Your Questions, Answered
Your Questions, Answered
Autism vs. ADHD Assessment, Exercise and Neurodivergence, Creativity + More!
You asked for it! I received 35+ quesions from my last “Ask me anything” request on my Instagram story, so I’m going to break these down into weekly ramble-y video answer posts. Thank you for your amazing curiosity and I hope you find (at least a grain of) value in my responses!
-Lindsey
Question #1: Why is it so much harder to get an autism diagnosis than ADHD? Got ADHD diagnosis but not autism yet.
Question #2: Do you have any information /thoughts on why so many people with ADHD have creative talents?
Question #3: Relationship between exercise and neurodivergence. Same as neurotypical or different?
Some resources:
Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (Mayo Clinic)
What is Ehlers-Danlos? (The Ehlers-Danlos Society)
Question #4: What if the future Science discovers that most of the human being are neurocomplex?
The philosophy of neurocomplexity includes the gestalt nature of each individual’s complex body mind, including aspects seen and unseen. So, this would be incredibly validating of our expanding definition, philosophy, and methodology of Neurocomplexity (it’s own public-facing website coming very soon!). Neurocomplexity is about aliveness, interplay and values subjective experience of all individuals. Confused? Stay tuned for more in-depth details on this work in the coming months.
Answering more of your questions next week!
Stay weird,
Lindsey
Great answers! I also have some thoughts on the connections between ADHD and creativity:
a) As you mentioned, ADHD is strongly associated with reduced inhibition overall. That also includes low latent inhibition, which is strongly correlated with creativity. Low latent inhibition is a condition where the individual does not have the usual mental gatekeeping functions in place to filter out irrelevant information and prioritize the most important thing in that moment, so the individual is constantly being bombarded with multiple streams of information/stimuli all at once and no internal filing system to rank them in order of importance, which makes it difficult to focus on the task at hand, but which also means that novel connections can be made between different things that don’t usually go together— the core feature of innovation. In a brain that is not very strong/self-aware that can lead to non-functioning or even madness, but when combined with high intelligence it can lead to genius discoveries and high creativity. This is also why genius and madness are also often strongly correlated.
B) ADHD is also believed to be caused by an overactive Default Mode Network of the brain, which causes attention problems, disorganization and task paralysis/procrastination because unlike in neurotypicals, it doesn’t turn off when the Task Initiation Network turns on, making it impossible to focus on the task at hand. The Default Mode Network is also associated with deep contemplation, problem solving, creativity and epiphanies. Needless to say, if that part of your brain is always on, it can lead to profound insights, but also cause you a lot of problems with functioning in your daily life.
C) Cultivating creative concepts takes so much obsessive focus that the person loses touch with their immediate surroundings/time/space, and has little mental energy left over for anything else.
D) ADHD is also associated with the DrD4 gene, aka the "explorer" gene. Exploration fuels creativity.
E) Creative brains think in non-linear patterns, which is great for innovation, but terrible for organization, aka ADHD.
F) Creative brains need tons of stimulation in order to keep churning out new, innovative ideas. Thus, it makes sense that a creative brain would balk at routine practicalities and go wander off to think about something else that's more interesting.
https://www.wired.com/2010/09/are-distractible-people-more-creative/
Hi Lindsey, thank you for mentioning EDS and the Hypermobility Spectrum Disorders in your video about exercise and neurodivergence. (They're not rare, just rarely diagnosed.) I'm actually co-authoring a book on the co-occurrence of EDS/HSD and autism and ADHD as we speak, due out Spring 2025 if all goes well. You can read more about this and all things EDS on my blog here: https://ohtwist.com/autism-and-adhd-and-eds-and-hsd