The Social Brain & Our Senses
There are three key sources that have served as the inspiration and underlying concepts for this site: Social Neuroscience, The Polyvagal Theory and our Sensory System. Together they illustrate the power and importance of social interaction, taking a holistic perspective and why the autism spectrum develops from social sensory differences.
The science behind human attachment & the social brain
The latest research explains the complex processes in our brains and body which are essential for complex brain development and emotional regulation. Critically, social interaction plays a central role in this.
Neuroception: the feeling of safety & the Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication & self-regulation
Developed by Stephen Porges, The Polyvagal Theory identifies three neurophysiological states: Safety, which is necessary for activation of the social engagement system, Danger leading to mobilisation (Fight/Flight) and Life Threat leading to Immobilisation (Freezing, Fainting & Faking).
Our sensory system is constantly regulating itself to the optimal arousal levels dictating our behaviour.
The sensory nervous system is a part of the nervous system responsible for processing sensory information. Its how we interpret the world around us. If we processes the world differently our behaviour will be different but perfectly coherent.
Social Neuroscience
The science behind the development of human relationships
New research into the neuroscience of human relationships is shedding light onto how essential relationships are for brain development, especially related to social-emotional competences.
There are three critical developmental phases:
1) Attachment & Falling in love with the social world: during this phase, babies and their carer are engaged in powerful communication that set the foundation for development of the social brain. There is lots of social stimuli in the form of the mother's gaze, voice, touch, smell and closeness. When the child is upset, it is soothed by the parent/mother/carer and learns that these social partners are critical for their survival. There are chemical reactions in the brain of the child, releasing dopamine and oxytocin, know as the love drug. The child is becoming addicted to people and uses them for mutual regulation (i.e. calming/returning to a regulated state with the help of a carer).
2) Seeking out social connections with words: this next phase involves the development of language, specifically for communicating with the partners they attached to in the prior phase. At this stage, children with social sensory differences may start showing a preference for non-social stimuli, focusing on objects instead of people. There is less eye contact, gaze towards people and receptivity to social stimuli. Children will start stringing together more complex sentences that include a noun + verb or subject + verb, not just objects and they will want to communicate with purpose with their social partners. As they now have language, they can use language to ask for help from their social partners.
3) Relating to peers & succeeding in a range of settings: at this stage children become more interested in engaging with their peers and can now use their language for imaginative play. They are learning the social norms of conversation (appropriate distance, level of voice, turn taking), understanding feelings and the associated facial gestures (using their mirror neurons and developing "Theory of Mind"). They have a motivation to engage to peers and learn how to be successful in a range of settings. Additionally, their language and cognitive abilities develop allowing them to not only learn across a range of subjects, but use their language for self-regulation.
The key point is that social interaction fuels brain development and serves as a source of emotional regulation.
Source: The Neuroscience of Human Relationships by Louis Cozolino.
The Polyvagal Theory
Neuroception: Our Sense of Safety
The Polyvagal Theory, developed by esteemed professor Stephen Porges basically articulates that there are three different neural structures, which have different adaptive functions.
The first one is a system that enhances social communication. It’s the ability to process human speech, to understand facial expression and in doing that, in a reciprocal interaction; it’s also calming and soothing our physiological state through a newer, uniquely mammalian, vagal pathway. That vagal pathway down-regulates basically what most people call arousal. It down-regulates the sympathetic nervous system. It’s calming. When we don’t have that system working, we are really a reactive individual. We are mobilized. We are in defensive state - often referred to as Fight/Flight. Our senses are determining whether we are in safe mode or need to be defensive.
When your nervous system is defensive, you really have two choices – or the nervous system has two choices. One is to be aggressive, to fight, and that retunes your ears to listen to low frequency sounds which are predator (sounds). If that doesn’t get you into safe places, you want to, in a sense, disappear or become inanimate and that’s what reptiles do under threat.
There’s an old unmyelinated primitive vagal system that shuts you down. Polyvagal Theory articulates and gets its name from the fact that there are two vagal pathways. One linked to social engagement behaviors which are calming, soothing, and foster social communication and one that makes you inanimate, shuts you down. It’s metabolically conservative. In middle of that evolutionary history of our autonomic nervous system is our sympathetic or arousal fight/flight system.
Our nervous system moves to these different circuits, these different levels when it detects features of safety or features of predator or features of danger. It does this not through any conscious awareness, but through a process that Dr. Porges calls neuroception because it’s actually on a reflexive level. We are detecting features of danger or safety.
These features come to us from all our senses and in a social world, importantly from social stimuli (eye gaze, facial expressions, voice, touch).
If we are unable to detect safety, we remain in either the sympathetic nervous system (fight/flight) or if that isn't available in shutdown. Shutdown is often seen in trauma patients.
The Key Point is that we use social stimuli to detect safety, which then enables the activation of the social engagement system which we need for social interaction.
Source: The Pocket Guide to The Polyvagal Theory by Stephen Porges
The Sensory System
Our system for receiving, processing and responding to the world around us
Most people know the five basic senses. In reality, there are several more that we use every day and that are essential for how we perceive and experience the world.
Visual - sense of sight
Auditory - sense of hearing
Tactile - sense of touch
Olfactory - sense of smell
Gustatory - sense of taste
Vestibular - sense of balance
Proprioception - sense of our muscles & joints
Interoception - sense of internal organs (i.e. hunger, going to the toilet, etc.)
Processing in any of these senses can be disordered resulting in hypo or hyper arousal and "abnormal" responses.
Additionally, a sensory processing difference can affect people in only one sense–for example, just hearing or just sight or just movement–or in multiple senses.
Sensory Processing Disorder may be diagnosed and is defined as, "SPD is a neurophysiologic condition in which sensory input either from the environment or from one’s body is poorly detected, modulated, or interpreted and/or to which atypical responses are observed.
Pioneering occupational therapist and psychologist A. Jean Ayres, Ph.D., likened SPD to a neurological “traffic jam” that prevents certain parts of the brain from receiving the information needed to interpret sensory information correctly.
Source: Understanding Your Child's Sensory Signals by Angie Voss