Welcome to the worlds of Steven Michael Harris (Author, Theorist, Educator and Performer).
The mechanisms that change in the nerve cells and synapses - mechanisms that affect sensitivity to neurochemicals - create an exponential range of differences of response to excitation and inhibition in different cells. Because of the fact that excesses of excitation lead to inhibition, and because changes in sensitivity can create ways for the cell to learn to respond with quicker inhibition with repeated exposure to certain kinds of input, some cellular events [See Essay: The "Cellular Event."] will be eliminated through exposure to medications that increase either excitation or inhibition. (The "coma" of a cellular event can be expressed by a shortening of the action potential to the point where that cell no longer is able to influence the excitation of the cells receiving its impulses.)
The problems occurring in the organism, problems that are being treated with the medication, may be caused by the nature of the firings resulting from these various cellular events. The problem firings are being communicated to many other cells and have an effect on the nature of the firings of those many other cells. The therapeutic range of medication reaches a level where it is able to eliminate the influence of these cellular events without causing too much havoc with other cells that are not as sensitive to these chemicals.
Every medication treatment will cause a range of cellular events to stop communicating to others. But if the problem is in the nature of the firings of these cells, the answer to curing the problem possibly could be something different than that of causing further inhibition in those cellular events so the influence of the cells on others is diminished. The cells might need to fire in a very different way but the medication reduces symptoms by severing the input of these cells into the mix. The fully inhibited cells were inhibited to begin with. The medication treatment results in further inhibition. (Some of it permanent.) A change in the opposite direction might be the answer but that would require different medications in many cases and medications delivered in ways that don't allow levels to reach such high volumes of chemical in the system.
These very sensitive cells (or cellular events of the cells) will be inhibited with excitatory or inhibitory chemicals at the levels used in medications and in the ways that the medications are delivered (with a pill that causes a great increase of that chemical in the body when the level of medication in the blood stream or cerebral fluid peaks).
It is possible to move the sensitivities of these types of cellular events in the other direction (towards greater responsiveness to excitation with lower frequencies) only if excitatory chemicals are delivered in such a way that these peaks of exposure are avoided. (Other mathematical factors are involved as well. More on that later.)
[See Essay: Beneficial Damage]
[Click to Go Back to Unified Theory Directory Page]
placeholder
This is a placeholder
Copyright © 1997-2008
steven michael harris
Lexington, virginia, usa