Which mental 'deficits' are really hidden strengths? | Heather Heying | Big Think

'Neurodiversity' is a pretty new term, and I'm very grateful for it. It gets to something that is absolutely real and has been harder to discuss before it existed. That said, I'm not sure I have a perfect definition. It recognizes the fact that we are not singular, that we are not all identical, that we have a variation of brains, of connectivity, of aptitudes, of weaknesses, of blind spots, and of sensitivities and of capabilities.

People on the autism spectrum who are very functional, in my experience, tend to have extraordinary analytical skills and also often actually insight into social interactions, so long as they are not the ones participating. I've had a number of autistic students actually point out to me dynamics that were emerging in classrooms that I hadn't yet seen, and that once they were pointed out, I could see. These are the same students who have a very hard time recognizing when it is or is not time to speak or get up or walk through the middle of a classroom.

There are a number of ways to be neurodiverse. We have names for some conditions that actually represent ends of continuum. Dyslexia is a big one. These are going to sound like they're coming out of left field, but colorblindness and left-handedness are examples as well. In each of those cases, being what in evolutionary biology we call the non-dominant phenotype. So, I am a lefty; that's one of those that I belong to as a group. About 10% of people across all cultures that have been studied are left-handed. It's a persistent, stable, rare phenotype, which suggests that it’s adaptive, that it’s persistent, that it’s complex.

The different wiring of the brain associated with being a left-hander provides benefits in the social group in which left-handers show up. We can put together analyses for why being a left-hander might allow you to approach a physical problem differently than a right-hander would have a harder time solving, but the different wiring of the brain allows for different approaches as well. This is similar with colorblindness; it might be really easy to say, "Well, okay, that just is going to give you some ability to see past color and to see patterns that aren't color-based, perhaps."

But I suspect that there's wiring in the brain that is associated with colorblindness that also allows for enhanced abilities that are different from those who are color sighted. Dyslexia, for sure, right? Dyslexia is obviously a very modern condition because writing is a very modern condition. So, as an evolutionary biologist, when I say modern, I mean thousands of years. Dyslexia is modern in terms of thousands of years, and you know, language was always about sound and never about writing until recently.

The lessened ability—it's almost never an inability—but the lessened ability to process written symbols into meaning in your head looks to me like it's a tradeoff relationship with the ability to engage in real-time in speech. That's not to say that all of us can't learn through practice to be better at any number of these skills, but that being born with what the world has is calling a deficit is almost always going to exist in a tradeoff relationship with some often hidden strength.