✦ AUGHTY ✦ The Keys 22 AUGHTY There is something called neurochemistry. It explains what happens in an autistic brain when it meets a task it finds genuinely engaging — versus one it doesn't. THE NEUROCHEMISTRY. ACCURATELY STATED. engagement threshold GABA inhibitory Dopamine motivation below threshold In the autistic brain, the balance between excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters is disrupted. GABA — the brain's main inhibitory signal — does not build to its usual level without a sufficient trigger. Dopamine — which drives motivation and sustained attention — does not release reliably for tasks the brain has not flagged as genuinely engaging. Below the threshold, the attention system does not engage. Not reluctantly. Not partially. It simply does not fire. AUGHTY I am aware that "neurochemistry" probably means very little to most people in practical terms. Allow me to explain it differently. A JOKE OLD PEOPLE MAKE ABOUT THEIR BODIES a key drops. Imagine you are old. Bending over has become an event. Your back files a formal objection every time it is requested. A key drops. The joke goes: before you bend over, you think about what else you could pick up while you are down there. Make the trip worth it. NOW YOUR BODY WON'T BEND UNLESS THE FLOOR IS WORTH IT 10c threshold met 10c One key won't make the back bend. So I throw more down — coins, a pen — until it agrees. Yes: I threw the keys. That is the trick. That is the absurdity. AUGHTY That is what it means to be autistic. You meet a task. It is genuinely unengaging. Your brain will not bend. You make mistakes. You miss things. You do it badly — not because you can't, but because the mechanism hasn't fired. THRESHOLD MET I can cook a ten course meal. completely absorbed. THRESHOLD NOT MET I will burn the fish stick. did not survive. The difference between the two is not effort. It is not motivation, in the way most people use that word. It is whether the task met the threshold that makes the mechanism fire. I did not choose the threshold. I did not choose what clears it. Nobody asked me. It was already installed. The fish stick was from a box. Four minutes at 180 degrees. I have a doctorate-level understanding of complex distributed systems. The fish stick did not survive.