this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2023
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Showerthoughts
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Neurotypical does mean pretty much exactly that, with only the clarification that while communication is significant, it extends beyond that.
That's a lot of why the terminology "neurotypical" and "neurodivergent" exists in the first place - because at this point, it doesn't even pretend to be an objective measure of mental health, but simply a pair of labels with which to describe the degrees to which people do or do not accord to current societal standards.
For example - posit a society in which it has become socially acceptable and even expected, when you meet someone, to punch them in the face.
If one were to ask a person how they feel about punching other people in the face, it's fairly obvious that the objectively psychologically sound view is that that's a thing they would not and likely could not do.
But to actually act in that way - to be unwilling or even unable to do it in a society in which it's the norm and thus the expected and sanctioned behavior - would be "neurodivergent." The conclusion would be that one must suffer from some psychological or physiological affliction that makes it so that one is unwilling or unable to act in a way that accords with expected behavior or societal norms. That one is "neurodivergent" instead of "neurotypical."
You could make definitions of neurotypical and neurodivergent that were based purely on statistical descriptions of the brain. It wouldn’t have to map onto culture at all. It’s not behaviorally or situationally divergent. It’s neurally divergent.
Behaviour is a translation of underlying brain structure, functions and neuronal networks in a given environmental setting. I don't think that you can just classify into "neurodivergent" and "neurotypical" only based on pure brain anatomy. We are all humans, so everyone has a human brain with slight individual variations. However, functional differences may occur more often and can be distinctive between groups (which network is more recruited for a certain type of task). These functional differences can translate in variations of performance and adaptation in a given setting. Functional brain imaging is generally used to explore and to search for explanations of observed behaviours, but is rarely used to classify or diagnose people. So, behavioural observations remain the main criteria for classification. "Neurotypical" and "neurodivergent" are however more of a social construction than a statistical.
True, but only due to lack of technology. It’s just not economically feasible to be using fmri (I understand the distinction between structural and functional here), and not technologically feasible to be using neural mapping to characterize people.
But the term neurodivergent implies neurons, not behavior.
If we insist on keeping behavior as the definition and not just the indicator we use to detect the differences, we should start referring to these as philosophical or behavioral divergence, because we have no good reason to assume differences in behavior are only or even mostly a function of neurological differences.