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Hello, welcome to another episode of Unpacking Neuroqueerness. In this episode,

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I wanted to talk a little bit about auditory processing differences and

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sensory processing differences amongst autistic people. This can also apply in

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some way to ADHD, but I'll be focusing on autism today. How auditory processing

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differences and sensory processing differences play a role in the autistic

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experience and why a little bit of background as to why these are common

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things that autistic people can experience a lot more than

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neurotypicals. Anyways, so basically this is something that is

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processing delays are something very common among autistic individuals and I

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can give examples of how I've experienced this throughout my life where I seem to

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kind of always be a little bit behind in a conversation particularly if it's a

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day that I'm more tired than I'm more overstimulated. I'll have a hard time

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absorbing and processing everything someone is saying to me and taking it in

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and really processing it it'll take me longer than most people that I observe

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around me and this has been an experience for a while and so I've never

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really I had never really dug into it and acknowledged it and realized and then

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acknowledged that it is indeed a part of the autistic experience because of

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course you know as I mentioned before on this podcast I've had my autism

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diagnosis for 14 years now I got it when I was 16 but I didn't know a lot of

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things regarding sensory processing and stimming and so many other things

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sensory processing is one of those things and now it makes a lot more sense

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and I've just read that there there was a study that came out recently from a

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co-study in between Case Western Reserve University and the University of

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Toronto the Neuroscience Departments at those universities found that the

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brains of autistic children generate more information even at rest so the so

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just imagine this even when when the brains of autistic children are at rest

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they generate 42% more information than the brains of neurotypical children so

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and you can so you can imagine why it's also harder to process things from an

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autistic person's standpoint because the autistic brain is processing so much

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more information on average and this can of course 42% is an average so it can be

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even higher than that because I certainly feel like my brain is processing a lot

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of information it does not slow down like I don't because that's why certain

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like meditation techniques and exercises can be really difficult for

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autistic and ADHD individuals is because our brains cannot really slow down like

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myself I'm having I'm constantly having thoughts in my head and I'm jumping

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from one thought to the next and I can't it would be nice if I couldn't really be

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able to slow down and not have any thoughts but I've experienced that it is

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difficult for me to do that because my brain is naturally just processing so

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much information and running at such a high speed and now I understand more like

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it it's just so validating to have a study like this come out and to see these

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numbers and like okay so it's not just me I'm not like it makes me feel like

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because it makes me feel more valid it's more validating because I feel like so

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many autistics like myself we grow up feeling really weird because we experience

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things that a lot of other people most other people can't relate to like they

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might even be understanding and supportive but you can just tell when the

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person doesn't really relate to it and it's just of course it's fine that not

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everyone is gonna have the same experience but it's just so encouraging

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when you come across someone that really does understand what you're going

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through and relates to it and it makes you feel a lot more seen and it makes you

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um it makes you realize that like for me it certainly made me realize that I'm

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not insane because I've been made to feel like I'm the only one I've been made

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to feel like an outlier a lot in life when I felt like I was the only one that

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saw a certain thing a certain way and so it just makes so much sense to me like

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it's so validating to see this and it's like oh okay this is a real actual thing

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amongst autistic individuals because it's it's I know that I had I had heard

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about this already from other autistic individuals but it's really nice to see

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it validated like in a study because I still feel like there's a lot of gas

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lighting that goes on in society when it comes to autistic people speaking about

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their experiences they're still people don't give our lived experiences as much

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weight as they give medical studies and that's not to say that medical studies

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don't have validity because they have a huge validity if they're done in a

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neurodiversity affirming way where people are also listening to the lived

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experiences of autistic individuals because I feel like that is something

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that doesn't happen a lot a lot of times we are not listened to and and our

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input is not taken when non-autistic researchers write about autism and so

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that's why we have a lot of misinformation out there nowadays but now I've

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gotten past the point the main topic of the episode which is to talk a little

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bit about why we why we end up taking so long to process information because it

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can be it is not only related to sensory processing differences where where we

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are actually it slower to process information but it's also I think it's

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a combination of that and the fact that our brains naturally process more

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information by default so therefore there's more to process regardless even

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if we didn't have a slower processing speed so that's just some interesting

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information to have once again it's a study from Caste Western Reserve

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University and University of Toronto a neuroscience study that came out I

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believe relatively recently but I'm just I could be wrong because I'm sure this I

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know there have been a lot of studies on brain activity and such for a long time

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but that's an interesting one to talk about anyways I have a lot more

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episodes coming soon I have many different topics planned including a

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review of the latest autism jubilee YouTube video debate that came out which

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features autistic young adults neurotypical young adults parents of

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autistic young adults there there is a good mix of people in there I did I do

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wish that we had seen a late diagnosed young adult person but that is for that

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video I'm going to do a full review a co-review of that video I'm planning a

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co-review with my friend X potentially in the next couple weeks I will I'll keep

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everyone posted on that I also have more episodes coming out soon so once again

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thank you for listening I hope you enjoyed this episode and I'll see you all

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next time