The Gift of Neurodivergence (and Vedic Meditation)

The Gift of Neurodivergence (and Vedic Meditation)

[00:45] Neurotypicality and Neurodiversity

Some of you may have heard of the term neurodiversity, and someone who is neurodiverse might be referred to as being neurodivergent. The rest of the population, the conformists, whose brains operate in ways that are unremarkable, let’s say average, are referred to as neurotypical.

And these are words that have been coined, probably in the last 15 years or so, to allow for an unbiased description of people who have what is sometimes considered to be pathologies.

A pathology, pathos, is the word that describes an illness. Pathology is then a disease state, but not all disease states are necessarily disadvantages. And we know that someone who is neurodiverse, who is neurodivergent, may have, be somewhere on a spectrum between the state known as Asperger’s syndrome, all the way up to classic autism, and to low socially performing autism, or high socially performing autism.

So there’s a spectrum of brain states that have been looked at and described with these names, and we would say that somebody who is somewhere on that spectrum is neurodiverse. That means to not accuse somebody of having a disease or to pigeonhole them, but to say their brain operates in a way that’s different to what is average.

And then the rest of us, the ones who are predictable, who are average, whose brains operate in ways that don’t make them stand out in any particular way sociologically, are referred to as neurotypical.

Typical people versus people who are divergent.

[02:52] Neurodivergence in Human Brain Evolution

It’s important to understand, from an evolutionary perspective, what has happened to the human brain over a period of millions of years, but in specific, over the last 120,000 years of human biological evolution, brain evolution specifically, through the process of reproduction that has occurred across the range of the neurotypicals, breeding with and reproducing with the neurodivergent.

And what’s basically happened is the creation of a brain that is the brain that we neurotypicals enjoy today: the bi-hemispheric, the cerebral cortex of the brain and the frontal cortex of the brain are all a product of a natural cross breeding between people who, not that that terminology was used, but over long periods of human reproduction, thousands of years, between neurodivergent people and neurotypical people, what we’ve ended up with is a brain that is neuroplastic.

Neuroplasticity is a concept which I encourage all of my listeners to read about in a fabulous book that is now about 15-years-old, entitled The Brain That Changes Itself by Dr. Professor Norman Doidge, D-O-I-D-G-E. Norman Doidge, PhD. MD., a neuropsychologist, neuropsychiatrist, medical doctor who teaches us lay people, I include myself in that for the moment, about the facts of the human brain.

[04:44] Left and Right Brain

And the facts of the human brain are very simple. Our brain is not as hard wired as we have imagined it to be in all the years leading up to, say, 15 years ago; it had been thought that particular parts of the brain were responsible for very specific functions.

So, for example, certain parts of the brain are known to be the area of the brain where memories are stored. Certain parts of the brain, left cerebral cortex, most notably, was accused of being the left linear analytic, linear thinking brain. The brain that was responsible for analysis.

The right brain, right-brainedness, if people had right dominant brains were the part of the brain that was responsible for synthesis, analysis and synthesis. So, synthesis meaning artistic appreciation, aesthetic appreciation, spatial relationships, and so on.

One very cursory way in which the differences between these two behaviors of the brain might be described would be that if you were in outer space floating in a space station looking down at the earth, it would be the right brain that would take in the whole of space, all of the stars, perhaps the moon floating over there, and the great blue ball of the earth being included in all of this spectrum of the play and display of cosmic art.

[06:23] Adaptive Neuroplasticity

Whereas the left brain would be zeroing in on, “There’s Texas, there’s San Antonio where I come from. In Texas, I can see the plains, I can see the mountain ranges, the mountain ranges.” Specificity.

And although this is a great oversimplification of the way in which the two halves of the brain have adopted their performance. Nonetheless, it somehow gets the point across. It’s illustrative if a little bit of an oversimplification.

Doidge will tell us, and when we read his book, The Brain That Changes Itself, about neuroplasticity, neuroplasticity simply means plasticity is the capacity of any element of the human body or human function, and we’re for the moment looking at plasticity in its human context, to be adaptive, to be super adaptive.

