Reading the Nervous System: A Physiological Reading of Autistic Experience - Paperback

by Maria E. Reyes (Author)

This book offers a physiological reading of nervous system organization across time, examining how the body builds, carries, and resolves experience, with particular attention to how these dynamics are expressed in autistic experience.

The Regulatory Reading Framework, developed across twelve chapters and five parts, describes four interdependent parameters through which any nervous system organizes experience: concurrent demand, activation slope, regulatory margin, and recovery. These parameters are introduced as properties of all nervous systems before being read in the context of autistic organization, where characteristic parameter values generate predictable consequences in environments built around different assumptions.

The framework makes three core clinical contributions. It locates difficulty at the level of regulatory mismatch rather than individual deficit. It makes the compensated access state - camouflage as a physiological configuration - visible as a named clinical zone. And it provides a process-based, time-sensitive account of how states develop and reverse.

Written for speech-language pathologists, educators, and clinical professionals working with autistic individuals across the lifespan, this volume is the first in a two-part series. The companion workbook translates the framework into applied clinical practice.