Are sensory issues in autism sensory? Autism, the predictive mind and sensory processing

Description

Many ideas about the autistic mind are based on conceptions about the human brain that are now outdated. There has been a Copernican revolution in neuroscience, and it’s changing our ideas about the brain drastically. The default idea about the brain (using the computer as a metaphor) with its input (perception of stimuli), processing and output (reaction, behaviour), has been very useful in the past, but seems to be incorrect in the light of recent discoveries in brain science. The brain does not merely perceive the world, the brain predicts the world. The brain does not just receive information from the senses, it is actually using the senses to check its own predictions about the world. The senses do not give input, they give feedback. So, the brain is not processing stimuli or incoming information, it is actually processing the difference between its own model of the world and the feedback coming from the senses, also known as prediction errors.

These new discoveries will have an impact on how we look at the sensory issues in autism. Sensory issues have long been overlooked in the field of autism but are a major difficulty and challenge for autistic people. Sensory overload and hypersensitivity are now in the centre of our focus. However, if the brain is not merely receiving information from the senses, but predicting the input and checking its own predictions, this means we should see sensory issues not merely as sensory, but more as prediction errors. And this will lead to a change in our approach of sensory issues in autism.

In the presentation. we will briefly explain what the predictive mind is, but also how the predictive coding framework will change our ideas about perception and sensory issues in autism. And how the new ideas about the brain tell us to move from the current default interventions for sensory issues in autism (mainly based on eliminating stimuli such as sound and light) to interventions that also take into account the predictability factor in sensory overload. Because, in the light of the new brain model, uncertainty and unpredictability are more contributing to sensory overload than the stimuli themselves.