Human beings vary neurologically.
We vary in how we think, communicate, concentrate, learn, remember, socialise, regulate emotion, process sensory information, respond to uncertainty and interact with the world around us.
Some neurological characteristics are very common, some less common, and every individual represents a different combination.
This is neurodiversity: the neurological variation of humanity.
But variation can become inequality when societies, institutions and systems begin to treat particular ways of thinking, communicating, learning, sensing or functioning as inherently more normal, credible, capable or desirable than others.
There is a word that may help us understand this phenomenon:
Neuroism.
The development of the word
The word neuroism has an interesting history because its meaning has evolved considerably.
One prominent early academic use appears in neuroscientist Leslie Brothers’ 2001 book Mistaken Identity: The Mind-Brain Problem Reconsidered. Brothers used neuroism to criticise neurological reductionism: the tendency to assume that complex aspects of human thought, behaviour and experience can ultimately be understood primarily through the individual brain.
In this usage, neuroism was principally concerned with how we understand human beings rather than discrimination between people with different neurological characteristics.
More than two decades later, the word appeared in a markedly different context.
In 2022, Elizabeth M. Radulski published Conceptualising Autistic Masking, Camouflaging, and Neurotypical Privilege: Towards a Minority Group Model of Neurodiversity in the peer-reviewed journal Human Development.
Radulski examined autistic masking and camouflaging within a broader social environment in which certain neurological behaviours are treated as normative. Within that analysis, she proposed neuroism as a potential sociological concept, describing stigma associated with a belief in the superiority of the neurotypical population over neurominority groups.
This represented a significant development of the word.
Neuroism could now help describe not simply ideas about brains, but what happens socially when different forms of neurological functioning are assigned different value.
The Institute of Neurodiversity (ION) proposes a further development.
Rather than locating neuroism exclusively within a majority population or defining it through the superiority of one population over another, we suggest examining the underlying mechanism:
What happens when assumptions about neurological functioning assign greater value, legitimacy or capability to some ways of thinking, communicating, learning, sensing and behaving than to others?
The conceptual development might therefore be summarised as:
2001 — Brothers: Are we reducing the person to the brain?
2022 — Radulski: Are we treating neurotypicality as superior?
ION: What happens when assumptions about neurological variation create hierarchy, prejudice, discrimination or systemic disadvantage?
These meanings are related through their concern with how neurological difference is understood, but they are not interchangeable.
ION’s definition should therefore be understood as an explicit development of the concept rather than an assertion that the word neuroism has always carried its present meaning.
ION’s definition of neuroism
The Institute of Neurodiversity defines neuroism as:
Neuroism is prejudice, discrimination or systemic disadvantage arising from assumptions about how people should think, communicate, learn, behave, sense or function neurologically. It includes the privileging of particular neurological characteristics or ways of functioning over others.
This definition deliberately encompasses both individual and systemic neuroism.
A person may consciously believe that people of a particular neurotype are less capable, credible or desirable and treat them differently as a result.
Such a person can reasonably be described as a neuroist, and their prejudicial or discriminatory behaviour as neuroism.
Neuroism does not require a neuroist: assumptions about how people should communicate, behave, learn or function can be held without being recognised as neurological norms, embedded in institutional policies and processes, and perpetuated by systems for decades without anyone consciously intending to exclude.
A useful distinction is therefore:
A person or an action can be neuroist, an institution or system can reproduce neuroism, and neuroism can exist without anyone consciously intending to discriminate.
Neuroism and other “isms”
This distinction is not unique to neuroism.
Our understanding of racism, sexism, ableism, ageism and other forms of prejudice and discrimination has developed considerably. These terms can describe overt prejudice. People can consciously hold racist, sexist, ableist or ageist beliefs and discriminate accordingly. But our understanding has moved beyond individual intention.
We also recognise that assumptions about race, sex, disability and age can become embedded within cultures, institutions and systems. Practices created in one period can continue long after their origins have been forgotten. Expectations can become conventions and conventions can become standards. Eventually, something that began as an assumption can simply appear to be “the normal way things are done.”
Neuroism can operate in a similar way.
This does not mean that neuroism is identical to racism, sexism, ableism or ageism. Each has its own history, context and consequences. Rather, neuroism belongs within the broader family of concepts that helps us examine how human difference can be converted into hierarchy and disadvantage and the process can move in both directions.
Belief → behaviour → system
Someone holds an assumption, the assumption influences behaviour. Repeated assumptions and behaviours become embedded in institutions.
But it can also operate in reverse:
System → behaviour → belief
People enter institutions, learn “how things are done”, reproduce established practices and potentially internalise their assumptions without ever consciously deciding that one kind of person is inferior. That is particularly important when considering neuroism because many neurological assumptions are so familiar that we may barely notice them.
When common becomes normal
Human systems inevitably develop around patterns, with schools forming expectations about how children learn and behave, workplaces establishing norms around communication and productivity, healthcare systems developing assumptions about how patients describe symptoms, and recruitment processes creating conventions about what confidence, competence and professionalism look like. Many of these conventions have emerged because they work reasonably well for large numbers of people.