It turns out that, and Doidge gives very good examples illustrating his point, our brain does have certain areas to which certain neurological areas, certain topology of the brain to which it assigns certain functions like memory, like intellectual performance, like emotional experience, like sensory data and input and processing of pain and whatnot.

Certain parts of the brain can be identified as centers of that, but not because they were that way at birth. This is the italicized sentence, not because they were that way at birth. Our brain learns how to do this, and there is a pattern of behavior that causes the brain to assign these functions to different parts of itself.

[08:06] Flexibility in Evolution Needs Neurodivergence and Anomalies

And so, when somebody has had a serious traumatic brain injury, or they have had a stroke that has cut off oxygen to a particular part of the brain, which is now necrotizing, it may be that they lose certain functions.

They may become aphasic or dysphasic. They may lose speech. They may lose certain right, left sides of the body, functionality and all that.

But we now know that with adequate training, quite a number of these disabilities can be overcome because our brain has a wonderful capacity to use its billions of neurons to reassemble databases, to reassemble and retrieve memory, to reassemble and retrieve gross motor performance and fine motor performance, and to assign these new tasks to different topological brain bases.

And what this comes from interestingly, genetically, Darwinistically, evolution-wise, is the cross-breeding of people who are so-called neurotypical with people who are neurodivergent.

That is to say, we couldn’t have such a flexible hyper-adaptive brain if it were not for those of us who are not neurologically typical but neurologically divergent, reproducing with people who are.

[09:34] The Mainstream is Defined by the Fringe

In other words, human evolution can only be guaranteed by aberration, by behaviors that stand outside the regular, and we’ve always known this. People who’ve studied Darwinistic evolution are very aware of the fact that all existing forms are adaptations to a function, but come from anomalies, genetic anomalies that occur.

And then when those anomalies end up becoming part of the regular and testable capability that allows certain humans to survive to reproductive age, then an evolution of a style of functioning or an evolution of a form becomes made into concrete and becomes something that’s passed on to the vast majority of others.

So, without the fringe, we don’t get the mainstream. The mainstream is defined by the fringe.

And so then, one of the things that our meditation practice is adding to all of this is that regular practice of Vedic Meditation has been demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt to change and make more plastic the style of functioning of the brain.

During our practice of Vedic Meditation, our brains settle down into a least-excited condition, and the brain instead of behaving as it is, a hundred billion neurons all firing off and on with a kind of sparkling randomicity, the brain rather begins to perform using a model for one neuron as if the billions of neurons all begin to fire off on in synchrony.

[11:16] Neuroadaptive Brain: The Brain of a Meditator

And this shows up as a spectral array of spatial coherence across all points of the brain what is, in fact, a neurodivergent way of the brain behaving. The brain draws upon its capacity to change its style of functioning, and is one of the explanations for why meditation generates different behaviors in people.

In fact, studies on mindfulness and Zen meditation in monks has shown that the areas of the brain which normally are associated with compassion increase in their neurological density, that is to say, the neuromass of those parts of the brain responsible for experiences of empathy, increase in the number of neurons that support that functioning.

Our brain is not a frozen sculpture that, from birth, is something that behaves the same all the time. Our brain is a work in progress. And every experience that we have in our daily life changes the style of functioning of the brain and makes the brain more, and here’s a new word for you, neuroadaptive. Neuroplastic we can make that word a little more friendly and call it neuroadaptive.

The neuroadaptive brain is the brain of the meditator that is able to meet what might typically be considered to be insurmountable demands but to meet those demands with a great degree of adaptability, and to interact with the demands, and from that interaction to derive satisfaction or satiety, to derive happiness from interaction with demands.

This is not something that is merely a psychological attitude that one can groom. This is a psycho-neurological capability that is greatly enhanced when people practice meditation. The ability to derive satisfaction from taking an interactive approach to dealing with what once upon a time would have been considered insurmountable demands. And this is what gifts the meditator with a greater sustainability of lifestyle.

Jai Guru Deva.