Welcome back to My Weird Prompts. I am Corn, and I am sitting here in our living room in Jerusalem with my brother, the man who probably knows more about the inner workings of the human brain than most neuroscientists I have met. It is a beautiful evening here, the light is hitting the stone walls just right, and we have a deep dive today that I think is going to resonate with a lot of our listeners who feel like they have never quite fit into a single box.
That is quite the introduction, Corn. Herman Poppleberry here, at your service. Although, to be fair, I just read a lot of papers and keep up with the latest longitudinal studies. I am not performing surgery anytime soon, though I do find the architecture of the mind endlessly fascinating. It is February twenty-fourth, twenty-six, and the field of neurodiversity is moving faster than ever.
Well, stay away from the scalpels and stay near the microphones. We have a fascinating prompt from Daniel today that builds on some of our previous conversations about multipotentialism and giftedness. Daniel has been looking into his own experiences with sensory processing disorder and stumbled upon the concept of being double gifted, or twice exceptional.
Also known as two E. It is a term that has gained a lot of traction in educational psychology and neurodiversity circles over the last decade or two, but we are only now starting to understand the biological "why" behind it.
Right, and it describes people who are intellectually gifted but also neurodivergent or have some kind of learning disability. ADHD, autism, dyslexia, or like Daniel mentioned, sensory processing disorder. The core of his question is whether there is an inherent connection between high intelligence or creativity and these other conditions. Is there something about the way these brains are wired that predisposes them to both?
It is a profound question because for a long time, we treated these things as separate buckets. You were either the smart kid or the kid who struggled in school. The idea that you could be both simultaneously was actually a bit of a revolution in how we think about human potential and cognitive architecture. In the past, if you were brilliant but could not sit still, the brilliance was often ignored in favor of the behavior. Or, if you were a genius who could not read due to dyslexia, you were simply labeled as "slow."
I remember when we first talked about giftedness, we touched on the idea that it is not just about having a high IQ. It is about a different way of experiencing the world. But the two E label adds this layer of complexity. It is like having a Ferrari engine but the steering wheel of a bicycle, or maybe the sensors are just turned up to eleven.
That is a great way to frame it. If we look at the neurological basis, there is a lot of evidence suggesting that the very traits that lead to high intellectual performance are often the same traits that lead to what we classify as disorders. One of the leading theories in this area is the concept of neural hyper-connectivity. In a neurotypical brain, there is a very efficient pruning process that happens during development. The brain gets rid of "extra" connections to make the remaining ones faster and more specialized. In many two E brains, that pruning process seems to be less aggressive.
Okay, let us break that down. Hyper-connectivity sounds like a good thing, right? More connections, more speed?
In many ways, yes. In gifted individuals, we often see a higher density of white matter and more robust connections between different functional areas of the brain. Specifically, the parieto-frontal integration theory, or P-fit, suggests that intelligence is less about one specific area and more about how efficiently the parietal and frontal lobes communicate. But here is the catch. When you have an incredibly high level of connectivity, the brain can become hyper-sensitive. It is like having a city where every single house is connected to every other house by a ten-lane highway. The communication is incredible, but the traffic jams are catastrophic.
So it is a signal to noise ratio problem?
Exactly. If your brain is wired to find patterns and make connections across disparate fields, it might not have the same filtering mechanisms that a more typical brain has. This is where we see the overlap with things like ADHD or sensory processing disorder. A neurotypical brain is very good at pruning away irrelevant information. If you are sitting in a cafe, your brain ignores the hum of the refrigerator, the chatter at the next table, and the feeling of your socks on your feet. But in a highly connected, two E brain, all of that data might be coming in at full volume. The brain is trying to find a pattern in the refrigerator hum while simultaneously trying to solve a physics problem.
I can see how that would be exhausting. It is like your brain is a giant sponge that does not know how to stop soaking up water. But I want to push on that. If the brain is so good at processing information, why does it struggle with things like executive function or social cues in the case of autism?
That brings us to the concept of asynchronous development. This is a hallmark of giftedness and especially twice exceptionality. It is the idea that different parts of the brain are developing at vastly different rates. You might have a ten-year-old who can discuss the nuances of quantum mechanics or compose a symphony, but who still has the emotional regulation of a six-year-old or the fine motor skills of an eight-year-old. This creates a "spiky profile" rather than the relatively flat profile of a neurotypical person.
I have seen that. It is often why these kids, or even adults, get misdiagnosed. If you only look at the struggle, you miss the brilliance. And if you only look at the brilliance, you assume they are just being lazy or difficult when they struggle with basic tasks.
Precisely. This is often called the masking effect, and it is one of the most damaging aspects of being two E. There are three ways masking usually plays out. First, the giftedness masks the disability. The student is so smart they find workarounds for their dyslexia, so they appear "average" but are actually underperforming and exhausted. Second, the disability masks the giftedness. The ADHD is so disruptive that the teacher never sees the child's incredible analytical skills. And third, they mask each other, so the person just appears "average" or "adequate" while living in a state of constant internal friction.
