Autism research and clinical practice is a rapidly evolving branch of psychiatry. This chapter explores autism through the lenses of the neurodiversity paradigm, challenging the deficit-based model whilst remaining stark about significant healthcare inequalities and challenges that autistic people face. It considers the perinatal journey from an autistic perspective, highlighting some of the common challenges autistic mums (to be) can face, and makes suggestions for approaches to take when working with autistic patients.

This chapter examines the various definitions and models used to conceptualise and diagnose dyslexia. The authors critique traditional approaches such as the discrepancy model and response to intervention (RTI), arguing that these methods are inadequate – particularly for adolescents and adults. Instead, they advocate for the profile of strengths and weaknesses (PSW) model, which accounts for underlying cognitive inefficiencies, such as working-memory deficits, to explain functional impairments in skills such as reading and writing. The chapter also explores the biological and neurological foundations of dyslexia, including genetic influences and structural brain differences, and challenges simplistic or euphemistic views such as ’neurodiversity’ that may obscure understanding. Emphasising a scientific, empirical lens, the authors reject models based purely on social narratives or lived experiences, advocating instead for the biopsychosocial model that integrates biological, psychological, and environmental factors. Dyslexia is positioned not merely as a reading issue but as a complex cognitive disorder with broad implications across the lifespan. The chapter closes by asserting the need for clear, evidence-based conceptual models to foster self-understanding, improve assessment, and guide effective intervention.

This chapter characterises the beginning of the 1810s as a transitional moment for both early feminist thought and cultural conceptions of intellectual disability. Through a sustained reading of Lucy Aikin’s critically underexamined Epistles on Women (1810), the chapter argues that the long, combative poem articulates an intersectional appeal to feminine-coded weakness, idiocy, and disability. The opening question of the poem, ‘when was ever weakness in the right?’, pits a utopian matriarchal future against the overwhelming misogyny and brutality of the masculinist past. Aikin’s revisionist history begins in Eden with Eve’s assiduous care for the ‘moping idiot’ Adam and ends in the modern era with the new ideal of feminine friendship supplanting compulsory ideologies of heteropatriarchal marriage. Throughout, Aikin creatively develops a compelling feminist aesthetics and ethics grounded in the complex trope of idiocy and neurodiversity.

The Epilogue provides a reflective distillation of the book’s major claims and anticipatory warnings. It revisits the central idea that the human species is entering a new epoch of cognitive modulation — one that combines the ancient allure of psychoactive substances with the unprecedented reach of digital simulation. It affirms that while such tools offer extraordinary opportunities for creativity, healing, and connection, they also pose significant risks to autonomy, mental integrity, and collective meaning-making. The epilogue emphasises the urgency of ethical design, regulatory foresight, and public education to manage this dual-edged transformation. It concludes with a speculative yet grounded vision: that the next phase of human evolution may depend less on biology and more on how we symbolically navigate our internal and external realities. The final call is for conscious engagement — with our histories, technologies, and altered states — to ensure our adaptations remain humane and meaningful.

This integrative chapter highlights the interdisciplinary implications of the book’s core arguments. It synthesises the historical, neuroscientific, cultural, and ethical perspectives covered in earlier chapters, showing how they converge around a central theme: the human impulse to reshape consciousness through external means. The summary identifies key throughlines such as the neurochemical basis of thrill-seeking, the symbolic encoding of drug use, the commodification of altered states, and the rise of digital simulation as a new frontier of mind alteration. It stresses the importance of cross-disciplinary collaboration in addressing emerging challenges — including addiction, mental health, identity fragmentation, and regulatory vacuums. The chapter proposes that future research and policy must account for the hybrid nature of cognitive environments, shaped by both chemical inputs and algorithmic systems. Ultimately, it reaffirms the need to develop new cultural literacies and ethical frameworks suited to the complexities of the digital-chemical age.

