Your brain is a rain forest

... The trouble is that medical researchers generally have a disease-based perspective regarding the brain, not a view that is focused on health and well-being. Funding for brain research goes to the squeaky wheel. Studies abound, for example, about what's wrong with the left hemisphere of the brains of dyslexics. Little research, however, exists on an area in the right hemisphere that processes loose word associations and may be the source of poetic inspiration.

The concept of neurodiversity provides a more balanced perspective. Instead of regarding traditionally pathologized populations as disabled or disordered, the emphasis in neurodiversity is placed on differences. Dyslexics often have minds that visualize clearly in three dimensions. People with ADHD have a different, more diffused, attentional style. Autistic individuals relate better to objects than to people.

This is not, as some people might suspect, merely a new form of political correctness (e.g., “serial killers are differently assertive”). Instead, research from brain science, evolutionary psychology, anthropology, sociology and the humanities demonstrates that these differences are real and deserve serious consideration.

I recognize that they also involve tremendous hardship, suffering and pain. The importance of identifying mental illness, treating it appropriately and developing the means of preventing it in early childhood cannot be overstated.

However, one important ingredient in the alleviation of this suffering is an emphasis on the positive dimensions of people who have traditionally been stigmatized as less than normal. My own definition of neurodiversity concerns itself with an exploration of seven mental disorders of neurological origin, which may represent alternative forms of natural human difference: ADHD, autism, dyslexia, mood disorders, anxiety disorders, intellectual disabilities and schizophrenia. I have come up with eight principles of neurodiversity to serve as guideposts on this journey.

– 1 – The human brain works more like an ecosystem than a machine

The primary metaphor used to describe the workings of the brain for 400 years has been the machine. The problem with this kind of approach is the human brain is not a machine; it is a biological organism. It is not hardware or software. It is wetware. And it is messy. Millions of years of evolution have created hundreds of billions of brain cells organized and connected in unbelievably complex systems of organicity. The body of a neuron, or brain cell, looks like an exotic tropical tree with numerous branches. The electric crackling of neuronal networks mimics heat lightning in a forest. The undulations of neurotransmitters moving among neurons resemble the ocean tides.

Like an ecosystem, the brain has a tremendous ability to transform itself in response to change. Pennsylvania student Christina Santhouse was 8 years old when encephalitis and the seizures it caused resulted in the right hemisphere of her brain being removed. Nevertheless, she graduated with honors from high school and is attending college. Her left hemisphere was able to take up the slack, so to speak, and function virtually normally. ...

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