Neurotypical

Neurotypical or NT, an abbreviation of neurologically typical, is a neologism widely used in the autistic community as a label for people who are not on the autism spectrum. In its original usage, it referred to anyone who is not autistic or a 'cousin' with an 'autistic-like' brain; the term was later narrowed to refer to those with strictly typical neurology, that is, without a defined neurological difference. Neurotypical or NT, an abbreviation of neurologically typical, is a neologism widely used in the autistic community as a label for people who are not on the autism spectrum. In its original usage, it referred to anyone who is not autistic or a 'cousin' with an 'autistic-like' brain; the term was later narrowed to refer to those with strictly typical neurology, that is, without a defined neurological difference. In other words, this refers to anyone who does not have any developmental disabilities such as autism, developmental coordination disorder, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The term was later adopted by both the neurodiversity movement and the scientific community. In recent times, people with any sort of mental disability, whether congenital or acquired, have also sometimes been excluded from the neurotypical label. In this sense, the term is now contrasted to neurodivergent, ND, or neuroatypical, an umbrella term inclusive of people with diverse mental and behavioral disorders, such as mood, anxiety, dissociative, psychotic, personality, and eating disorders. The conditions themselves, following the neurodiversity and social construction of disability models and in distance from the hegemonic medical model of disability (otherwise known in the neurodiversity community as the 'pathology paradigm'), are often referred to as neurodivergences—that is, neurotypes that are divergent from a given social and medical norm. Neurotypical, as a specific term for its original purpose within autistic communities, has been replaced by some with allistic, or 'nypical', which has roughly the same meaning that 'neurotypical' had originally. These terms refer to those who are not autistic and who do not possess another pervasive developmental disorder, even if they may be neurologically atypical in some other way, such as having dyslexia. The National Autistic Society of the United Kingdom recommends the use of the term 'neurotypical' in its advice to journalists.