Double Empathy and the Dorsal Vagus 

The perception of autistic lack of empathy has been a hallmark of autism. Historically, this has been empirically validated by research pursuing a certain lens and this has, in turn, directed therapeutic process and intervention. Academically, therapeutically and socially it has been binarily accepted that neurotypicals do empathy, autistics do not. 

The assumption that the autistic brain cannot encompass empathy misses salient social points. It also misses current neurophysical underpinnings that allow for a more nuanced understanding of the differences between the autistic and the neurotypical mind.

While we do not have specific neurophysical biomarkers for autism, we do have biophysical clues that infer differences. The autistic mind is and is not different to the norm. The social and biological models allow us to infer and describe. We have conjectures of what autism is and may be. We have ways to see, ways to hold space and meaning and we get to choose whether those ways are helpful in ever changing social paradigms. The exploration of the autistic experience serves to inform multidimensional thinking. 

We can only experience and see the world through our body. Our neurophysical choreography allows us to access both the superficial and the multidimensional, and in order to do so, the mind (and body) have to be in certain modes of operation. Like Darwin vs Wallace, left brain and right brain, there is a physical line between these two distinct ways of seeing and being. 

The Polyvagal Theory and the Theory of Sensory Gating permit us a doorway into the spaciousness of the autistic mind and to how it is unseen by the normative mind. Sensory Gating assumes that autistics dualistically have less ability to censor sensory information due to more abundant synaptic branches and that this in turn promotes greater information flow and pattern recognition. It  promotes a certain mode of being. It can be a place of witness, of deep empathy and connection with all things. 

The Polyvagal Theory purports that the choreography of the vagal system permits certain states of being through a synergistic relationship with the neurophysical system. The vagus nerve gives access to a variety of internal and external engagements that in turn influence brain development and life experience. Reflecting visible social engagement, the newer, ventral system is more highly prized. The ability to stay in a ventral state requires an ability to innately gate sensory experiences, to have good vagal tone.

The dorsal vagus is typically seen as a lower function and the focus in Western therapy is typically on rising up and out of this mode and back up into the ventral state.  What is missed in this assessment is that the more ancient, dorsal system is its own domain. It is here that the animist learns to dwell, it is here that the sensory landscapes open wide, to hear and feel and breathe in multidimensionality. It is here that the autistic often resides. Animist and ancient Eastern practices teach initiation into this physical and metaphoric space. This deep diving also requires good vagal tone. 

Looking at states of being through a biophysical lens brings us an appreciation of the continuum of empathetic qualities of both the normative and the neurotypical. There can be more visible states of empathetic connection and there can be more open, wild and subterranean states that require a deeper knowing. The human being is designed to know both. The plasticity of the human brain expects continual growth of synapses, movement and change. All humans, autistic and non-autistic can upgrade their individual capacity to bring themselves into greater dorsal and ventral tone and upgrade their experience of themselves and the world. Like Piaget’s formal operations we grow as a world, appreciating both, not with one at the expense of the other. We expand our consciousness and our ability to value difference.

Contemporary history has prized the ventral state far above the dorsal. It has relegated the ancient system of knowing as obsolete.

Autism is giving it a comeback!