Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional SPD brain scan research

Thought I'd share this here, since many of us are dealing with sensory processing disorder and many teachers and even doctors understand so little about it. I need to read it more closely, but am very interested to see SPD being researched seriously. The take away is that the brain scans of kids with SPD showed significantly different functioning from those of kids without SPD.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213158213000776

So maybe there will be a way to determine if it is SPD or just overexcitabilities or both?

That would be an interesting research question. Although, I am not sure that they would like different neurologically? Maybe, maybe not. I have been thinking a lot about that distinction lately. It seems that some see them as different things, but others think that our use of the overexcitabilities concept just obscures real conditions like SPD, ADHD, etc.

I am not sure what I think about that yet. I know that when I read about overexcitabilities I had a major "aha!" moment about my ds. SPD also fits, though. So I don't know. Is it overexcitabilities? Or does he really have SPD? Are over excitabilities "real"? Does it even matter what we call it as long as the issues are being addressed? These are the questions I have. I am really glad there are researchers taking SPD seriously, though.

Thanks for the article link, btw. It is nice to see more and more neurological research connecting and disconnecting various disorders.

There are some interesting bits in this set of research articles related to Dabrowski's theories. http://www.positivedisintegration.com/DRIBiblio.htm

There's some indication of generalized brain chemistry issues being related to overexcitabilities, such as variations in serotonin or dopamine uptake or production.

As an example, take someone who has sensory overexcitabilities, they look at a street scene and notice dozens of things like a candy wrapper on the ground that a neurotypical person doesn't see. Not a problem, no SPD. Now same person, same scene, and someone is talking to them. They don't follow what's said because their visual system is so loaded the speaking doesn't have much more data than the candy wrapper. APD, ASD? No.

In the above, as a child it seems problematic, but as their executive function matures and learns, they develop coping strategies like looking directly at a speaker when the environment is too rich or sitting in the front of the class or simple social things like saying "one moment, I wasn't paying attention, just found the street fascinating; what were you saying?"