NEURODIVERSITY & NEUROPLASTICITY
When April begins - a day, a week, an entire month - lights up for Autism Awareness around the globe. The United Nations-sanctioned World Autism Awareness Day is on April 2, and this year marks the 16th annual event. With their global virtual event, the UN is calling for ‘transformation toward a neuro-inclusive world for all’ and supporting ‘embracing the concept of neurodiversity
—the idea that people experience and interact with the world in many different ways and that there is no one “right” way’.
Recent research indicates the number of individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in many countries of the world is increasing. Autism Spectrum Australia suggests the prevalence in Australia is now possibly 1 in every 70 people. In America, about 1 in every 36 children is identified with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Like all of us, every person with autism is unique, however, there are core areas used to define this diagnosis characterized by differences in behavior, social interaction, communication, and sensory processing. Every person is different, and whilst some people on the autism spectrum may also have an intellectual impairment or disability, some people have average or profoundly gifted intelligence. At this stage of the journey autism’s advantages do not make it into the diagnostic criteria. Autistic individuals may experience additional challenges, things as ADHD, anxiety, and epilepsy.
Infinitely complex, it is impossible to capture and define the experience of autism for any individual. Indeed, like a ‘spectrum’ of light, there are parts of the spectrum of the experience you actually can’t see, aspects we all will always be discovering more and more about. Light itself, as a reference for understanding another ‘spectrum continuum’, comes in many other ‘colors’ – radio waves, infrared light, ultra-violet, x- and gamma ray – invisible to the naked eye, but still there and incredibly powerful. In this sense, there are parts of any of our lived experiences that will only ever be ‘seen’ by us, by the individual, and understood by our own brains alone.
Importantly with an increasing number of autistic people becoming directly involved in driving pivotal autism research, changes are afoot with the neurodiversity paradigm. Where (as popularised from the work of Harvey Blume) ‘what biodiversity does for a healthy natural environment, neurodiversity helps to create a healthy and sustainable neurocognitive environment for us all’.
Extraordinary scientists who are autistic, like Ph.D. researcher Kana Umagami, who is exploring and redefining the experience of loneliness in autistic adults. Or self-professed ‘unashamedly and unabashedly autistic’ researcher Monique Botha robustly challenging research methodology, training, and service design with the essential “Nothing About Us Without Us”. Further progressing the pioneering (and assumption questioning) researchers like Michelle Dawson who feels ‘it would be more useful to try to determine how autistic brains work rather than how they are broken’.
So, how can we explore how brains work? These days we can use imaging devices like fMRI; SPECT scans; EEG and QEEG Brain Scans.
There are extensive and expanding clinical applications for QEEG Brain Scans, including neuropsychiatric disorders, epilepsy, stroke, dementia, traumatic brain injury, mental health disorders, and many others. These detailed and colorful brain scans, whilst they cannot be used for diagnosis, can be used very informatively to help understand what is going on in the brain, and how a brain is working. These QEEG Brain Scans can then be used to direct targeted and truly personalized treatment that is consistent with an up-to-date and evidence-based scientific approach to brain-based disorders.
This year, as we all stand for a world of difference, we can all stand for welcoming differences in the ways we can all understand how our brains work, and all stand for the different choices we have with what treatments we choose may work for us in this incredible world of possibilities.
If you would like to find out more about how your unique brain functions and changes, with everything you think, feel, and do each day, the Team at The Perth Brain Centre embraces you and your curiosity. You can watch, read, call, or email, to find out more today.
About the author - Ms. Emily Goss (Occupational Therapist, Senior Clinician, The Perth Brain Centre).