It is not that ADHD brains are willpower-poor or “meaning-gated;” it is that their prediction system requires higher meaning detailed language precision to unlock metabolic engagement.
Prediction — ADHD as Energy Regulation, Not Deficit
ADHD is not a disorder of attention; it is a regulation of prediction under high arousal.
The brain in ADHD is constantly forecasting novelty or stimulation to support metabolic balance.
Tasks without emotional or contextual meaning feel metabolically expensive because they offer no predictive reward signal.
So, the brain withholds dopamine to prevent energy waste. It is not a lack of discipline; it is predictive efficiency. That is why interest ignites focus:
Meaning creates prediction, which gives the brain enough certainty to release metabolic energy.
“Interest isn’t indulgence; it’s ignition”
It describes metabolic energy for prediction.
Emotional Meaning — The Gate Is Detailed Language Precision.
The so-called “meaning gate” in ADHD reflects the language-to-prediction interface. If a task lacks conceptual meaning, if the brain cannot see why the energy expenditure matters, it does not release dopamine to fund it. That is why deadlines, external feedback, or urgency help; they supply meaningful context that produces cortisol and norepinephrine arousal, stabilising prediction error. It is not that ADHD individuals are distracted; their brains are selective about spending energy where meaning is metabolically balanced.
Metabolic Regulation — Energy, Not Effort.
What looks like procrastination or inattention is often energy conservation. The ADHD brain is not willpower-poor: it is energy dependent. Without a clear predictive value, it prevents metabolic depletion. The moment detailed language meaning becomes clear, interest, connection, novelty, and challenge, the body tracker releases energy, attention, and regulation. That is dopamine’s job: to fuel updated predictive balance.
Summary.
Dopamine is not pleasure; it is metabolic precision. It does not reward excitement; it funds prediction that the brain can afford. ADHD is not a willpower issue; it is a regulation of energy through language meaning. When prediction lacks emotional or contextual coherence, the brain withholds energy. When meaning aligns, dopamine releases, not as indulgence, but as prediction. It is a brain waiting for clear predictive detailed language meaning before releasing energy. Interest does not spoil focus; it activates attention. Motivation is not a feeling; it is the brain agreeing to spend metabolic energy. Dopamine is not pleasure; it is prediction. It fuels what feels meaningful, not what feels easy.
COVID-19, the Rise in ADHD and Autism Diagnoses Is a Correction of Prediction error not a Sudden Epidemic.
1. Prediction — The Brain Is Not Disordered.
It is Predicting Differently. What’s rising is not ADHD or autism itself; it is recognition of how the brain constructs concepts and prediction under chronic uncertainty. Before COVID, most people lived in the West within rigid structures, routines, commutes, and environments that unconsciously stabilised their body’s allostatic energy tracking.
Those routines acted as metabolic moderated “guard rails” and external regulators. When lockdowns stripped those away, many brains that had always relied on environmental predictability were suddenly forced to restrict share attention to self-regulate without external cues. That is when prediction differences, attentional drift, sensory overload, hyper focus, or fatigue became visible. These were never new conditions. They were long-standing prediction errors, now revealed by the loss of external simulation as scaffolding. ADHD and autism are not epidemics. They are expressions of how differently brains have learned to manage uncertainty.
2. Emotional Meaning — Diagnosis as a Language Problem.
Much of what we call diagnosis is really the process of assigning emotional and behavioural meaning to interoceptive data. Before, society lacked the language to name or value these prediction differences. Post-COVID, there is a collective reappraisal underway; people are finally describing sensory and attentional experiences that were previously pathologised or ignored.
This is not just “awareness.” It is a semantic correction, a social shift in how we label prediction styles. The categories remain blunt, but they help people explain what was always metabolically true: some brains forecast differently because they were built under different sensory and energetic conditions, like ADHD and Autism. The label is not identity. It is a westernised medical translation of how your prediction system works. How cultural inheritance, affect realism and medicine in Western society quickly becomes a diagnosis. A continued assembly of named behaviour and experience. This is not what is happening in the brain.
3. Diagnoses are human inventions, not neural entities.
They are the language we created to describe sensations, how people predict and regulate energy differently. What psychiatry calls a disorder, neuroscience recognises as a prediction pattern, the brain’s best attempt to stay metabolically efficient under uncertainty, as past adversity. There are no unique markers in the brain for mental illness, only predictive models waiting to be updated.
Metabolic Regulation — Why It Became Visible After COVID.
COVID created a global metabolic stress test. Sleep, movement, and nutrition patterns changed dramatically. Cortisol levels rose; collective uncertainty spiked. Under those conditions, people’s body trackers began running at a chronic deficit. And when the body cannot regulate efficiently, attention, language, and emotional meaning all destabilise. The surge in diagnosis is not pathology; it reflects metabolic strain, revealing the diversity of predictive functioning across social species as individuals. Construction theory states, when energy availability drops, the brain prioritises survival over exploration, magnifying differences in attention, social regulation, and sensory sensitivity. After COVID 19, diagnosis increased because regulation decreased.
4. Integrated View — The Correction, Not the Crisis.
The post-COVID rise in ADHD and autism diagnoses marks a cultural and scientific correction, not a disorder epidemic. We are finally acknowledging that human brains vary in how they construct predictions and manage uncertainty, shaped by early adversity, environment, and metabolic history. The challenge now is not to “treat” those differences but to teach regulation, helping people stabilise their predictive systems so they can work efficiently within their energy range.
The true epidemic is not neurodivergence. It is metabolic dysregulation, a global mismatch between how much uncertainty we live in and how little energy we give ourselves to process it. What changed is not the number of divergent brains. What changed is the collective energy state of an uncertain world.
5. For Leaders, Educators, and Clinicians.
Recognise that what looks like inattention, sensory avoidance, or emotional flatness often reflects metabolic depletion, not dysfunction. Redesign workplaces and schools for predictive flexibility, consistent routines, clear communication, and regulated sensory environments. Teach people to track interoceptive cues (hydration, sleep, nutrition, movement, attention) before assuming cognitive deficit. Replace deficit language with predictive granular literacy: “How is this person predicting and funding their energy right now?”
Final summary: The surge in ADHD and autism diagnoses is not a spike in the disorder. It is the revelation of how modern culture deals with uncertainty, as it exposes metabolic differences in prediction. When the world lost external stability, internal prediction had to take over, and many brains simply could not afford it. This is not a mental illness. It is a prediction error meeting energetic simulation, as reality.
You can also read all about the flight or fight myth here.