Asperger’s can be difficult to understand as an outsider and, indeed, difficult to explain to outsiders if (like me) you have Asperger’s. That’s why I’ve come up with this explanation: our brains are missing the telepathy lobe.

“What do you mean telepathy?” I hear you ask — I’m not talking about telepathy in the Professor X sense — I’m referring to the innate ability of the neurotypical brain to model the thoughts of other people. It’s something you don’t have a name for because your brain does it automatically, but to the Aspergerian, it often seems like some kind of sorcery. When we observe a conversation, it’s as if we’re watching a high-speed game of chess, except we don’t know the rules. We have so many questions: How did he know how his friend’s sentence would end? Why did she laugh at that particular point? Was that a joke? How do they mirror each other’s body language like that? How did they know whose turn it was to speak?

It isn’t that we don’t understand expression or tone of voice — we do. In fact, in certain circumstances we can have a greater appreciation for social nuances than most; it’s just that it doesn’t come naturally or in the moment. Think of it like throwing a ball: you don’t consciously calculate the ball’s trajectory, estimate the initial angle and velocity required to produce that trajectory, then work out the exact force, timing and coordination required from your arm muscles to generate the correct angle and velocity — you just aim and throw! Your motor cortex and cerebellum do the work for you.

That’s what your telepathy lobe does for you when you socialise.

Conversations: Chat vs Dialogue

One thing that many people don’t realise is that Asperger’s isn’t always apparent, even if you know what to look for. You can have a conversation with someone, and they respond in all the right ways. They can follow the rhythm and flow of the conversation, and their body language and tone of voice seem completely normal. But what you are seeing is the result of years of effort. Your conversational counterpart has gained those skills through observation, trial and error, and practice. They’re consciously doing what your telepathy lobe does unconsciously.

Aspergerians don’t have chats — we have dialogues. It can be hard to appreciate the distinction — but watch what happens when the dialogue becomes a trialogue. If you have a telepathy lobe, the switch should be seamless. Most people think “the more, the merrier” when another person joins the conversation. Aspergerians, however, now have to juggle two dialogues simultaneously, while observing a third. With each added speaker, the difficulty increases exponentially.

When we’ve mastered the art of dialogue, a conversation is as stimulating and rewarding for us as it is for anyone else. We can follow the flow, and know when to speak and how to reply. Much like with tennis, once we know the rules and have the skills to keep the “ball” in play, we can have tons of fun. But as soon as someone else joins the conversation, the game changes from tennis to football! Now we don’t know who’s going to get the ball, or who we’re supposed to pass it to. We start to feel left out. Most of the time we fade into the background, letting the other two do most of the talking and chiming in only when we think we have something important to say. However, it’s easy to fall into the trap of viewing the third person as an interloper, and to keep interrupting and trying to exclude them.

When we have a relevant point to make, we don’t always know how to slip it into the conversation. By the time we say it, the conversation has moved on, and we get “the look.” Now we appear either slow-witted or egotistic, because we’ve tried to turn the conversation backwards. People conclude that either we take a few seconds longer than everyone else to understand things, or we’re ignoring them and trying to bring the attention back to ourselves.

One the things I deeply appreciate is when someone who knows and understands me acts as a social guide, and includes me in the conversation. A little nudge to let me know that I’m hogging the airtime, or that I’ve missed an important social cue, can be all it takes to prevent a catastrophe! Just giving me little prompts such as, “right, Gordon?” can make a world of difference.

Grey Areas: Trust vs Paranoia

One frequently mentioned characteristic of Asperger’s is the tendency to view the world in black and white. Everything is either good or bad — “us” versus “them”. Distinguishing grey areas in social interactions is an important function of the telepathy lobe. People on the autistic spectrum need to train themselves (or be taught) to see situations from more than one perspective.

Almost every Aspergerian child is bullied at school. We don’t fit in, so we get picked on. Bewildered teachers give up on helping us, accepting that children can be mean to each other, and that’s that. Even today, it’s almost unavoidable.

