I’m writing a series for Wired.com about neurotechnology and my son. Here’s an excerpt:

What if your computer missed your keystrokes whenever it was playing music? Or what if it couldn’t read from the hard drive when a picture was on the screen? Or maybe every time the CD tray opened, a random window would close? Imagine that all system functions work fine by themselves, but not in combination. You would probably send your computer to the repair shop, if not the dump.

What if it wasn’t your computer that acted this way, but your child’s brain? Now what would you do?

My son’s brain can’t handle all of the sensory input his body is sending him. Caleb has Sensory Processing Disorder, the human equivalent of a computer that can’t adequately multitask, or a network that drops packets when there is a lot of traffic. All of his senses work individually, but his brain loses information when they are combined. This problem wasn’t obvious to us when he was younger, but now that he is in first grade, the complications are growing.

Read the full article here.