It feels like a very precarious way to live. You are constantly balancing these two extremes. But let us go back to the biology. Daniel asked if there is a specific pathway. Is there a genetic link between these things?
The research is still evolving, but there is a clear genetic overlap. Recent studies from twenty-twenty-four and twenty-twenty-five have shown that the genetic markers for high intelligence often correlate with the markers for certain types of neurodivergence, particularly autism and bipolar disorder. There is a theory called the "Intense World Theory," proposed by Henry and Kamila Markram, which suggests that the fundamental impairment in autism is actually a hyper-functioning of local neural circuits. This leads to hyper-perception, hyper-attention, and hyper-memory.
So it is almost like a spectrum of cognitive intensity. If you turn the dial up on pattern recognition, you get a gifted scientist. If you turn it up a bit more, you might get someone who is on the spectrum and finds patterns where others see chaos, but who also finds the social world, which is inherently un-systematic, to be overwhelming.
That is a very astute observation, Corn. And it is not just about the logic. We have to talk about the emotional side, too. Kazimierz Dabrowski, a Polish psychologist, developed the theory of positive disintegration. He talked about overexcitabilities, or OEs. He identified five areas where gifted people often have an increased capacity to respond to stimuli: psychomotor, sensual, intellectual, imaginational, and emotional.
Overexcitabilities. That sounds like a polite way of saying you are intense. Can we go through those? Because I think people will recognize themselves in these.
Let us do it. First is Psychomotor Overexcitability. This is that surplus of energy. It is not just "hyperactivity" in the ADHD sense; it is a fundamental need for physical action. These are the people who talk rapidly, fidget constantly, or feel a physical drive to be productive. When they are stressed, they do not just get worried; they have to move.
I definitely have a bit of that. If I am working on a script and I get stuck, I have to pace the room. If I stay still, my brain shuts down.
Exactly. Then there is Sensual Overexcitability. This is what Daniel was talking about. An enhanced sensory awareness. It can be aesthetic—being deeply moved by a sunset or a piece of music—but it can also be aversive. The texture of a specific fabric, the smell of a certain perfume, or the hum of an air conditioner can be physically painful. It is as if the volume knob on the five senses is stuck at maximum.
And Intellectual Overexcitability? That sounds like the "gifted" part.
It is the "hunger for truth." It is the person who asks "why" until everyone else is exhausted. They love theory, analysis, and problem-solving. They are the ones who stay up until three in the morning reading about the history of the Byzantine Empire because they found one interesting footnote. It is an insatiable curiosity that can be both a gift and a distraction.
Then we have Imaginational and Emotional. Those feel like the ones that lead to the "creative" side Daniel mentioned.
Imaginational OE is about vividness. These people have incredibly detailed internal worlds. They use metaphors, they have vivid dreams, and they often struggle with the boundary between fiction and reality because their internal visualizations are so strong. And Emotional OE is perhaps the most significant. It is the capacity for deep relationships, intense empathy, and a wide range of feelings. But it also means the "lows" are devastating. A small criticism can feel like a soul-crushing rejection.
It is interesting because we often pathologize these things. We call it a disorder. But if you look at it through the lens of Dabrowski, these overexcitabilities are actually the fuel for high-level development. You cannot have the deep intellectual curiosity without the intellectual overexcitability. You cannot have the world-changing empathy without the emotional overexcitability.
Right, but the cost is that you are living in a world that is not designed for that level of intensity. The world is built for the middle of the bell curve. When you are on the edges, whether it is the high end of IQ or the divergent end of sensory processing, the environment becomes a constant source of friction. This is why we see such high rates of anxiety in the two E population. Their "radar" is picking up everything, but they do not have the "shields" to block out the noise.
I think about Daniel's experience with the air conditioning and the noise. In a typical office or even a vacation spot, most people just tune it out. But for him, it was a barrier to functioning. It was not a lack of willpower; it was a biological reality of his hardware.
And that is why the two E label is so important. It validates that experience. It says, yes, you are brilliant, and yes, this simple thing is incredibly hard for you, and those two facts are actually related. They are two sides of the same coin. In fact, there is a concept called "Neural Efficiency" that we should mention. In neurotypical people, as they get better at a task, their brain uses less energy. But in some gifted and two E individuals, the brain actually uses more energy because it is engaging more areas and making more complex associations even for "simple" tasks.
So, Herman, if we look at the brain pathways, is it possible that the lack of pruning, the hyper-connectivity we mentioned earlier, is actually an evolutionary trade-off? Like, as a species, we need some people who can see the hidden patterns, even if those people are also more prone to anxiety or sensory overload?
