EDS & Perception: A Pattern Mapping Study
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Mapping the relationship between connective tissue, sensory processing, nervous system regulation, and unusual experience.
People don't all experience the same input in the same way. Differences in sensory processing, interoception, autonomic regulation, connective tissue, neurodivergence, and other physiological factors can influence what reaches awareness and how strongly the body responds.
The nervous system continuously receives, filters, prioritizes, and integrates information from both inside and outside the body. Differences in those processes can affect what reaches conscious awareness, how strongly a stimulus is experienced, and how quickly the body responds to it. That variation is where my research begins.
I'm interested in what happens when we look at those differences alongside something harder to measure: the unusual experiences people report.
Through this project, I'm collecting self reported data from people with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and hypermobility spectrum disorders about sensory sensitivity, physical responses, interpersonal perception, dreams, intuition, environmental sensitivity, and experiences they may describe as unexplained, anomalous, spiritual, paranormal, or contact related.
Why EDS?
EDS affects connective tissue throughout the body. Connective tissue participates in a system containing sensory receptors responsive to mechanical input such as stretch, compression, and vibration.
Mechanoreceptors convert mechanical changes into signals that can be processed by the nervous system, a process involving mechanotransduction. Differences in tissue tension, elasticity, and integrity may therefore affect proprioceptive and interoceptive signaling and how physical input is registered across the system.
EDS also frequently intersects with other variables relevant to perception and physiological state, including autonomic dysfunction and differences in sensory processing. My research is therefore not treating EDS as an explanation for anomalous experience. I'm using it as a population in which differences in body
wide signaling and sensory processing can be examined alongside those reports.
The Brain Body Environment Interface
Several biological systems are relevant to the question.
Sensory processing determines which external signals are amplified, filtered, prioritized, or ignored.
Interoception provides information about the body's internal condition, including signals related to cardiovascular, visceral, and other physiological states. Some bodily responses can occur before the triggering information reaches conscious awareness.
Autonomic regulation changes baseline physiological state and responsiveness. The same stimulus can therefore produce very different bodily responses depending on the state of the system.
Connective tissue and mechanotransduction contribute another layer of body wide sensory information through mechanical signaling and feedback to the nervous system.
Neurodivergence introduces additional variation in sensory filtering, attention, stimulus prioritization, and perceptual processing.
Rather than treating these systems independently, I'm interested in what happens when they occur together.
What I'm Measuring
The survey collects self reported data across several domains:
EDS/HSD status and associated diagnoses
Sensory sensitivity and environmental responsiveness
Interoceptive and physical sensations
Autonomic type responses
Responses occurring around other people
Dream and sleep phenomena
Altered or unusual states of awareness
Experiences involving apparently nonverbal information
Unexplained, anomalous, paranormal, spiritual, or contact related experiences
Age of onset and changes in frequency or intensity over time
Relevant demographic and biological variables
I'm looking at co-occurrence. For example, does a particular sensory profile occur more frequently among participants reporting vivid dream phenomena? Do people reporting unusual interpersonal physical sensations also report greater awareness of internal bodily states? Do these patterns differ alongside dysautonomia, neurodivergence, EDS subtype, biological sex, age, or other variables?
Those questions can be investigated without deciding in advance what caused the reported experience.
The Experiencer Profile
This is part of a broader framework I've been developing that I call the experiencer profile isn't a diagnosis, personality type, or claim that a particular biological trait produces anomalous experiences. It is a way of asking whether people who report certain experiences also share identifiable characteristics in the systems responsible for receiving, filtering, integrating, and responding to information.
My working model considers multiple interacting variables, including genetic variation, connective tissue behavior, body wide sensory signaling, autonomic regulation, brain based sensory filtering, physiological state, and environmental context.
That creates a testable starting point:
Before asking what an unusual experience was, can we first characterize the biological and perceptual system that experienced it?
That is what this survey is designed to begin mapping.
Participate in the Research
You don't need to believe in a particular explanation for unusual experiences to participate. You don't even need to know how to explain your own.
I want the observation first. Interpretation comes later.
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