The Unified Theory of the Nervous System
and Behavior
Cognitive Philosophy /Brain Theory by Steven Michael Harris
A large number of you who read this essay will have great difficulty "getting it" and may never "get it." Try hard. It is not easy.
I've written about the cellular event and also about the mathematical advantage that inhibition holds over excitation in other essays.
In answer to a question that was e-mailed to me
Excitatory and inhibitory medications can do the same thing to some decisions of the brain
This slight mathematical advantage leads to a wide range of behaviors and symptoms with time (and sometimes very quickly when extreme stresses affect the nervous system).
In a synapse, exposure to repeated dominance of excitation leads to greater receptivity to excitation (but reverses when taken to an extreme). Repeated exposure of dominant inhibitory activity leads to greater receptivity to inhibitory activity. Inhibition washes out excitation - excitation washes out the inhibition. But changes in the direction towards greater inhibition are more likely with a lot of back and forth movements of sensitivities (both excitation and inhibition). All mental activity is the movement of changes in mechanisms of sensitivity that occurs with the learning and all mental activity is also the nature of the firings of cells that occurs with thought that is affected by such changes in sensitivity that are a part of such changes in sensitivity as well. The gradual changes towards more sensitivity to inhibition in cellular events in various places of the nervous system (remembering that many different cellular events occur in any particular cell and that cellular events move through the system from cell to cell so they are not easy to witness clinically instead of theoretically) increasingly occur with greater activity and these changes can be reversed with lesser activity (when cells are not firing, when the organism is asleep).
Decisions can go back and forth between on and off, excited and inhibited, yes and no - but changes can quickly or slowly occur that make it more difficult to change a decision from no to yes. A very small minority of cellular events [See Essay: The "Cellular Event"] that have changed to a no (inhibited) decision because of this factor are too active at certain times (or most of the time) to change back to a yes (more receptive to excitation) decision. A very small minority of cellular events can have a massive effect on a nervous system because of the way one cell can influence tens of thousands of other cells.
When I describe the mud swamp, I'm explaining what happens because of the nature of liquids and solids and the changes that occur with time because of the differences between liquids and solids and their molecular attractions to each other. The molecules in the mud swamp are reacting to adjacent molecules in a three dimensional world. The similar math event that occurs in the nervous system is with movements of sensitivities in cellular events and is a part of the physical world and created by the physical world of the nerve cells and the changes that occur in nerve cells, but because of the many changes that occur and the many different connections of cells to each other and the almost infinite possibilities of different paths that nerve impulses can follow through the brain (and the mathematical factor of how the cell influences it's own inputs through circular feedback loops of connections), the math involves far more than the three dimensions involved with the example of mud substances. These factors in the movements of sensitivities are also different in that this evolution of changes can occur extremely quickly (mostly in select regions of a nervous system) and over a great amount of time in the nervous system as a whole.
The nature of solids and their attractions to each other in the mud swamp as opposed to the liquids in the mud swamp are mathematically akin (in a way) to the nature of changes to inhibition receptivity as opposed to changes to excitation in the nervous system (because of that slight mathematical advantage that is given to inhibition).
The mud swamp in the example as a very wet mixture of mud and water someplace that is fed by a source of water from some source on one end and with that liquid flowing through the muddy area of earth and draining away or evaporating away someplace downhill. The liquid is moving very slowly through this muddy region.
In the infancy of this region of muddy liquid it is brown water. There is an even mixture of this liquid throughout the region. Should a large amount of clean water enter the swamp in one part of the swamp, it would quickly mix into the entire swamp through osmosis so that the entire swamp would soon have an equal mix of dirt/water from one end of the swamp to the other.
Let's now imagine that a drought or other change to the input of water to the region begins to change the ratio of water to dirt so that there is less and less water in the mix. With less water in the mix, the greater attractions of the solids to each other start to change the characteristics of the mud. Instead of a liquid mix moving freely in any direction, there now can be found many small channels of muddy liquid flowing throughout the field. In the beginning when the liquid mud dries enough that channels start forming, the channels finger everywhere and flow in all directions with muddy liquid flowing through them.
Over time, as the swamp dries out further, the solids are more solid and the liquids that flow through are in fewer channels and these fewer channels are deeper and not changing as rapidly as did the many channels when the dirt was more wet. The liquid that flows through these fewer channels is clearer and moves through these channels more quickly because such a great proportion of hardened dirt does not slow it down anymore.
