What happens when the brain and nervous system fall out of sync? The NSAM model is now live.

[u/CrocsAreBabyShoes]

UPDATE: The Nervous System Adaptation Model (NSAM) is now published as a preprint. It reframes autism and related conditions as recursive autonomic-cortical adaptations—loop-based systems, not static traits. https://osf.io/preprints/osf/6cfy8_v1

After years of trying to understand why my body and brain seemed constantly out of alignment, I built a theory.

It’s called the Nervous System Adaptation Model (NSAM). It proposes that autism, ADHD, and related neurodivergent traits aren’t just brain-based—they stem from early autonomic nervous system (ANS) mismatch and dysregulation.

The full model is now peer-shared as a preprint. It integrates neuroscience, trauma, and systems-level reinforcement loops—drawing from both lived experience and empirical studies.

If you’ve ever felt like your nervous system reacts faster than your thoughts, this may resonate.

Read the full preprint: https://osf.io/preprints/osf/6cfy8_v1

Note: If the document preview doesn’t load, scroll down and click to download it directly—it’s all there.

I’m open to questions, feedback, critique, or test cases.

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[u/bigasssuperstar]

Heya - I'm right on board with investigating the likelihood that the brain and body aren't lining up right and the system adapts to compensate. My parallel hypothesis alongside that is the source of the mismatched wiring - connective tissue differences. I'll dig into your goodies, but I'm curious if that end of development is considered in this work? Thanks for chasing your hunches and sharing what you've learned in doing so

[u/CrocsAreBabyShoes → u/bigasssuperstar]

Hey, I appreciate you jumping in with this—it’s clear you’ve been thinking about this stuff too. I want to give you space to unpack your angle a bit more before I say too much on my end.

Like, when you say “connective tissue differences” as the source of the mismatched wiring—what makes you lean in that direction? What are you seeing or basing that on?

The reason I’m asking is because I want to make sure people feel heard here. I know what it’s like to not be listened to, or to have people shut down your thoughts before you can even lay them out. So before I explain how NSAM frames that same territory, I’d rather hear how you’re seeing it.

Then we can look at where it overlaps or doesn’t, and go from there.

[u/bigasssuperstar → u/CrocsAreBabyShoes]

Most of what I'm thinking comes from the Connectivome Theory, then learning about autistic comorbidities and considering whether they all had a connective tissue component. Then I heard an autistic doctor on a podcast talking about a clinic for autistic people which treats aurism itself as a manifestation of connective tissue differences, and takes a holistic approach to medical care for autistic people throughout the lifespan. The overlap with oddly wired folks like us is that what makes our wiring - the stuff the neurons are laid down on, and the insulation around the nerves - is connective tissue. A memoir from 2018, I think, had the author pondering (paraphrasing) "if the goop that makes so much of our brain is different, it stands to reason that our brains would run differently, too."

A big part I haven't dug into is: is the experience of "autistic" coded in the same way as the connective tissue recipes; does our hardware come with its own OS preinsrslled? Or, is "autism" one possible outcome of developing with this odd wiring scheme, as a brain adapts to cope with getting different stimulus patterns than the neurons have evolved to expect?

[u/CrocsAreBabyShoes → u/bigasssuperstar]

Hey, I get where you’re coming from now. Thanks for laying it out. This helps me see what angle you see it from. That last question you asked actually gets really close to how I see it through NSAM.

The key difference is this: I don’t see the wiring or connective tissue structure as the cause of what we call autism. I see it as a response—a kind of “biological callus.” You put enough strain on a system early on. (See: Dr. Gloria Choi; Maternal Immune Activation (MIA)) Especially, if the signals from body to brain aren’t syncing right, and the system adapts by reinforcing the parts that keep it functional. Like how hands form calluses from repeated friction, the nervous system forms “wiring patterns” based on repeated mismatch between expectation and input.

So what you’re calling “odd wiring” might exist, yeah—but not as the thing that caused autism. It’s the footprint left behind after the system spent years trying to regulate itself under pressure.

NSAM’s frame is:

The brain builds whatever pattern survives the autonomic chaos.

Not whatever pattern was preloaded in the tissue. Appreciate the way you’re thinking it through. This is exactly the kind of contrast that helps clarify what NSAM is—and what it’s not.

[u/bigasssuperstar → u/CrocsAreBabyShoes]

I can dig it! From what I gather, our systems don't prune neurons the way other folks do, leading to a what looks to some like a drastic over connectivity.

The analogy I've imagined before is.... two PCs, built to identical specs, except one of the two was made with slight alterations to the wiring - different wire lengths, different impedances and resistances, different voltages... just off-spec wiring but everything else was standard issue.

Now we give it a BIOS that's tasked with learning how to run a stable state, minimal crashes, with its observations of what the weird wiring does.

In my head at this particular moment, that's about parallel to what you're saying? That autism is the outcome of the brain adapting to the unusual wiring we have in this brain-body?

I know that if an audio engineer is running two lengths of cable between a source and receiver, she'll be sure to grab cables the same length. The difference in travel times for a 200ft cable and 50ft cable may be negligible, but it can fuck with phasing and stereo and all that jazz.

When I apply that to our ears, I get an obscenely crude explanation for Audio Processing Disorder. Brain gets out of phase audio and struggles to parse it. Too simple, I'm sure it's much more nuanced.

The degree to which our brains adapt to unpredictable or overly "noisy" stimuli from any or all of our senses could result in the autistic experience, if I'm still on the trolley. This helps make sense of monotropism as a dandy explanation for our brain's preference for one one track, one focus, one signal, with something like a noise gate on everything else.

Are we still grooving?

[u/CrocsAreBabyShoes → u/bigasssuperstar]

You’re definitely working through it, and I respect that.

Here’s where NSAM simplifies it: Most people’s bodies and brains developed in rhythm. The autonomic system and the cortex found sync, and from there—homeostasis.

Ours didn’t. And never fully did. What came next wasn’t faulty wiring—it was adaptation. Reinforcement. Loops that worked well enough to survive, so they stayed.

So it’s not that the wiring was bad. It’s that the signal never stabilized—and the system built around the noise.

That’s NSAM.