‘Noisy’ autistic brains seem better at certain tasks

Autism is a neurodevelopmental difference associated with specific experiences and characteristics. Evidence for high neural noise in autism can be seen in electroencephalography recordings, where increased levels of neural fluctuations were observed in autistic children. But autistic brains seem to show bigger ups and downs, demonstrating greater amplitude of neural noise. In line with this theory, high neural noise in the autistic brain might enhance performance for some cognitive tasks. The more interesting prediction was that noise would not help individuals who already had a lot of brain noise, because their own neural noise already ensured optimal performance.