Neurotransmitters are chemicals that help brain cells “talk” to each other, controlling thoughts and feelings. Dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine are all neurotransmitters.
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The vagus nerve is a bundle of nerve fibres in your body. It runs from the brainstem down through the neck and into the chest and abdomen. It branches out to the heart, lungs, airways, stomach, liver, intestines, and most of the digestive tract. It is the longest cranial nerve in the body. Roughly 80% of what it carries is sensory information travelling upward. The vagus nerve reports to your brain about what is happening in your organs. In recent years, the vagus nerve has become a fixture of wellness content. Many techniques, including cold showers, humming, and gargling, are promoted as ways to “stimulate” or “tone” it. Some of this is supported by research, but many of the easy-fix claims are exaggerated. And for neurodivergent people in particular, some of the advice is actively unhelpful.
The gut-brain axis is the two-way communication system between your digestive tract and your brain. It runs on nerves, neurotransmitters, immune signals, and microbial chemistry, and it's a large part of the reason why so many neurodivergent people have persistent stomach problems which are often not even connected to their neurodivergence.
The brain is the organ behind every neurodivergent trait you experience — from how you pay attention to how you process emotion to how you sleep. Neurodivergent brains use the same basic structures and chemical messengers as any brain, but the tuning is different: different dopamine activity in reward circuits, different balance between excitatory and inhibitory signalling, different default mode network behaviour.
Synaptic pruning is the process by which the brain refines its connections during development, removing synapses that are used less frequently while strengthening active ones. In autistic brains, this process works differently — two independent cleanup systems (the neuron's internal recycling programme and the brain's specialised immune cells) are both less aggressive, meaning significantly more connections are retained. This denser wiring contributes to many recognisable autistic experiences: sensory intensity, deep focus, rich pattern recognition, difficulty filtering, and the challenge of switching between tasks or environments.
Related Glossary Terms
vagus nerve
gut-brain axis
The neurodivergent brain
synaptic pruning
dopamine system