Blame the Amygdala
Like many, I received a late diagnosis of ADHD, although I think my experience is more in line with AuDHD. I use this site to share thoughts via blog posts, but also share essays from time to time.
I think writing is special to people with ADHD because the act of writing a sentence is at the same time the organization of a thought. For people who need no excuses for their focus to ricochet around a sentence in search of all possible nuance, perfecting a sentence is an act of therapy.
I started my writing career researching and writing about psychopathy, serial killers, and personality disorders.
I still remember coming across a study from 2000 by the renowned neuroscientist, Adrian Raine, demonstrating that those with Antisocial Personality Disorder had differing amounts of gray and white matter in specific areas of their brains (than the non disordered). This idea of physical and structural differences for people who engaged in pathologically different behavior was fascinating, because the first immediate question is, “Do those differences have anything to do with their behavior?” This question is closely followed by, “If their brain is different, is it still their fault if they do bad things?”
These are the questions that start careers.
I have always been fascinated by the brain; I somewhat disagree the brain is an organ, because I think it might be better classified as a system of organs/organelles. Every human who ever existed will have had a vastly different brain, and even within that same brain it will have had millions of subtle differences moment-to-moment. The brain has billions of neurons with trillions of synapses, which to me gives it a kind of infinity. The human brain throughout time, in all manifestations, is the perfect symbol for human diversity.
I don’t think current neurodiversity narratives go far enough and I would love to see the term neurotypical disbanded. There is no neurotypical. There is no normal. Just a lot to discover and understand, moment to moment.
Jack
Member of the Society for the Scientific Study of Psychopathy (SSSP)
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