self' 'advocacy' for example) and another huge factor is that autism in its present form is historically differentiated from achizophrenia by being the less stigmatised, more benign 'version' with schizophrenia explicitly reserved for more vulnerable and marginalised populations (eg in the US, black political radicals). so it's not terribly surprising that some of those diagnosed autistic then push this logic even further and say, hey, there's nothing actually Wrong with us though—and it's especially not surprising that the institutional and public response to this has been, while hardly universally positive, generally much more amenable than to people with 'scarier' and racialised diagnoses who say the same thing about themselves. non-radicality of mainstream autistic advocacy aside, even.

[scifibabee]

hey, ya girl had a breakthrough in therapy. who wants to journal with me?

and to be so clear: this is a very nuanced topic, and is based on me and my experience, not saying this is true for all autistics (i'd hope that'd go without saying, but. covering my ass, anyway).

---

the autistic trauma of moral vigilance

aka: being raised in a world where your natural way of being was read as wrong

here we go, folks!

1. every mistake was magnified

when you're autistic, your “errors” don’t get interpreted as oops.

they get interpreted as defiance, disrespect, or dysfunction.

you didn’t make eye contact? you’re rude.

you didn’t answer fast enough? you’re ignoring me.

you asked too many clarifying questions? you’re challenging me.

you didn’t mask your overwhelm? you’re overreacting.

so your body learns:

“if i’m not constantly vigilant about how i show up, i’ll be seen as bad.”

2. masking becomes morality

you didn’t just mask to fit in. you masked to be perceived as a good person.

you learned to suppress natural behaviors—stimming, directness, emotional honesty, tone mismatches—because they weren’t just “weird,” they were interpreted as rude, insensitive, selfish, inappropriate.

and over time?

you stopped being able to tell the difference between what’s wrong and what’s just not neurotypical. you started assuming everything that caused friction was your fault.

so you worked harder and harder to appear morally polished, socially fluent, emotionally tidy. even when it was costing you your nervous system.

3. repair was conditional — and rarely initiated by others

when you’re autistic and raised in a neurotypical environment, you’re almost always the one expected to adjust.

so when a rupture happened?

you were expected to apologize first

you were expected to explain yourself

you were expected to take responsibility for “miscommunications” — even when the other person didn’t meet you halfway

this teaches your brain: “if i don’t preemptively take the blame, i’ll be punished — or worse, completely misunderstood.”

so you spiral not because you were wrong, but because you fear what will happen if someone else decides you were.

4. black-and-white morality became your structure for survival

because when the rules are unclear and inconsistent, when neurotypical norms feel like quicksand, your brain builds rigid systems to try and feel safe.

so you cling to moral absolutes:

“good people don’t yell.”

“if i’m right, i must be calm.”

“if i mess up, it means i was selfish.”

“if i’m hurtful, i’m dangerous.”

you make yourself small, soft, and passive because god forbid anyone see your real emotional intensity and call it wrong.

again.

---

anyway, gonna be screaming the mantras

REGULATION IS NOT A MORAL REQUIREMENT

and

MY BODY IS NOT ON TRIAL

until they hopefully stick.

[positivelyapunovexponent-good]

Okay why does this make so much sense???

I was diagnosed with autism when I was three years old and enrolled in an intensive ABA program, which attempted to use operant conditioning to train me out of acting autistic. One of the things that always confused me, reading over the ABA practitioner's notes decades later, is just how sweeping the category of "autistic problem behaviors" they were trying to extinguish in me was.

For instance, one such “autistic problem behavior” was my "reluctance to attend to non-preferred activities". When I was asked to do something I didn’t want to do, sometimes I would say 'no' or even cry before relenting and doing what I was told. Which is indeed uniquely disordered behavior, because neurotypical toddlers are famously obsequious angels who relish being ordered to do things they hate! (/sarcasm)

In all seriousness though, it's alarming that perfectly standard toddler stubbornness was something the ABA therapists felt they needed to condition out of me. It wasn't enough I learn to be indistinguishable from my non-autistic peers (which is already a messed up goal in its own right), the standard of “neurotypicality” I was told to aspire to seemed nothing short of being a perfectly obedient automaton. 

