Trauma Informed & Responsive Scotland💙

Are autism and ADHD neurological conditions – and if they aren’t, what are they? My time line is full of people saying that their autism or ADHD is down to neurology. It seems to be something which many believe. Autism and ADHD are not considered to be neurological by doctors or health professionals. If they were, they’d be diagnosed by a neurologist. Neurologists are doctors who specialised in neurological conditions. Things like strokes, or brain injury, or brain tumours. Physical changes to the brain, which cause a wide range of problems for people. Those conditions are diagnosed by brain scans or other biological tests. Autism and ADHD are diagnosed by psychiatrists and psychologists – specialists in mental health and behaviour. That’s because they are not diagnosed by looking at your brain, and they aren’t defined by a particular issue in the brain. They are defined by a list of behavioural criteria. They are called ‘neurodevelopmental’ but that doesn’t mean the same as neurological. It just means, they are present throughout development. The word 'neurodiversity' also leads people to think that they are neurological, but neurodiversity does not mean the same thing as neurological. Many people think that autism and ADHD are neurological because there are some studies which have compared groups of autistic people with non-autistic people, which show differences in brain activation or structure. This isn’t the same as a neurological condition. Literally everything that we do is reflected in our brains. There is a famous set of studies with London taxi drivers who were learning ‘The Knowledge’ – detailed knowledge of London streets. The researchers shows that their brains looked different on scans before and after learning The Knowledge. More than that, they could see structural differences in the brains of those who passed the test of The Knowledge, compared to those who failed. nature.com/articles/nature.2… This doesn’t mean that learning The Knowledge is neurological. It means that learning and behaviour differences are visible in our brains. The Knowledge is only neurological in the sense that everything we do, think and feel are reflected in our brains. So what are autism and ADHD then, if they aren’t neurological? They certainly aren’t anyone’s fault. They describe real differences. They are a description of a cluster of behaviours, not an explanation. They don’t mean that we’ve found out WHY someone is behaving the way that they are. They just give it a name. A very useful name, but a name isn’t an explanation.