Autistic people think in complexities

Autistic people tend to think in complexities. 

Someone can ask us to do something seemingly straightforward, but our brains will often make it into something extremely complex and nuanced.

We ask questions to untangle our thoughts.

There's actually research that I think might explain why we do this...

The study (which I'll link below) found that autistic brains have 50% more synapses than nonautistic brains.

Some of the autistic brains they looked at even had 2/3rds more synapses. Which is significant, if you ask me.

The explanation the researchers gave for this finding is that in autistic brains, during development, there's a slowdown in the natural pruning process... which is when the brain removes synapses it no longer needs.

One researcher who studies over-connectivity in the brain explained that with too many synapses...

"A brain region that should be talking only to a select number of other regions is receiving irrelevant information from many others"... (let's set aside the fact that "irrelevant" is entirely relative for now 🙂)

So back to autistic people thinking in complexities and asking questions to untangle our thoughts...

In my opinion, this synapse pruning difference is more than likely why.

We just have too much information to parse through. And apparently, it's a LOT more than nonautistic people.

I don't know about you, but this synapse pruning study explains a LOT to me about the way my brain processes and accesses information. Like a LOT a lot.

P.s. I think these findings may also explain the research that found that autistic brains generate, on average, 42% more information at rest than nonautistic brains.

References for context...

https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2014/08/22/4072456.htm

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140131130630.htm