3 Things They Didn’t Tell You About Neurodiversity
How Biology, Environment, and a Sheep Named Dolly Might Change Everything
Ewe Would Have Thought It?
“We live on a neurodiverse planet where amoral nature generates endless genetic diversity… What neurodiversity brings us is a challenge to find a place for everyone and to distribute the bounty fairly” — Judy Singer. Founder of neurodiversity
The neurodiversity movement is a social and political powerhouse that began as a bold and necessary idea. It reframed autism, ADHD, and other neurological differences not as defects, but as variations — part of the natural spectrum of human minds.
It helped dismantle shame.
It secured rights.
It empowered countless people to understand themselves not as broken, but as different.
This was a social and political triumph.
But over time, it hardened into a narrative.
One that asserts neurodivergence is:
• Entirely genetic
• Inherently fixed
• And because it is natural, it must be celebrated
Nature, as Singer reminds us, is impartial. It brings forth all forms of life, but it also gives rise to illnesses like cancer. It fosters language and creativity, yet it can lead to trauma and conditions like type 2 diabetes and obesity.
All of these exist within nature. Yet, we don’t celebrate them. Instead, we strive to understand these aspects so we can intervene wisely, ethically, and with compassion.
The problem isn’t with neurodiversity itself. Rather, it's the assumption that if something is natural, it must be unavoidable or beneficial. Asking why this is the case is often viewed as dangerous.
To protect our results, we’ve smothered our curiosity. In this quest for safety, we might be overlooking something profound. What if some neurodivergent traits—just some, not all—aren't set in stone? What if they are simply ways our brains adapt to a world they aren’t fully equipped to manage?
What if feeling anxious, overly energetic, shutting down, or pulling away from others isn’t really who someone is, but just how their brain learned to cope with the world?
And what if we already have proof — in the body of a sheep named Dolly —
That even the most fixed biological identities… can be rewritten?
In this post, I want to unveil three surprising truths about neurodiversity—delving into the realms of genes, the intricate workings of our brains, and the transformative journey that begins when we set aside labels and start posing new, insightful questions.
1. Becoming Human: The Brain That Waits
A baby is not born human.
It is born ready to become human.
That might sound strange, but it’s one of the most astonishing facts in biology.
The human brain is incomplete at birth.
We arrive with just a fraction of our wiring.
Over the first months and years, the brain begins to build itself —
Not randomly, but in response to the world.
This process is called experience-expectant development.
It means the brain is expecting specific inputs —
Because for hundreds of thousands of years, those inputs have always arrived.
Gaze.
Touch.
Voice.
Movement.
Rhythm.
Care.
A sense of safety.
Wherever humans are born — in Tokyo or Lagos or Buenos Aires — these same patterns shape the developing brain.
Not because they’re taught.
Because they’re expected.
These inputs install the core cognitive traits that make us human:
• Shared attention
• Language
• Emotional regulation
• The ability to bond
• The capacity to reflect
• The ability to walk, run, and dance.
This isn’t just a fluffy idea; it can be measured. It’s in our biology. It’s the process that helps turn a child’s brain into a fully developed human mind.
But here’s the catch:
When those expected experiences are delayed, distorted, or missing,
the brain still develops.
Just... differently.
That’s where Cognitive Epigenetic Modification begins.
Not as a flaw.
As an adaptation.
And that means neurodiversity may not be written into our genes.
But into our early environment.
2. Why Genes Don’t Decide — They Wait for Instructions
We often talk about genes in the language of risk.
“You have a 25% genetic risk for autism.”
“A 40% chance of ADHD.”
It sounds precise. Clinical. Even predictive.
But this kind of “risk” is fundamentally misunderstood.
If you inherit the genes for blue eyes, you will have blue eyes — but only if development proceeds normally and you make it to the end of the first trimester. That’s not a trivial point. Even something as “genetically determined” as eye colour depends on the right developmental environment, especially in early gestation.
So what happens when we talk about something as complex as cognition?
Autism isn’t from just one gene;
It’s a complex weave of many genes (polygenes), countless genes coming together,
Each adding a small piece to the puzzle.
Researchers created polygenic risk scores (PRS) to make sense of this.
These are statistical models. They don’t diagnose you.
They compare your genome to large datasets and say,
“People with this pattern, in this kind of environment, tended to develop this condition.”
It’s a post-hoc rationalisation — a story told after the outcome.
It doesn’t predict who you’ll be.
It describes who some people were in a particular context.
And that context is changing.
Over the past 50 years, risk scores for neurodivergent conditions have risen.
More people qualify for ADHD.
More children are diagnosed with autism.
More adults report chronic anxiety and emotional dysregulation.
But here’s the critical point:
The same polygenic combination that once carried little or no statistical risk
now carries more — not because the genome changed,
but because the environment changed.
And the environment has always been the thing that converts potential into phenotype.
That’s how biology works.