That is the evolutionary neurodiversity hypothesis. The idea is that these traits were preserved in the gene pool because they provided a survival advantage to the tribe. You want the person who is hyper-aware of the slight rustle in the grass, even if they are a bit jumpy. You want the person who can spend eighteen hours straight obsessing over a new tool-making technique, even if they forget to eat or talk to anyone else. These are specialized cognitive profiles. We are a social species, and a healthy tribe needs both the "generalists" who keep things running smoothly and the "specialists" who innovate or detect danger.
It makes sense. But in our modern world, we do not live in small tribes where everyone knows each other's quirks. We live in a world of standardized testing, open-plan offices, and constant digital notifications. It feels like the modern world is particularly hostile to the two E brain.
It absolutely is. Think about the executive function requirements of modern life. Managing a calendar, responding to emails, navigating complex bureaucracies. These are often the exact areas where two E individuals struggle, because their brains are designed for deep, associative dives, not for the shallow, rapid-fire task switching that modern life demands. Their prefrontal cortex is often busy processing high-level concepts, leaving very little "bandwidth" for remembering where they put their keys or when the electric bill is due.
I want to touch on the creativity aspect that Daniel mentioned. He noted a connection between high intelligence, creativity, and these neurodivergent traits. Why do they often go hand in hand?
Creativity often requires what we call divergent thinking. It is the ability to generate many different solutions to a problem or to see connections between seemingly unrelated things. If your brain has less inhibition—what we call "latent inhibition"—if your neural filters are a bit more porous, you are going to have more of those random, creative sparks. A "normal" brain sees a brick and thinks "building material." A two E brain sees a brick and thinks "paperweight, doorstop, weapon, red pigment source, heat sink, or a very small stool."
So, if a neurotypical brain is like a well-paved highway where you get from point A to point B very efficiently, the two E brain is more like a wild meadow. You might get lost, you might trip over a root, but you are also going to find a rare flower that the person on the highway would never see.
I love that analogy. And to take it further, the person in the meadow might need a map or a compass more than the person on the highway, because it is much easier to get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of detail in the meadow. This is where the "disability" part comes in. The very thing that makes the meadow beautiful—the complexity, the lack of rigid paths—is what makes it difficult to navigate if you are just trying to get to work on time.
That brings us to the practical side of this. For people who identify with this, or for parents of children who are two E, what do you do with this information? It is one thing to understand the neurology, but how do you live with it?
The first step is what Daniel did: self-discovery and reframing. Shifting from "I am broken" or "I am lazy" to "my brain has a specific architecture with specific needs." In education, the gold standard for two E kids is to focus on the strengths first. This is a huge shift. Historically, we have used a "deficit model"—find what is wrong and fix it. But for a two E person, if you spend all your time trying to fix the disability, you kill the gift. You have to provide accommodations for the struggles, like using speech-to-text software for a brilliant kid with dysgraphia, while simultaneously giving them high-level, challenging material that matches their intellectual level.
It seems like we often do the opposite. We say, well, you cannot even spell correctly, so you are not ready for advanced physics.
Exactly. And that is a tragedy. Because that kid is going to be bored to tears in basic English and then feel like a failure because they cannot do the spelling, and they never get to discover that they are a genius at physics. For adults, it is about designing your environment. Daniel mentioned ear muffs and white noise machines. That is not a weakness; that is environmental engineering. In twenty-twenty-six, we also have incredible AI tools that act as an "external prefrontal cortex." Using an AI to summarize long emails, set reminders, or help structure a project can be a game-changer for someone with high intelligence but low executive function.
I think about how many people are walking around with this dual identity and do not know it. They just feel like they are failing at being normal, despite being told they are smart. The psychological toll of that must be massive.
It leads to a lot of anxiety and depression. There is a specific kind of existential depression that is common among the gifted and two E population. When you see the world's problems so clearly and feel them so deeply—that emotional overexcitability—but you struggle to manage your own daily life because of sensory issues or executive dysfunction, it can feel very hopeless. You feel like a "failed genius."
Is there a danger in the label, though? Do we risk putting people in boxes or making excuses?
There is always that risk with any label. But I think the benefit of understanding the mechanism outweighs the risk of the box. If you know that your struggle with noise is a result of neural hyper-connectivity and a lack of sensory gating, you can stop blaming your character and start looking for a solution. It moves the conversation from morality to biology. It is not that you are "weak" for needing noise-canceling headphones; it is that your brain is literally processing more data than the person next to you.
I am curious about the future of research here. As we get better at brain imaging, like functional magnetic resonance imaging or magnetoencephalography, are we going to be able to map this out more clearly?
We are already seeing it. There is a lot of work being done on the "connectome," which is basically the map of all the connections in the brain. We are finding that there are specific patterns of connectivity that are predictive of both high intelligence and certain neurodivergent traits. For example, in many two E brains, we see a very strong connection between the default mode network, which is active when we are daydreaming or thinking about the self, and the task-positive network, which is active when we are focusing on a goal.
