SOMA Neurodiversity Community Network
​The SOMA Neurodiversity Community Network, or SNCN, is a resource to connect neurodivergent community members of South Orange and Maplewood to one another and to bridge the gap between neurodivergent and neurotypical community members.​
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Focusing on diversity within the neurodivergent community and recognizing that experiences of neurodivergence are shaped by our gender, race, sexuality and other aspects of identity, SNCN enhances visibility and understanding of neurodivergence and neurodiversity in SOMA through providing opportunities for neurodivergent community members to share their experiences and through providing a platform for self advocacy.
Concepts to Know
Understanding sensory experience, cognitive processes and patterns of behavior and communication is necessary to appreciate what neurotypical, neurodivergent and neurodiversity are. Understanding neurodiversity helps explain neurodivergence as an invisible disability and the need to combat ableism with neurodiversity affirming attitudes and aspirations.
Sensory Experience
Thoughts resulting from information taken in from eight senses; touch, smell, taste, sound, sight and the less commonly discussed vestibular signals(sense of balance), proprioceptive signals(sense of one’s body in space), and interoceptive signals(internal cues).
Neurotypical
Relating to or showing cognitive processes that align with sociocultural norms and expectations. Neurotypical individuals tend to have sensory experiences, cognitive processes, and patterns of behavioral and communication that are considered standard or the default.
Ableism
Systems, actions, and attitudes that hold non-disabled individuals as ideal and disabled individuals as less than. Ableism marginalizes, devalues, and excludes those with disabilities and intersects with other forms of systemic oppression, disproportionately affecting disabled individuals from marginalized communities.
Cognitive Processes
The mental processes that establish knowledge and understanding through thought.
Neurodivergent
Relating to or showing sensory experiences, cognitive processes, and patterns of behavior and communication that are distinctly apart from what is socioculturally expected. Individuals diagnosed as autistic, having ADHD, dyslexia, and dyspraxia as well as those without specific diagnosis are neurodivergent. Neurodivergence is an invisible disability because society is not based on the needs and experiences of neurodivergent people.
Invisible Disability
A disability that is not immediately apparent to others but impacts the disabled person's lived experience. Because invisible disabilities are not always recognized, accommodations are rarely provided.
Patterns of Behavior & Communication
Recurring or habitual actions and mannerisms including those involved in method and manner of conveying information.
Neurodiversity
Coined by Australian sociologist Judy Singer, this concept rejects that there is a 'right' way to have sensory experiences, cognitive processes or patterns of behavior and communication acknowledging instead the reality of an abundance of diversity.
Neurodiversity Affirming
Validating and supporting of both neurotypical AND neurodivergent experiences; particularly, engaging with neurodivergent experiences as valid rather than something to be "fixed" or "overcome."