What’s changed isn’t that the environment converts —
It’s what kind of environment we’re now offering developing brains.
Polygenic risk isn’t a genetic fingerprint.
It’s a canary in the coal mine.
It tells us that something in the world is now consistently producing outcomes
that used to be rare —
Not because genes are failing us,
but because the world is.
The rising PRS is not a warning about our genes.
It’s a warning about our world.
But our genes haven’t changed.
So why has the “genetic risk” gone up?
Because it’s not measuring the genome.
It’s measuring how that genome responds to the world.
The risk score is not a diagnosis. It’s a canary in the coal mine.
It’s warning us that the environment is becoming more likely to trigger these outcomes.
If we knew exactly which inputs caused that trigger, there would be no risk.
There would only be certainty.
100% — under these conditions, this phenotype emerges.
0% — under others, it does not.
That’s not the language of destiny.
That’s the language of design.
Genes don’t decide who we become.
The environment does.
And this isn’t just true for the mind.
The same pattern unfolds with other biological conditions, such as Type 2 Diabetes or obesity. These conditions are also polygenic, involve gene–environment interactions, and have surged over the past 50 years.
But no one claims that diabetes is destiny.
Or that obesity should be celebrated as a fixed identity.
We understand — almost universally — that the environment is a causal factor.
We also build public health campaigns, food policies, and education around that fact.
Could you imagine if we launched a “Metabodiversity Movement”?
One that said:
“Obesity is natural. It’s beautiful. It must never be questioned.”
“Investigating causes is oppressive. Changing the environment is erasure.”
We would call that absurd.
Not because obese bodies aren’t worthy of dignity.
But because health, function, and suffering matter, too.
So why do we accept environmental causation in the body?
But reject it in the brain?
3. The Miracle of Dolly the Sheep
Every cell in your body contains exactly the same DNA.
Your brain cells. Your liver cells. Your skin.
Identical blueprint.
So, how does one become a neuron, another a blood cell, another a mammary gland?
Because not all genes are read.
Some are silenced.
Others are activated.
This process — of turning genes on or off — is called epigenetics.
It’s how the body builds itself from a single cell.
It’s how a blank slate becomes a body with thousands of specialised tissues.
And what activates those switches?
The environment
It’s not the DNA that decides what a cell becomes — it’s the context.
And once those instructions are in place — they’re considered permanent.
A liver cell will never become a heart cell.
A mammary gland will never become a neuron.
Each cell “remembers” what it is.
And then, in 1996, something happened that changed everything.
Scientists took a mammary cell from an adult sheep.
A fully differentiated, epigenetically locked cell.
They placed its DNA into an empty egg, and restarted development.
They expected… maybe some cell growth.
Maybe a tumour.
Maybe nothing.
Instead, they got a sheep. A whole, living animal — cloned from a single cell that had already been told what it was.
Her name was Dolly
And she didn’t just change genetics —
She changed what we thought was possible.
Because Dolly proved that epigenetic identity is reversible.
That even the most fixed biological “memory” can be overwritten.
What a cell has been doesn’t define what it can become.
And if that’s true for cells…
What might it mean for minds?
If we now know that developmental identity can be reprogrammed,
Why wouldn’t the same apply to cognitive identity?
To anxiety.
To emotional shutdown.
To neurodivergence forged by early life experience.
If Dolly could forget she was a mammary cell…
Maybe your brain can forget it's always on edge.
Maybe it can learn to focus, to feel safe, to connect.
Not because there’s something wrong with you —
But because something once shaped you…
and it might be possible to reshape it.
PTSD Proves the Mind Can Be Rewritten
If you need proof that the mind is plastic —
that thoughts, behaviours, and identities can be rewired by experience —
look no further than Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
PTSD isn’t something you’re born with.
It’s not encoded at birth.
It’s something the environment installs.
Sometimes in a moment.
Sometimes over time.
But always as a response to overwhelming experience.
It changes memory.
It alters attention.
It restructures emotional regulation.
It can transform how someone relates to others, to themselves, even to the world.
No gene changed.
No mutation occurred.
The phenotype shifted — because the inputs did.
PTSD is the clearest demonstration we have that:
The brain is not fixed. It is reactive.
It builds itself in response to what it encounters.
And here’s the extraordinary part:
It can also unbuild.
Rebuild.
Adapt again.
With safety.
With connection.
With care.
The brain can let go of its fear-based adaptations —
not always fully, not always easily, but meaningfully.
PTSD doesn’t show us what’s broken.
It shows us what’s possible — in both directions.
It is the ultimate proof that the environment doesn’t just influence the brain.
It writes it.
And if it can be written once,
maybe it can be rewritten again.
Conclusion
Neurodiversity is real.
But so is neuroplasticity.
If neurodivergence can be learned, maybe it can also be unlearned.
If thought patterns can be installed, maybe they can be reinstalled.
Your brain is a construction site.
It’s shaped by experience, not fate.
And if that sounds impossible