The older and drier the swamp becomes, the harder the dirt becomes, the cleaner and clearer and faster the water flows through the channels, and the deeper and fewer and less flexible those channels become.
Dirt is the inhibition and water is the excitation.
In the brain these patterns occur with the movements of sensitivity to inhibition and excitation throughout the system over time. The factor that repeated excitation in a cellular event leads to greater excitation in the future, and that repeated inhibition in a cellular event leads to greater and quicker response to inhibition in the future also adds to this kind of change.
Think of inhibition as stress. (The opposites of excitation and inhibition are both necessary parts of the mechanisms of nervous system communication and there is no good or bad between them, but the fact that one end of the spectrum is the pain end and the fact that the same end of the spectrum accumulates in excess because of the slight mathematical advantage - and whenever there is any kind of excess of excitation as well - that inhibitory end of the spectrum becomes the expression of all stress. Imbalance is always more permanent on the inhibition end of the scale.)
The mathematics that causes the swamp to develop in such a way with the buildup of solids (stress) is very much the math that is behind most behaviors, learning, disorders, characteristics of normal development, etcÉ.
The healthy baby is an all or nothing kind of actor. Every part of the body is pleasure when happy, every part is pain when not happy. There are few patterns developed yet in behavior. Like the very wet swamp with just muddy liquid and no channels developed yet. (Think of the channels as learning. The channels become deeper and less flexible with learning, with practice.)
The healthy young child changes focus from topic to topic, activity to activity. Like the first expressions of the swamp when the solids begin to attract to each other and there are many small channels of liquid mud moving in all directions without any or many dominant channels. Patterns are developing but they are not entrenched, more flexible. (The channels that form in the softer mud are more flexible and less permanent as well.)
As the person ages the behaviors become more individual, the quirks more specific, there is less flexibility. The activities of focus are fewer.
Activities that have been practiced are performed faster than those that are new. (The water in the older swamp is clearer and moves faster through the deeper/harder channels.)
Inhibition is the cause of disorders of the brain and the nature of disorders is expressed in this math as well:
The disorders that are the most severe are of a brain that is the most inhibited and most like the older and drier swamp. Patterns that develop are less able to change and with practice become more and more extreme. (Symptoms get worse with time and practice. The channels in the dry swamp just get deeper and the water flows through faster. Obsessions and repetitious movement result.)
The person with bi-polar disorder has a very inhibited nervous system. When a large number of cellular events are inhibited you have the obsessive depression. Some parts of the brain can be so inhibited that they just stop or the brain decides to inhibit a region completely to avoid pain. (Remember that in a nerve cell high frequencies of firing are akin to inhibition and slower frequencies are akin to excitation.) Because a cell that is communicating excess inhibition is doing so to thousands of other cells, the complete inhibition of that cell can lead to some interesting effects. Excess inhibition leads to a complete shutdown of a region of the brain. The brain is generally inhibited (so you have the hardened swamp effect with less flexibility and faster movement of excitation) so that the shutdown of a region of the brain leads to a gush of excitation when the normal inhibitory responsibilities of that region are no longer working. Much like a flood of water that rushes over that hardened swamp that does not absorb the water but deflects it causing the fewer channels of water to cut deeper and run faster with less flexibility in the paths that can be taken, the switch to mania occurs with greater general inhibition of sensitivities in synapses that leads to a regional shutdown of the brain that leads to a gush of excitation occurring with more obsession (fewer choices of paths for the impulses to follow) and lacking in logic because the information that was processed by the part of the brain that was shut down is no longer in the mix.
The old person is the old swamp. Inflexible with hardened characteristics and some strong practiced abilities but the interests are fewer just like the channels are fewer.
This essay is just the beginning of the explanation of many factors of behavior and development and disorder. All disorders are at least partly explained by this mathematical factor, the differences being the nature and degree and location of such inhibition in the brain.
Other factors such as the reasons why stress will collect in some regions of the brain over others (statistically) due to the wiring and the problems that occur in logic when a "yes" turns into a "no" due to this inhibitory advantage all need to be discussed later.
I'll be linking back to this essay with many future essays.
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