Neurodivergent conditions—including autism, ADHD, and dyslexia—persist at stable prevalencesacross human populations despite apparent individual costs, suggesting they confer collectiveadvantages maintained by natural selection. Conceptual arguments for this hypothesis exist but lackmathematical formalization. Here we bridge neurodiversity theory and nonlinear dynamics by modelinghuman groups as networks of coupled Stuart-Landau oscillators in which neurocognitive type iscaptured by a continuous distribution of social coupling strengths, grounded in the monotropismframework. Neurotypical individuals correspond to strongly coupled oscillators that synchronize readily;neurodivergent individuals correspond to weakly coupled oscillators with deep internal attractors. Wesubject this model to six classes of perturbation—structural and adaptive—and demonstrate that: (i)chimera states emerge spontaneously at neurodivergent fractions of 1–5%, coinciding with autismspectrum prevalence; (ii) structural resilience under node removal increases 25-fold at 1%neurodivergent fraction; (iii) adaptive resilience improves 1.6–3.5× with increasing neurodivergentfraction, formalizing exploration-exploitation complementarity; (iv) the opposing relationships create atradeoff predicting intermediate proportions consistent with population data. These results constitutethe first mathematical proof that neurocognitive diversity enhances collective resilience.
Franny Philos Sophia (Sat,) studied this question.