Although the neurodiversity movement calls people who aren’t autistic and don’t have other brain-related diagnoses “neurotypical,” there really is no such thing. Every brain is unique, starting even before birth as the initial wiring is laid down. Our genes don’t contain nearly enough information to direct the placement of every neuron, every glial cell, and every synapse. Many of the first, primitive connections are random, and many useless. Ruthless pruning takes place during development, killing millions of cells that don’t manage to hook up properly or aren’t in networks that represent
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