The difficulty comes when:
Common becomes normal and normal becomes preferable.
Consider human height.
People exist across a considerable range of heights. We would not normally argue that the statistically most common height is the correct human height. Nor would we assume that someone closer to the average is inherently more capable. But imagine that every doorway, chair, desk, shelf and vehicle were designed for a person of precisely that average height.
The people who fitted the environment might barely notice but others would repeatedly encounter difficulties whilst nothing about their height would have changed.
The environment would have converted ordinary human variation into structural advantage and disadvantage.
Neuroism can occur when systems do neurologically what that imaginary world does physically: turn human variation into advantage and disadvantage through the assumptions built into the environment.
Frequency is not value
This leads to an important principle:
We should not confuse frequency with value.
A neurological characteristic being common does not make it inherently better, just as being uncommon does not make it inherently better. The difficulty arises when familiar characteristics begin to acquire meanings beyond the characteristics themselves: eye contact may be read as engagement, rapid verbal responses as intelligence, sitting still as attention, or particular ways of communicating and navigating social and sensory environments as signs of professionalism, resilience or leadership potential. None of these characteristics is inherently wrong or undesirable. The problem arises when they become proxies for capability, allowing what is common or familiar to influence how we judge what is valuable.
The same person may also possess characteristics that are advantageous in one environment and disadvantageous in another.
Intense focus may be extremely valuable in one context and problematic in another. Sensitivity to environmental signals may provide important information in one situation and become overwhelming in another. Human capability emerges partly through the interaction between the individual and their environment.
That makes the design of our systems incredibly important.
The well-worn path
Imagine generations of people walking across a field. Gradually, a path develops. New people naturally follow it because it is clearly the established route. Nobody walking along it today necessarily decided where the path should go.
But perhaps the original path went around an obstacle that disappeared fifty years ago, maybe it is unnecessarily steep and some people cannot use it at all. Still, everyone continues following it because it is the path they have followed for so long.
Eventually:
The path becomes normal because it is the path.
Human systems can develop in much the same way. Practices are inherited and expectations become conventions. Conventions become standards and standards become embedded in policies, professional practices and organisational cultures. People then reproduce them because that is simply how things are done.
The most useful question may therefore be:
Why does the path go this way?
Neuronormativity, neuroism and neurodiscrimination
Three related concepts can help distinguish different parts of this process.
Neuronormativity is the assumption that particular ways of thinking, communicating, behaving, sensing or functioning represent how people “normally” or ideally should be.
Neuroism occurs when assumptions about neurological functioning produce prejudice, hierarchy or systemic disadvantage by assigning greater legitimacy or value to some neurological characteristics than others.
Neurodiscrimination is discriminatory treatment, decisions or outcomes arising from those assumptions.
The progression can therefore be subtle:
Human variation ➡️common characteristics ➡️ assumed norm ➡️ preferred norm ➡️ hierarchy ➡️ system ➡️ unequal outcome
Consider a workplace that assumes leadership requires a particular communication style. That assumption may become embedded in recruitment and promotion criteria. People who communicate differently may then repeatedly be assessed as having less leadership potential despite possessing the capabilities required to lead.
Nobody involved needs consciously to dislike or reject people of a particular neurotype. The system can nevertheless produce neurodiscriminatory outcomes.
Neuroism can also be overt
Recognising systemic neuroism should not make us reluctant to name intentional prejudice when it occurs.
Someone may explicitly believe that autistic people cannot lead, others may dismiss a person with ADHD as inherently unorganised and some may assume that a person who communicates without speech is intellectually incapable.
Those are prejudicial assumptions based upon neurological characteristics or neurotype. They can reasonably be described as neuroist.
The distinction matters.
Identifying systemic neuroism should not prevent us from naming deliberate prejudice when it occurs. Equally, the existence of overt neuroists should not lead us to assume that neuroism always requires a consciously prejudiced individual.
A neuroist can practise neuroism, but neuroism does not require a neuroist.
Moving beyond “us and them”
There is another danger that ION believes we should avoid.
Discussions about discrimination can divide humanity into opposing camps: those who discriminate and those who are discriminated against. Neurological variation is considerably more complex than that. There are not two kinds of human brain. Neurodiversity is multidimensional. People vary across numerous neurological characteristics, and those characteristics interact with personality, experience, culture, environment, age, health, education and many other dimensions of human variation.
Terms such as majority neurotype and minority neurotypes can be useful for understanding patterns within populations. But they should not lead us to imagine humanity as neurologically divided into two homogeneous groups. A person of any neurotype can absorb neuronormative assumptions, including assumptions about themselves and other people.
For ION, therefore, neuroism is about identifying what happens when human neurological variation is converted into hierarchy.
Can neuroism affect a majority neurotype?
If that principle is genuine, an important consequence follows. Neuroism cannot logically be defined only by who experiences it.
Consider a hypothetical workplace that has enthusiastically embraced the idea of supposed “autistic strengths”. It begins to assume that autistic people are inherently more analytical, innovative or capable of recognising patterns than neurotypical people. A neurotypical candidate is consequently judged less suitable for a particular role because the employer assumes that a neurotypical person will not possess those capabilities to the same degree.