When we try to join a conversation we speak as clearly as we can, but the other children look at us as if we have green antennae sprouting from our heads. How can they not understand us? The logical conclusion of many a naive Aspie child is that the other kids are stupid, and they bully us because they’re jealous of our intelligence.

It’s extremely common for children on the autistic spectrum to become bookworms. Because of the linear nature of written language, it’s impossible for two dialogues to happen simultaneously in fiction without some exceptional wordsmithery from the author. This bookishness, of course, also makes us targets for the bullies.

When we’re a bit older, we realise that we’ve been speaking too much like an adult. We learn the slang, accents and idioms of our peers — often by using TV, movies or video games as a model — and now we sound more like them. We can blend in most of the time, but there’s still the occasional odd glance or mocking comment. It’s difficult to gauge how much teen-speak we should use in a given situation. Without a telepathy lobe acting as a social thermostat, we have to make an educated guess. If we turn the dial too far, we’re accused of “trying too hard to be cool,” and if we don’t turn it far enough, we’re “trying to sound clever.”

As we hone our skills, we come up with tactics and rules of thumb — which can often be wildly wrong. I likened myself to an anthropologist creating theoretical models of social interactions (or, when I was feeling cynical, to a zoologist observing animals in the wild). I developed a habit of working out a “pecking order” in each group, and classified my classmates into castes — such as the “jocks”, the “social climbers”, and the “cool geeks” — with myself right at the bottom. I had a watch-list of tells, phrases, and gestures that identified other kids as potential trouble, and that developed into a bully radar. While it was helpful most of the time, my “bully-dar” was oversensitive. In my last few months of high school, I realised that some of the “bullies” I had been avoiding for years were actually decent guys and, conversely, some of the worst people had slipped right under my bully-dar.

The telepathy lobe also functions as a lie detector. It helps neurotypical children understand who they can trust, and when. When Aspie children first interact with other kids, we believe everything they say. When I was five, I believed a friend when he told me that his house was haunted and his toys came to life every Friday night! We’ve been believing our parents for all of our lives up to that point, so mistrust is an alien concept. It’s only a matter of time before we experience the feeling of betrayal.

By the time we reach high school, paranoia is our default setting. We’ve worked out some rules and filters by which we weigh every statement to assess its probability of being a lie. It’s exhausting! If you can prove to someone with Asperger’s that we can trust you, we’ll be immensely grateful. We’ll take every opportunity to talk to you about anything that comes to mind. I understand how this can be tiring for you, but you just need to gently remind us that we’re rambling. Try to remember that talking to you costs us a fraction of the mental energy we’d use when talking to someone we don’t fully trust.

Facing the Real World

Leaving school and entering the wider world can be a tipping point for Aspergerians. Once we enter a world where we have to manage our own studies, finances, living arrangements, and schedules, the learning curve is orders of magnitude steeper.

We’ve spent almost two decades perfecting our strategies for dealing with four types of people: parents, family members, classmates and teachers. Now our social software needs some serious upgrading. Adulthood presents the brain with a whole range of new processing tasks, which it would handle easily if it was equipped with a telepathy lobe. Aspergerians, however, need to code new mental software for professors, landlords, flatmates, neighbours, bosses, co-workers, banks, shops, gyms, restaurants, fellow motorists, bureaucrats, committees, and dozens of other situations. And then, of course, there are relationships — which are way beyond the scope of this article.

I was one of the lucky ones — I had a family who loved and supported me, and an amazing partner (now my wife) who guided me through my early twenties while I developed a new social toolkit. I’m only half-joking when I tell people that without her, I would be either dead or in prison by now. The statistics were not on my side. I can only hope that others can be so fortunate.

If the Missing Telepathy Lobe Theory can help even one person understand Asperger’s a little better, then this article has done it’s job.