None of this made sense back when I thought neurotypicality was about normalcy. But it does now that I realize neurotypicality is, and always was, about control

it does more harm than good to prop up the myth of the ‘neurotypical’ who completes tasks cheerfully with no issues. this person is a capitalist fantasy. the more you define yourself in comparison to this myth the more you justify social structures staying the same with minor accommodations to the ‘exceptions’ and the continued pathologizing of discomfort under hostile conditions

[magnetothemagnificent]

I actually don't think that the high percentage of autistic people who are trans/nonbinary has anything to do with how autistic brains work, and I think insisting that it does is a dangerous path to go down.

Rather, I think it has a lot more to do with the fact that people who are already othered in some way are more likely to question aspects of themselves and their identities than people who aren't othered.

Autistic people, and really, all neurodivergent people, are already the Other. Whether diagnosed or not, autistic people already feel different and already wonder why they're different. You can say the same about any Othered demographic. A cishet, white, able-bodied person in the US is less likely to question deeply how they feel because being of the normative class, they just assume others feel the exact same way as them (even if it's not the case).

Think about how many seemingly cishet people say things that make us as non-cishet folks tilt our head a bit, when they say things like "everyone is a little bi, doesn't mean you're gay" or "everyone's felt like a different gender, doesn't mean you're trans", because obviously not everyone actually feels that way and maybe these people could benefit from a bit more introspection, but they never considered it because they assumed everyone felt that way because everything else about their identity- whiteness, abledness, income- is considered The Norm.

So, an autistic person who already has felt different and othered their whole life, who has already been constantly questioning themself, is more likely to also question their sexuality and/or gender identity because they don't really have anything to lose and are already questioning anyway. Meanwhile, a neurotypical person with the same unaddressed feelings about their gender and/or sexuality is more likely not to address those feelings because they either think they're unremarkable or because they fear the repercussions of suddenly Not Being The Norm.

It's not that autistic brains are more wired to not be cishet, it's that autistic people, by being the Other, are just going to be more open to questioning their identity because their identity is already in question by everyone around them.

[stuffieautism]

autistic people are not all able to integrate into the world in the ways you think we should be able to, with the accommodations that helped you or someone with lower support needs.

i had to give up on registering for a service that was supposed to help people like me with phone calls for doctor appointments, etc because it became extremely clear that their service was not accessible for someone (myself) with cognitive impairments. i asked for help with understanding and their response was incomprehensible to my brain. i couldn’t use a service for disabled people because i am too disabled.

yes, do not assume incompetence, but also don’t assume someone not able to understand complex concepts and systems and such, isn’t a person with feelings and a life and existence that matters, even if it doesn’t make sense to you

and please for the love of god stop demeaning “neurotypicals” for being “stupid” when they can’t understand things you deem simple if, for no other reason, then because in doing so you are being ableist to fellow autistic and neurodevelopmentally disabled people who can’t understand because of our own disabilities, which may even be the same as yours, on a different part of the spectrum.

not being “intelligent” or functional doesn’t make me unworthy of life and joy

[autiebiographical]

Day 12 of Auctober!

The autistic brain is literally wired differently from an neurotypical brain. It's why we experience the world differently. It's also why autistic can't magically be cured. You can't just rewire someone's brain!

[chronologicalimplosion]

[[Meme ID:

1- A stock image of a hand pointing at the viewer that says "You. Autism."

2- A screenshot of Monkey D. Luffy in a large parka pointing at the viewer that says "You. Autism."

End ID]]

It has just now occurred to me that what’s “visibly on the spectrum” is wildly different for autistic and allistic people. Most allistics don’t recognize autistic behavior (at all or anything more that weird/quirky) unless it impacts their ability to interface with an autistic person. That’s when allistics see someone as visibly on the spectrum. Other autistics can spot each other from a mile a way though over minor stuff.

For example every allistic I’ve ever worked with has told me “oh but you’re sooo good at socializing with people?!? I could neverrrr tell?!?!” If they learned I’m autistic.

However other autistic people meet me and are like: YOU. AUTISM.