This chapter focuses on the second bridge between economic and social values in contract law, examining the role played by regulation in bringing together these values. The discussion questions the effectiveness of regulatory responses to business to consumer (B2C) relations in English consumer contract law, in protecting people not just as economic actors, but also as citizens, and in safeguarding values such as autonomy and human dignity. The analysis focuses on the regulation of unfair contract terms, unfair commercial practices, implied terms in contracts for the provision of goods, services and digital content, and on information and cancellation rights in business to consumer (B2C) contracts. This chapter also examines the concept of consumer vulnerability in trader– consumer relations.

This chapter focuses on the influence of nineteenth-century neurology on Beckett’s writing, especially the work of Jean-Martin Charcot and Georges Gilles de la Tourette, who both worked at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris. Charcot’s famous Tuesday lectures, at which he exhibited his patients to admiring crowds, became an intellectual and middle-class pastime in Paris, instigating a new performance style in the Parisian café-concert, in cabaret, and in music hall, while the performers at such venues, in turn, became the stars of early cinema, adapting their convulsive performance style to silent film. Beckett took a lifelong interest in these popular forms, and the chapter considers the impact of their convulsive aesthetic on his work. It also addresses Beckett’s representation of speech and his reading of Bergson’s 1900 essay on Laughter, which argued that humour arises from ‘something mechanical encrusted on the living’. Bergson’s extended essay was itself substantially influenced by medical discoveries, and especially the theatrical and often spectacular culture of the late-nineteenth-century science of neurology. While Beckett diverges from Bergson’s Cartesian stance, he nevertheless concurred on the limitations of free will and agency, on ‘the deep-seated recalcitrance of matter’, and on the human as always already determined by the mechanical.

Describe how children can take different paths in development and reach similar destinations; understand the developmental differences between children as a set of strengths and challenges that are highly sensitive to environmental context; explore how events in children’s lives can trigger a cascade of later consequences.

This chapter explores the unique relationship between music and individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). It highlights the remarkable musical abilities often found in people with autism, contrasting with their challenges in social interaction and communication. Research shows that music can serve as a bridge, facilitating social interaction and emotional expression for those on the spectrum. Brain imaging studies reveal how brain regions typically associated with language processing are activated in autistic individuals when they engage with music. This suggests that music may offer an alternative pathway for communication and emotional understanding. The chapter also discusses the therapeutic applications of music for individuals with autism, such as auditory-motor mapping training (AMMT), which has shown promise in improving verbal communication and social skills. Music therapy can also foster emotional expression, social connection, and a sense of belonging. The chapter concludes by emphasizing the importance of understanding and embracing the individual’s musical preferences and strengths in order to support their development and well-being.

In this chapter we discuss that, as well as being the main feature necessary for the diagnosis of Hoarding Disorder, hoarding can also occur as a symptom in many other physical and mental conditions. We will discuss clinical stories of people who have had difficulties with hoarding but will demonstrate how a different type of approach is needed to help them overcome their problems from that described from pure Hoarding disorder. There will then be a brief examination of the overlap between trauma and neurodiversity and hoarding as well as a brief description and discussion of the validity of the concept of Diogenes Syndrome in the elderly.

This chapter discusses cognitive individual differences that affect learning processes and outcomes of second language. It answers broad questions such as Why do some learners seem to have such an easy time learning a second language? and Why do some learners sound like a first-language speaker but others don’t? The chapter examines how our cognitive abilities influence our learning, and how we might be able to improve our learning even if we have lower cognitive skills in some areas. Specific individual differences include general intelligence, working memory, and language learning aptitude (phonemic coding ability, grammatical sensitivity, rote memorization). The chapter then examines how cognitive individual differences mediate the impact of second language instruction, that is, aptitude–treatment interaction. The chapter includes less-investigated individual differences as well, such as neurodiversity, autism, ADHD, and dyslexia. The chapter concludes with learning strategies and pedagogical recommendations that help counter the negative impacts that cognitive individual differences have on second language learning.