3/19/26
3/18/26
3/17/26
The Architecture of Awe: Experience, Disposition and Meaning Making in Autism
A new preprint out on my Berkeley Haas Scholar Research on the emotion of Awe in Autism.
PREPRINT (Version 1) available at Research Square [https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-9142343/v1]
3/13/26
The Shape of Meaning: Awe and Autistic Wellbeing
On the occassion of the International Day of Happiness
Conversations about happiness and wellbeing often focus on positive feelings and measurable outcomes, which can overlook how meaning is actually experienced across neurodivergent lives. This talk explores awe as a powerful emotion that reshapes attention, time perception, and meaning—not just mood. Building on my research on awe as a UC Berkeley Haas Scholar, conducted under the mentorship of Dacher Keltner, the session weaves together theory, empirical insights, and lived experience to examine how awe is accessed and organized in autistic lives. Rather than being absent or diminished, awe often emerges through conceptual depth, sensory patterns, and engagement with systems rather than social spectacle. The talk concludes by reflecting on what a more inclusive, meaning-centered approach to happiness might look like.
Everyone Deserves Happiness Summit
Hosted by Proof Positive
12 Hours. 1 Mission.
Join us LIVE for one session or stay for the full day — drop in when you can!
Leaders in autism, mental health, education and positive psychology will unite to celebrate happiness in the autism community. This full-day livestream explores happiness as a universal right — and ensures the autism community is included in global conversations about happiness.
Rethinking Autism Through the Body: A Sensory-Motor Architecture of Autistic Experience
Registration: https://www.icdl.com/conferences/2026dirconference
Rethinking Autism Through the Body: A Sensory–Motor Architecture of Autistic Experience
Abstract
Autistic experience is often interpreted through behavior, yet many challenges—and strengths—originate earlier in the chain: in how the body senses, moves, predicts, and regulates. This keynote reframes autism through the lens of sensorimotor neuroscience, showing how these foundational processes shape attention, communication, learning, and emotional well-being. A key part of this architecture is monotropism—a tendency for attention to form deep, meaningful channels that provide regulation, stability, and the powerful pull of special interests. Understanding how sensory–motor systems feed into these attentional rhythms helps us reinterpret familiar experiences. Different autistics benefit from different kinds of supports and the supports themselves change over the lifespan. But all supports work better when they honor the sensory–motor realities of the autistic nervous system. Understanding autism through this embodied perspective helps autistics, practitioners, families, and researchers shift from asking what a person is doing to understanding why their nervous system responds the way it does. When we rethink autism through the body, we open the door to more humane, flexible, and inclusive forms of support across a wide range of environments.
Registration: https://www.icdl.com/conferences/2026dirconference
Inside our Invisible Bubble. A Review of Developmental and Neural Perspectives of Peripersonal Space in Autism
My candidacy review is now published in Vanderbilt Reviews Neuroscience
When AI Can’t Hear You, It’s Not Neutral — It’s Designed That Way
Update: My paper is now in revision stage in the publication cycle.
I’ve been thinking a lot about who gets heard by AI—and who doesn’t. We tend to talk about artificial intelligence as if it’s neutral. Objective. Just math and data. But for many autistic people—especially those who are minimally speaking or nonspeaking—AI systems don’t just fail sometimes. They quietly shut people out. That’s what my paper is about: something I call engineered exclusion
What do I mean by “engineered exclusion”?
3/6/26
3/4/26
3/2/26
What Happens When Autistic and ADHD Adults Grow Older?
We talk a lot about autism and ADHD in childhood. We talk a bit about adulthood. But we almost never talk about aging. And that silence matters—because the first large generations of autistic and ADHD adults are already reaching midlife and older adulthood.
That’s why I wrote this paper,
🔗 https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/ypbzm_v1
This paper asks a simple but overdue question: What actually changes as autistic and ADHD people age—and what doesn’t?

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