shel

The Transsexual Chofetz Chaim

Mutant, librarian, poet, union rabble rouser, dog, Ashkenazi Jewish. Neuroweird, bodyweird, mostly sleepy.


I write about transformative justice, community, love, Judaism, Neurodivergence, mental health, Disability, geography, rivers, labor, and libraries; through poetry, opinionated essays, and short fiction.


I review Schoolhouse Rock! songs at @PropagandaRock


Website (RSS + Newsletter)
shelraphen.com/

If you discovered autism today and knew everything we know now about autism but had none of the stereotypes or misunderstandings since Asperger; what would you have named it? Nobody has called it autism or ASD before.

I think I'd call it "the hyperconnective-overprocessing neurodevelopment pattern." And then instead of "allistic" as the natural inverse I'd call it the "normative neural pruning neurodevelopment pattern"


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in reply to @shel's post:

I agree in theory but also idk how else to briefly phrase "brains that prune neural connections to the same amount that 90% of brains do as far as we know" versus "brains that prune neural connections less than 90% of brains do."

I dunno, the hypothesis seems plausible to me but a quick literature search finds at least two competing hypotheses. One of these seems like it is proposing a similar result with a different mechanism: brains with ASD start out with 67% more prefrontal neurons, so even with the typical amount of pruning they still end up with more connections.