Well, hello everybody. It's a beautiful day to bust some cognitive distortions and learn a little bit about neuroscience today. So, hi. I'm Suzanne M. Swain and I'm really, really glad you're here today. I am a child therapist, master, middle school teacher, and child sociologist. And we are here to talk today a little bit about brain science. So this is something that a lot of families and teachers really want to know more about. And to my young folks out there, I think it's important for you to learn about psychoeducation. In other words, learning about how your brain works so that way you can have more self-regulation skills, right? You can learn to control yourself a little bit better and react in a more appropriate way. So today's a science episode. Love science. I was trained as a science teacher, so this is really exciting for me. Can't wait to show you some new information that we've gathered. I've done a lot of research here and can't wait to share it with you. So we're not going with trends. We're no hot takes or anything. Not everyone is neurodivergent now type of thing. We're not going there. What we are talking about are peer reviewed research from 2024 and 2025 is actually showing about neurodivergent brains. So because the science has evolved and families deserve to evolve with it, so I think you need to know. It's very important to know as much as possible to help our kids and ourselves. So it's really not one gene. It's hundreds. One of the biggest updates in the past couple of years comes from genetic research, actually. In 2025, in a paper, Molecular Psychiatry, they looked at something called polygenic overlap, which basically means instead of one gene causing something like ADHD or autism, years looked at thousands of tiny gene variations that interacted together. Well, what'd they find? Pretty cool. There's significant biological overlap between ADHD, autism, and mood regulation differences. So that doesn't mean they're the same condition. It just means that brain systems involved kind of shared developmental pathways. So when a child seems like a blend of traits, attention, differences, sensory intensity, emotional sensitivity, the science now says, well, that makes perfect sense biologically. So it's a systems wiring issue and not a personality flaw. So that's really common. Very important stuff. Now, let's talk about something really fascinating, my favorite thing. The superior temporal gyrus. This region is basically involved in your brain where it deals with auditory processing, little nuances picking up on social cues, things like that, language integration and multi sensory pattern detection. That's really important. So what that means is it's the part of your brain that senses patterns. Are you the kind of person that can just look at something and be like, wow, that's not real, or I just can sense the pattern and you just have a sixth sense about it? Well you probably have a pretty astute superior temporal gyrus. So in 2024 and 2025, multiple fMRI and EEG studies, including work at the Drexel University and network neuroscience groups, published journals like neuro image and biological psychology that have shown differences in activation and connectivity patterns in temporal regions among neuro divergent kids. So it's not damage. It's not deficiency. It's different connectivity patterns once again. So when temporal regions show stronger or differently organized coupling with a default mode network, the system involved in imagination and internal narrative, researchers believe that this may actually contribute to heightened patterns, strong associative thinking with multi sensory connections, vivid language and creative ideation. But there's kind of a trade off. In the same network dynamics though, it can make it harder to disengage from a thought stream. So the brain that invents an entire fictional universe may struggle to exit the universe when asked to clean their room. The rabbit hole effect. It's not defiance. It's just network persistence. So sensory dreams and internal worlds and things like that. Well, this is the one families rarely hear about. Human cognitive neuroscience started examining default mode network activity and REM sleep related processing. So published in 2024, developmental neuroscience journals suggested that individuals with stronger sensory integration differences often report they have much more vivid dreams. They have more sensory rich imagery, more detailed daydream narratives and so on. Also more story plot. The same systems that process sound and texture and movement and internal stimulation during the waking hours are active during dreaming. So children with heightened sensory integration patterns may experience things like very immersive inner worlds. You know, that child that kind of zones out. Well, they're not really zoning out. They're in a world that they've created that is probably pretty complex. They're not disengaged. They just may be internally simulating at a pretty high resolution. This challenge is not imagination. It's switching networks. Imagination is involved in the creation of the world, but it's a way for someone to switch networks and potentially even provide a protective area. So network switching. So modern neuroscience doesn't really talk about single brain areas much anymore. It talks about networks. So default mode network, which is like your internal thoughts, your executive control network. So that's your tasks and your salience network, which decides what deserves attention when. So in a 2024 review and nature reviews, neuroscience, it emphasized that many neurodevelopmental differences involving switching efficiently between these networks is very important. So when switching is slower or less synchronized, you may see things like hyper focus, deep rabbit holes, difficulty shifting, intense rumination. And again, that's a coordination issue and not a character issue. So it's all in the brain. I mean, development isn't linear folks. A lot of things aren't large NIH funded longitudinal studies published in 24 in the JMA psychiatric and developmental cognitive neuroscience show something really important. Development function does not develop in one universal timeline. In other words, not all learning happens in a line. There are multiple growth curves, environmental factors, biological factors, so many different things. Some children showed delayed executive skills that may serve later in life. Some kids are just late bloomers. Some shift from external hyperactivity to internal restlessness and adolescence. It's pretty common. But this is where learning regulation is extremely important and to model it for them. How do you deal with that yourself? What did you do when you were feeling overwhelmed? So by modeling that we can help our kids to learn to regulate. There's an old narrative. They'll grow out of it. It's now really being replaced with they may grow along a bit of a different curve, which is much more hopeful. Honestly. So biomarkers and some personalization. The future of support is moving towards personalization, which is great. I love that. It's about a person first. It's about getting to know the human being before we get to know a we want to call disorder, issue, concern. Recent work in the translational psychiatry and NIH funded EEG studies also were exploring whether certain brainwave patterns predict which ADHD intervention interventions may work best. Or whether resting connectivity produces anxiety vulnerability. Or whether digital phenotyping passive behavioral data can guide some support. In other words, you know, doing some genetic testing from the family, you might be able to find that you might have a predisposition for one thing or another. We're not diagnosing kids with brain scans or anything, but we're just learning that biology can help to tailor support. How you choose to do that in your own family is up to you. That's progress. Of course, you know, eating healthy, getting plenty of sleep and exercise, a thing can do a world of wonder. So in closing, just a little reflection. My big takeaway out of all this and out of the things that I've been learning is that neurodivergent brains are not broken versions of typical brains. Please don't think this. This is a cognitive distortion. They're just differently organized networks with a totally different filing system and probably one that's very complex. The same wiring that can produce vivid sensory dreams or detects complex patterns, lots of them, maybe dive deeply into ideas, create richly textured internal worlds, and maybe also struggle with switching and fatigue more quickly and they need a little bit of help. And maybe it's hard for them to ask. It's not pathology, it's trade-off biology. Science isn't here to label our kids. It's here to help us understand them. And when we understand the wiring, we respond with wisdom instead of worry. And it's always a beautiful day to bust some cognitive distortions, right? So I want to thank you all for taking the time to listen to us today. And if you want to support the show, please visit our website at www.msmerrypoppins.com for information on how you can support the show. Remember, we are ad-free and completely non-profit. So if you'd like to help with our project, head on over to Ms. Mary Poppins.com. Until then, stay clever, little foxes. Have a great day.
