Weirdly Successful
Dedicated to helping you understand, navigate and enjoy your weird & wonderful neurodivergent life.
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.
The mTOR pathway is a signalling system inside every cell that regulates the balance between building new structures and recycling old ones. In autistic brains, this pathway runs hotter than typical, suppressing the cell's internal cleanup processes. Up to 58% of autism-associated genes relate to this pathway, making it a point of convergence where many different genetic routes produce similar outcomes — from differences in synaptic pruning and sensory processing to neuroinflammation and the balance between excitatory and inhibitory brain signalling.
Habituation is a biological reaction mechanism where if a non-threatening stimuli keeps repeating, the response to it lowers over time. In neurodivergence, the brain's reduced capacity for habituation means we can't "tune out" unimportant stimuli, which leads to sensory difficulties and sensory overwhelm.
Norepinephrine (also called noradrenaline) is a neurotransmitter produced by the locus coeruleus in the brainstem. It regulates alertness, attention, arousal, and the stress response, and works alongside dopamine in the prefrontal cortex to support executive function. Your prefrontal cortex needs norepinephrine in an optimal range — too little, and you can't sustain focus, too much, and the brain shifts to reactive, survival-oriented processing.
In ADHD, norepinephrine signalling is dysregulated, contributing to difficulties with sustained attention, emotional regulation, and the stress response.
Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that helps regulate mood, sleep, and appetite, keeping us balanced.
Neurotransmitters are chemicals that help brain cells “talk” to each other, controlling thoughts and feelings. Dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine are all neurotransmitters. References1↑ Volkow, N.D. et al. (2009). Evaluating dopamine reward pathway in ADHD: clinical implications. JAMA, 302(10), 1084–1091. 2↑ Volkow, N.D. et al. (2010). Motivation deficit in ADHD is associated with dysfunction of the …
The dopamine system is the network of neurons, pathways, and chemical machinery that produces, delivers, uses, and recycles dopamine throughout the brain. It's one of the most-discussed systems in ADHD, and with good reason — differences in how this system works are closely linked to difficulties with motivation, attention, reward, and the ability to sustain effort on tasks that aren't immediately interesting.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter involved in many different functions, including movement, motivation, reward, and pleasure. It is one of the most important neurotransmitters you have to get to know if you want to understand ADHD better.
A stimulus (plural: stimuli) refers to any physical or sensory input from the environment that elicits a response or reaction from someone. It can be any sensory information, such as sound, light, touch, taste, or smell, that triggers a biological or behavioural response. Stimuli can range from simple to complex and vary in intensity and …
