The Shape of Meaning: Awe and Autistic Wellbeing

 On the occassion of the International Day of Happiness

The Shape of Meaning: Awe and Autistic Wellbeing
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.

Register at at 

https://events.zoom.us/ev/Ao79_EsFPbirSeiGXojq_SSVds1aNBTolmZT3BjrwtOQMPdXo0Jb~AhBJPSp72b24e5CCXPRVCeGf7mZAdidblIKx9_MsLTpRqRqrdP8zrbP-rQ

Learn About Happiness

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

Inside our Invisible Bubble. A Review of Developmental and Neural Perspectives of Peripersonal Space in Autism

Full text available at PsyRxiV or Research Gate 

Citation: Srinivasan, H. (2025). Inside our invisible bubble: A review of developmental and neural perspectives of peripersonal space in autism. Vanderbilt Reviews Neuroscience, 17, 100–111.

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

Link to the preprint:  https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/eahjb_v1

What do I mean by “engineered exclusion”?

 

Society criticizes disabled people for showing both too much or too little emotion

Read Full Article at

 https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/giving-voice/202409/caught-between-tears-and-stoicism

 

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?

My upcoming talks for March 2026

My upcoming talks for March 2026

https://lnkd.in/g-M4hjXC

• 3/2/26: Guest Speaker at Berkeley's Autism Decal - The course I created as an undergrad student at Berkeley. Have loved returning as a guest speaker each semester since I graduated.

• 3/7/26: UCSF's 25th Annual Developmental Disabilities Update for Health Professionals. Talk Title: Flourishing and Mental Health For High Support Autistics

• 3/20/26: Proof Positive - Everyone Deserves Happiness Summit, a livestream event on the International Day of Happiness highlighting wellbeing and flourishing in the autism community. Talk Title: The Shape of Meaning. Awe and Autistic well being

• 3/21/26 IDCL International Council on Development and Learning International DIR® Conference. Talk Title: Rethinking Autism Through the Body: A Sensory–Motor Architecture of Autistic Experience

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/giving-voice/202410/how-reasonable-are-reasonable-accommodations-at-work

The ADA’s reactive enforcement model exacerbates the challenges faced by autistic employees.

 

Elite Rising Scholar Peer Reviewer Award

 

Dear Hari,
We are pleased to announce that you have been named an inaugural 2025 Elite Rising Scholar Peer Reviewer for Rehabilitation Psychology. We initiated this award for 2025 to specifically recognize the incredible contributions of peer reviewers who are at the graduate student or postdoctoral fellow level...
This award is particularly impressive given that you are outstanding in comparison to all reviewers – including editorial board members. Your commitment and service to the journal is remarkable and even among our best reviewers, you have stood out this past year.
We have included a certificate of appreciation to congratulate you on this distinctive recognition. We are very grateful for your service and contributions to our overarching mission to advance rehabilitation psychology research. We look forward to working with you in the coming years.
With sincere gratitude,
Anna Kratz, PhD & Paul Perrin, PhD
Editors-in-Chief
Rehabilitation Psychology

"Finding solutions for the most marginalized members ultimately benefits everyone." - Hari Srinivasan

Read on... https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/aut.2024.38246.pw

Lonely in a Crowd: When Being There Still Isn’t Belonging

Loneliness is usually imagined as being alone. But many autistic people describe something different—and harder to explain: being surrounded by people and still feeling profoundly lonely. That paradox is what my paper tries to make sense of

Preprint Link: https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/rjeus_v1 

A map of multisensory illusions—and what they reveal about autism and ADHD

I recently wrote a Psychology Today piece [Why Perception is Not Just What We Sense] about a simple idea: perception isn’t something we receive. It’s something the brain builds. I used a few familiar illusions—the McGurk effect, the stream–bounce illusion, the sound-induced flash illusion, and the parchment-skin illusion—to show what happens when the building process becomes visible.

[Contributor 🔗 https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/contributors/hari-srinivasan]

What I couldn’t fit into that article is the part I think about most: illusions aren’t one category of party trick. They’re a toolkit. Different illusions probe different “decisions” the brain has to make—about timing, about cause, about whether signals belong together, about what counts as part of the body, and about how much certainty is “enough.”

When “Just Try Harder” Isn’t the Problem

We tell students this story early and often: If you work hard enough, you can get there.

That message—usually called growth mindset—has helped a lot of people. It pulls us away from “I’m just not good at this” and toward “I can learn.”

But there’s a quieter question that doesn’t get asked nearly enough: What if I am trying—and the system still doesn’t move? That question is what my new paper is trying to take seriously

Preprint link: https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/x7jru_v1 

Why growth mindset sometimes falls short

Neurodiversity 2.0. Contemporary Research Evolving Frameworks and Practice Implications

Thanks, NIEPID for hosting and to everyone who joined the conversation today. Lovely to see so many MPhil students joining from all over India. Recording at. https://youtu.be/q0ctpgproS4

Breaking the Either Or Trap. Why Autism needs nuance not extremes

Thanks, Chico State for hosting and to everyone who joined the conversation on nuance in autism. Recording at  https://youtu.be/h70I6msB7rA

 

Emotional expression should be seen as a human experience, not defined by disability.

Read Full Article at

 https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/giving-voice/202409/caught-between-tears-and-stoicism

 

About That Autism Barbie and the Headphones

A few weeks ago, there was a lot of social media posts on something that was being widely celebrated online: a new Barbie meant to represent autism.

It had noise-canceling headphones. It had an AAC device. It had flexible hands for stimming.

And I felt… conflicted.

That moment is what eventually became my new Psychology Today .

My TedX Talk

  My Ted X talk titled "Pebbles in the Pond of Change

Hari Srinivasan, shares a powerful message about the power of small actions in creating ever-widening ripples in the pond of change. Drawing from personal experiences and the legacy of disability rights leaders, he redefines progress as a journey that starts with simple, accessible steps. His inspiring message encourages everyone to identify and act on their own "small pebbles" to drive societal transformation.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e87-3xydg58