That too would be neuroism.
Similarly, describing neurotypical people as inherently unimaginative, superficial, conformist, socially preoccupied or incapable of particular forms of thinking would be a neuroist generalisation.
The same principle applies between minority neurotypes. Assuming that one neurotype is inherently more intelligent, creative, empathetic, reliable or valuable than another simply creates another neurological hierarchy.
This does not mean that every neurotype experiences neuroism equally. History, prevalence, power and institutional structures matter. Neurominority populations may encounter forms of systemic disadvantage that majority populations do not experience to the same extent. Equality of principle does not mean equality of lived experience. But that does not alter the underlying principle:
Neuroism is not defined by which neurotype experiences it. It is defined by what we do with neurological difference.
This distinction matters particularly for the neurodiversity movement. The purpose of recognising previously overlooked strengths among neurominority people should not be to create a new collection of stereotypes.
“Autistic people are brilliant at detail” may sound positive compared with a deficit-based description of autism, but it is still a generalisation based upon neurotype. It can disadvantage autistic people who do not possess that characteristic while simultaneously creating assumptions about people of other neurotypes.
Replacing a negative stereotype with a positive stereotype does not necessarily remove the underlying categorisation. Nor should neuroinclusion reverse an existing hierarchy.
If we move from assuming that majority neurological characteristics are inherently preferable to assuming that minority neurological characteristics are inherently preferable, the hierarchy remains. Only its direction has changed. The objective is not to determine which neurotype should occupy the preferred position.
It is to question why neurotype should determine human value or presumed capability in the first place.
Why ableism does not describe everything
Ableism remains an essential concept. Many neurominority people are disabled, identify as disabled or encounter environments that disable or disenable them. The disability rights movement and social model of disability have profoundly changed our understanding of exclusion.
But neurological variation and disability are not identical. A person can experience disadvantage because their way of communicating, processing information, sensing or interacting with an environment differs from what a system expects without necessarily understanding themselves primarily through disability.
Neuroism allows us to ask a related but distinct question:
What assumptions about neurological functioning have been built into this system?
That question can reveal barriers that conventional approaches to disability or discrimination may not identify.
From accommodation to better systems
Much of inclusion has historically focused on accommodation. A system is created around an assumed or modelled human. When somebody differs significantly from that assumption, an adjustment is made to enable them to participate and remain important and sometimes essential. Nneuroism invites us to ask an earlier question:
Why was s particular human assumed when the system was designed?
What if schools naturally expected children to learn in different ways?
What if recruitment focused more on whether someone could do the job and less on how they performed socially in an interview?
What if healthcare recognised that people describe pain and distress differently?
What if workplaces accepted that there is more than one effective way to communicate, concentrate and contribute?
Return to our well-worn path. We could continue helping individuals navigate a path that was not designed for them but we can simultaneously ask:
Would we design the path this way if we were starting today?
This moves neuroinclusion beyond helping individuals fit existing systems to asking whether our systems accurately reflect the neurological variation of the people who actually live within them.
Not “us and them”, but all of us
Neuroism should not become another way of dividing people. There is no neurological “us and them”, there is human neurological variation.
Within that variation, some characteristics occur more frequently than others making some people fit existing environments more easily than others. Some variations are valued in particular cultures or institutions while others are overlooked or misunderstood.
And those patterns can change which is why the purpose of naming neuroism is to make assumptions visible. It allows every organisation, institution and community to ask:
What ways of thinking, communicating, learning, sensing and behaving does our system implicitly reward?
Which does it unintentionally penalise?
Why?
Are those distinctions actually necessary for what we are trying to achieve?
And perhaps most importantly:
What might we learn if we designed for a wider range of human variation?
That is why ION believes the concept of neuroism is useful.
Neuroism begins when neurological variation becomes a hierarchy of human value or capability.
Recognising It is about building a world in which the neurological variation of humanity can participate, contribute and prosper equally.
References
Benson, K. J. (2023). Perplexing presentations: Compulsory neuronormativity and cognitive marginalisation in social work practice with autistic mothers of autistic children. British Journal of Social Work, 53(3), 1445–1464.
Brothers, L. (2001). Mistaken Identity: The Mind-Brain Problem Reconsidered. State University of New York Press.
Chapman, R., & Fletcher-Watson, S. (2026). Neurodiversity: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press.
Huijg, D. D. (2020). Neuronormativity in theorising agency: An argument for a critical neurodiversity approach. In H. B. Rosqvist, N. Chown & A. Stenning (Eds.), Neurodiversity Studies: A New Critical Paradigm. Routledge.
Kadodia, Z. (2026). Neuronormative atmospheres and the language of the pathology paradigm. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.
Leong, C., & Graichen, R. (2024). Decentering neuronormativity: A neurodiversity-affirming approach to understanding masking and authenticity in ADHD. Transactional Analysis Journal, 54(1), 91–106.
Radulski, E. M. (2022). Conceptualising autistic masking, camouflaging, and neurotypical privilege: Towards a minority group model of neurodiversity. Human Development, 66(2), 113–127.