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One 'Axon' Explains the Human Mind. The Other Sells Cables. Welcome to Hell.
You ever fall down an internet rabbit hole that makes you question the very fabric of reality? Or at least the sanity of Google’s algorithm? That was my Tuesday. I was looking into research on axons—the wiring of the human brain—and what I got was a perfect snapshot of our broken, ridiculous world.
On one screen, I have a press release. It’s about a French company called Axon’ Cable. Founded in 1965, makes electrical connections for cars and planes. Groundbreaking stuff. They’ve just deployed a “unified platform” from a company called Ivalua to “transform” their “indirect procurement.” I had to read that three times just to stay awake. Some guy, a COO named Dan Amzallag, is quoted saying how they’re empowering organizations to transform procurement “quickly and effectively.”
They’re streamlining their indirect procurement, and honestly... I just can’t. This is the kind of soul-draining corporate word salad that fills up 90% of the internet. It’s information designed to be skimmed by a C-suite executive and immediately forgotten. It’s the digital equivalent of beige carpeting. It’s noise. It’s filler. It’s a story about supply chains and ESG performance that means absolutely nothing to anyone outside of their shareholder meetings.
And yet, it shares a keyword with something that actually matters. Something that changes everything.
And Then There's the Other Axon
On my other screen is Age-related differences in axon pruning and myelination may alter neural signaling in autism spectrum disorder - Molecular Autism. It’s also about axons. But not the kind that connect a dashboard to a car battery. The kind that connect you to yourself, and to the rest of the world. The paper details how the brains of males with autism spectrum disorder seem to develop on a completely different track than neurotypical brains. This is heavy stuff. This isn't about saving a few percentage points on office supplies; it's about the literal architecture of consciousness.
Let me try to break this down, because the science is dense, but the implications are staggering. Your brain, as it grows, is supposed to be like a good city planner. It starts with a mess of local roads, then, over time, it "prunes" the unnecessary side streets and builds out superhighways. This process, along with wrapping the highways in insulation called myelin, makes communication faster and more efficient over long distances. It’s how different parts of your brain talk to each other to process language, social cues, and all the other things we take for granted.
But this study suggests that in the autistic brains they examined, that city planner is working from a different blueprint. The pruning doesn't happen in the same way. The brain keeps an overabundance of small, local axons—all those little side streets. It’s a state of what scientists call local “hyperconnectivity.” Meanwhile, the big, long-range axons—the superhighways—don't get the same thick layer of myelin insulation, making them less efficient.
Think about that. It’s like having a dozen conversations happening in the same room, all at once, while someone is trying to whisper instructions to you from across a football field. The paper links this physical structure to the core features of ASD: challenges with language, social reciprocity, sensory integration. It’s not a choice. It’s not a personality quirk. It’s the hardware. This is fascinating stuff. No, 'fascinating' isn't the right word—it's profoundly unsettling.
A Blueprint for a Different World
This isn't just one isolated finding, either. The researchers point out that similar patterns have been found in the prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain responsible for executive function. It suggests a widespread, fundamental difference in how the brain wires itself. The study focuses on the temporal lobe, a region critical for social and emotional processing, and finds it's just buzzing with this local traffic, potentially at the expense of connecting with the rest of the brain. Offcourse, the study has its limits—small sample size, only males, postmortem tissue. The researchers are honest about that.
But even with those caveats, the picture it paints is incredible. It provides a potential biological basis for why the world can feel so overwhelming for someone on the spectrum. It’s not just a feeling; their brain might literally be processing a firehose of local information that a neurotypical brain has long since learned to filter out. What does that even mean for our concepts of "normalcy"? If the wiring is fundamentally different, are we trying to run software on the wrong operating system?
And here I am, staring at two tabs on my screen. One is a key that could unlock a deeper understanding of the human condition, of neurodiversity, of what makes us who we are. It’s a story about the intricate, mysterious, and sometimes painful ways our brains construct reality. It’s a story about people.
The other tab is about How Ivalua Transformed Indirect Procurement at Axon' Cable and their goddamn procurement platform. A story about efficiency and supply chain risk. A story about money. One of these things is a profound piece of the human puzzle. The other is just business. Guess which one gets more press releases. It ain't the science.
Maybe I’m just a layman yelling about science I barely understand. But it feels like we're mapping the soul here, and it's terrifying. To see that complexity, that raw human data, placed side-by-side with a story about how Axon’ Cable is improving its ESG performance… it’s a kind of digital whiplash that makes you want to throw your laptop out the window.
So, Which Axon Matters?
Let's be real. One of these stories is about the wiring that creates thought, love, and pain. The other is about the wiring that gets a shipment of copper from point A to point B. The fact that my search engine treats them with equal weight is a perfect, depressing metaphor for our entire culture. We've drowned the signal in an ocean of noise, and we're celebrating the companies that sell us better buckets to bail it out. Give me a break.