Hello, welcome to another episode of Unpacking Neuroqueerness. In this episode,
I wanted to talk a little bit about auditory processing differences and
sensory processing differences amongst autistic people. This can also apply in
some way to ADHD, but I'll be focusing on autism today. How auditory processing
differences and sensory processing differences play a role in the autistic
experience and why a little bit of background as to why these are common
things that autistic people can experience a lot more than
neurotypicals. Anyways, so basically this is something that is
processing delays are something very common among autistic individuals and I
can give examples of how I've experienced this throughout my life where I seem to
kind of always be a little bit behind in a conversation particularly if it's a
day that I'm more tired than I'm more overstimulated. I'll have a hard time
absorbing and processing everything someone is saying to me and taking it in
and really processing it it'll take me longer than most people that I observe
around me and this has been an experience for a while and so I've never
really I had never really dug into it and acknowledged it and realized and then
acknowledged that it is indeed a part of the autistic experience because of
course you know as I mentioned before on this podcast I've had my autism
diagnosis for 14 years now I got it when I was 16 but I didn't know a lot of
things regarding sensory processing and stimming and so many other things
sensory processing is one of those things and now it makes a lot more sense
and I've just read that there there was a study that came out recently from a
co-study in between Case Western Reserve University and the University of
Toronto the Neuroscience Departments at those universities found that the
brains of autistic children generate more information even at rest so the so
just imagine this even when when the brains of autistic children are at rest
they generate 42% more information than the brains of neurotypical children so
and you can so you can imagine why it's also harder to process things from an
autistic person's standpoint because the autistic brain is processing so much
more information on average and this can of course 42% is an average so it can be
even higher than that because I certainly feel like my brain is processing a lot
of information it does not slow down like I don't because that's why certain
like meditation techniques and exercises can be really difficult for
autistic and ADHD individuals is because our brains cannot really slow down like
myself I'm having I'm constantly having thoughts in my head and I'm jumping
from one thought to the next and I can't it would be nice if I couldn't really be
able to slow down and not have any thoughts but I've experienced that it is
difficult for me to do that because my brain is naturally just processing so
much information and running at such a high speed and now I understand more like
it it's just so validating to have a study like this come out and to see these
numbers and like okay so it's not just me I'm not like it makes me feel like
because it makes me feel more valid it's more validating because I feel like so
many autistics like myself we grow up feeling really weird because we experience
things that a lot of other people most other people can't relate to like they
might even be understanding and supportive but you can just tell when the
person doesn't really relate to it and it's just of course it's fine that not
everyone is gonna have the same experience but it's just so encouraging
when you come across someone that really does understand what you're going
through and relates to it and it makes you feel a lot more seen and it makes you
um it makes you realize that like for me it certainly made me realize that I'm
not insane because I've been made to feel like I'm the only one I've been made
to feel like an outlier a lot in life when I felt like I was the only one that
saw a certain thing a certain way and so it just makes so much sense to me like
it's so validating to see this and it's like oh okay this is a real actual thing
amongst autistic individuals because it's it's I know that I had I had heard
about this already from other autistic individuals but it's really nice to see
it validated like in a study because I still feel like there's a lot of gas
lighting that goes on in society when it comes to autistic people speaking about
their experiences they're still people don't give our lived experiences as much
weight as they give medical studies and that's not to say that medical studies
don't have validity because they have a huge validity if they're done in a
neurodiversity affirming way where people are also listening to the lived
experiences of autistic individuals because I feel like that is something
that doesn't happen a lot a lot of times we are not listened to and and our
input is not taken when non-autistic researchers write about autism and so
that's why we have a lot of misinformation out there nowadays but now I've
gotten past the point the main topic of the episode which is to talk a little
bit about why we why we end up taking so long to process information because it
can be it is not only related to sensory processing differences where where we
are actually it slower to process information but it's also I think it's
a combination of that and the fact that our brains naturally process more
information by default so therefore there's more to process regardless even
if we didn't have a slower processing speed so that's just some interesting
information to have once again it's a study from Caste Western Reserve
University and University of Toronto a neuroscience study that came out I
believe relatively recently but I'm just I could be wrong because I'm sure this I
know there have been a lot of studies on brain activity and such for a long time
but that's an interesting one to talk about anyways I have a lot more
episodes coming soon I have many different topics planned including a
review of the latest autism jubilee YouTube video debate that came out which
features autistic young adults neurotypical young adults parents of
autistic young adults there there is a good mix of people in there I did I do
wish that we had seen a late diagnosed young adult person but that is for that
video I'm going to do a full review a co-review of that video I'm planning a
co-review with my friend X potentially in the next couple weeks I will I'll keep
everyone posted on that I also have more episodes coming out soon so once again
thank you for listening I hope you enjoyed this episode and I'll see you all
next time