Why does stimming help?

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I can tell you why it helps me, but neurologically-speaking: is anyone aware of tests that explain why?

I read in Temple Grandin's book, The Autistic Brain, there was evidence that autistic brains are bigger--a lot bigger. This and other neurological information helps me explain how I "lose" information I know. I imagine stimming as moving my synaptic energy from one far reach to another. I need to rock it over.

I would love to read about fMRI studies done on an ASD person *while* stimming.

I'm afraid I don't know very much about MRI studies done while someone is stimming, but I agree with you - it does sound interesting. I know that the reasons I stim are usually to soothe myself and make myself feel calm and comfortable....when in public, I do this by playing with a Tangle Jr. toy or two stones, and in private, I rock back and forth, cuddle with my stuffed animals and look at pictures of characters from my favorite movies - at the moment, I enjoy looking at pictures of characters from Chicken Run that I have saved to my laptop. I also have this one stim that I'm not even aware of most of the time - whenever I'm sitting down and something makes me feel happy, I tend to "bounce" or "lurch" forward in my seat in a sort of rocking motion. My dad was the first to notice it.

I don't know why I lose information I used to know but I feel like stimming helps me when I feel like I have too much energy.

It would be very interesting to come up with a way to do an MRI while someone is stimming because as far as I know, and I could be wrong, but from what I know of MRI's in order for them to work you have to be perfectly still. So getting successful images while stimming might be very hard indeed. But if someone could figure out how to do it it would be fascinating to actually see what happens neurologically. I think what we can do, however, is to measure chemicals released by the brain and glands while stimming. And also measuring what neuro activity is going on and what connections are being made might be possible as well. That would be a start. And it may have already been done. So maybe the research is already out there.

I imagine stimming, motor stereotypies having something to do with patterns of brain activity.

As far as I can tell, stimming has to do with reducing general anxiety, or any emotion really, because of the increased number of neurons, this is like pixels on a tv, but a side effect is increased reactions to stimuli (has to do with increased attention to detail, the same thing causes it). This can be easily overwhelming and is usually experienced as an "all or nothing" personality. This is often contrasted with under-reactivity to stimuli which I'm pretty sure is just the 'nothing' phase in which one introverts inward because the outside world is just too much. So it makes sense that stimming allows u to change your thoughts more easily because anxiety causes a focused, singular analysis of a single thing, but relaxation and openness allows for more abstracting away to different concepts. I would honestly probably compare stimming to meditation, becoming more mindful and accepting of oneself in order to free thoughts from a single cognitive mindset or perspective. There are studies with mindfulness meditation helping aggressive behaviors in adolescents with autism spectrum conditions and aspergers.

No, you are right. To be able to do fMRI correctly, the subject typically has to be quite still to get good resolution back to the detectors. Now there may be a trick to this though: If the subject was just going to stim with their hands and/or feet, without moving their head (or the rest of their body), this might allow for some brain studies to be done on them even though part of their body is in motion within the sampling tube.



Side note:

I think that technology will reach a point where the fMRI instrument may become much like a paper scanner wand for a computer. (Personally I would love to have a microsized 300-400 MHz NMR version for testing chemical samples in my lab.) However, there will be some major material engineering breakthroughs that have to occur before that can ever happen. If we get there, it will likely be able to compensate for motion without the need to be kept still at all.

I have heard it described as creating sensory output to dither input.

It's a bit like the white noise added to an audio signal in a CD players DAC chip.
The harmonic distortion created by early (and cheap) cd players meant that the conversion from
digital to analog needed to include dithering (addition of shaped white noise) to cancel out / diminish these harsh and unpleasant frequencies.

I truly believe our brains do something similar only using stimming instead of white noise (though white noise does soothe some of us)

I always thought dither's whole purpose was to sidestep around quantization noise. I use it to make smoother fades in my audio work.

Aye, dithering can help with fades in DAW renders but both dithering and oversampling have been used to reduce harmonic and phase distortion in digital audio.

i'm glad for the sake of my budget, that I can't quite hear well enough to notice those things.

Maybe it releases endorphins. For me, it can help "lower the gate" on excessive information bombarding my brain, only letting in what's needed or can help introduce information to my brain that I otherwise struggle to interpret. Sometimes it just feels pleasurable.

I heard it explaned by an occupational therapist. But I don't remember exactly how it goes. Most people know exactly where they are in their mind. What house/building, street, address, city etc along with kepping track of the time of day plus what day it is etc. And also being able to tune out a lot of sensory stuff going on around them. Whereas someone with autism might have trouble with managing all that or are not able to all. And stimming works as a coping mechanism for that. Especially the kinkind like where a kid holds the wheel of a toy car in front of his eye and focus on watching the wheel spin. Same with the rocking and rapid hand movement.

Yes, as others have posted, it is calming, and helps cope with stress, and as one poster said, it's effect is like white noise, but for the body, instead of for hearing. When used as white noise, it seems to lessen the impact of info overloads, perhaps by lessening the amount of input that can get through while you are doing it. The stimming doesn't take much brain resources, as it is sort of automatic, so you can keep doing it while doing other stuff, but the process of doing it does seem to narrow the channel for other input, thereby reducing overloads.

I do find that I seem to stim less when I am not stressed as much, but even when not stressed I will sometimes stim. It's sort of like a baby with a pacifier, it calms and relaxes one. As long as one's stim isn't too weird I wouldn't worry about it.

I see it some form of coping with an abundance nervous anxious energy consciously and subconsciously, you feel better I don't know why.

I like this.