In most people, those two networks are like a see-saw, right? When one is on, the other is off?
Exactly. They are supposed to be anti-correlated. When you focus on a task, your "daydreaming" brain shuts off. But in many gifted and neurodivergent individuals, they both fire at the same time. This can lead to incredible insights, because you are bringing your internal, creative world into the task you are doing. But it can also lead to intense distraction, because your internal world is always competing for your attention. It is like trying to write a report while a movie is playing in the same window.
That explains so much. It is the classic distracted professor trope. Their brain is literally doing two things at once that most brains can only do one at a time.
Precisely. And that is a biological reality. You can train yourself to manage it, you can use tools to help you focus, but you are never going to have a brain that works like a see-saw. You are always going to be operating on a different frequency.
It is also worth noting that this is not just about the brain. There is research into the gut-brain axis and the immune system in two E individuals. There seems to be a higher prevalence of autoimmune issues, allergies, and even Ehlers-Danlos syndrome in this population.
Yes, the overexcitability that Dabrowski talked about might not just be limited to the nervous system. It might be a systemic hyper-sensitivity. The body's defense systems are also turned up to eleven. It is like the whole organism is set to a higher level of alert. This is why many two E people struggle with chronic fatigue or "burnout." Their system is simply running "hotter" than the average person's.
It is a lot to carry. But I think the takeaway for me is that we need to stop looking at these things as a list of symptoms to be treated and start looking at them as a complex, integrated system. You cannot pull the thread of the disability without potentially unraveling the gift. If you "cured" the ADHD, would you also lose the divergent thinking that makes the person a great inventor? If you "cured" the sensory sensitivity, would you also lose the deep aesthetic appreciation that makes them a great artist?
That is the core of the neurodiversity movement. It is the idea that these are not bugs; they are features of the human genome. They come with challenges, absolutely, and those challenges need support—sometimes even medical intervention—but they are part of the diversity that makes our species resilient and creative. We need the people who see the world differently.
I think about our own lives, Herman. We have our own quirks and intensities. Understanding this stuff has definitely made me more patient with you when you go down one of your research rabbit holes and forget to answer your phone for three days. I used to think you were being rude, but now I realize you are just in the middle of an "intellectual overexcitability" storm.
And it has made me more appreciative of your ability to pull me out of those holes and ask the questions that actually matter to people's lives. You translate the "hyper-connectivity" into something human. We are a bit of a two E team ourselves in some ways.
Just a bit. So, for Daniel and everyone else listening who feels like they might fit this description, the message is: you are not alone, you are not broken, and your brain is doing something very complex and potentially very beautiful, even if it is also very loud.
Well said, Corn. It is about finding the right environment where that meadow can bloom without being trampled by the highway traffic. It is about "niche construction"—building a life that fits your brain, rather than trying to force your brain to fit a life that was not built for it.
We have covered a lot of ground today. From the P-fit theory of intelligence to Dabrowski's overexcitabilities, to the evolutionary reasons why these traits might exist. It is a huge topic, and we have really just scratched the surface. We did not even get into the specifics of how dyslexia and giftedness interact, which is a whole other episode.
It is. The "Sea of Strengths" model for dyslexia is a perfect example of two E. It describes the dyslexic brain as having a "sea" of high-level cognitive strengths—like reasoning, concept formation, and visualization—surrounding a small "island" of weakness in phonological processing. If you only look at the island, you miss the entire ocean.
I love that. Let us save the deep dive on the "ocean" for next time. For anyone who wants to dive deeper right now, I highly recommend looking into the work of people like Linda Silverman at the Gifted Development Center or the various neurodiversity advocacy groups that are doing great work in this space. There is a whole community of two E people out there.
Definitely. This is one of those topics where the lived experience is just as important as the scientific research. We learn so much from the community. If you are an adult who just realized you are two E, there are support groups and coaches who specialize in exactly this.
And if you are listening and this resonates with you, we would love to hear your story. How do you manage the balance between your gifts and your challenges? What are the tools you use to navigate a world that is not always built for your frequency? Have you found that "niche" that Herman mentioned?
We really do want to hear from you. This is how we build a better understanding of the human experience—one story at a time.
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This has been a great conversation, Corn. I think we gave Daniel's prompt the depth it deserved. It is a reminder that "normal" is just a statistical average, not a goal to be achieved.
I think so too. Thanks to Daniel for sending that in. It is a topic that hits close to home for a lot of us. Until next time, keep exploring those weird prompts and keep being kind to your own unique brain.
Absolutely. Until next time, keep exploring.
Thanks for listening to My Weird Prompts. We will see you in the next episode.
Goodbye, everyone!
