Welcome to the worlds of Steven Michael Harris (Author, Theorist, Educator and Performer).
A fatal flaw is a missing piece of logic so basic and so common to medical research that almost all medical understanding is distorted and corrupted without it.
Every brain cell makes its own decisions. Under consistent conditions a brain cell might be inclined to indicate excitation to other cells, and under consistent conditions another brain cell might be inclined to indicate inhibition.
At the synaptic level is one of the mechanisms for learning. Exposure to a certain neurotransmitter is reacted to by a change in the actual number of receptors. The cell, at this junction, can learn to become more and more reactive to a particular chemical through activity.
Practice makes perfect. The cell learns to react faster and faster to exposure to a particular chemical agent.
The brain is able to create zones of control through the use of different particular neurotransmitters.
If a lesser amount of brain activity (perhaps under-activity) has been occurring in the regions of the brain that are responsive to serotonin (an inhibitory transmitter), for instance, then those cells that have been very active in the past have been learning to react faster and faster to serotonin through the mechanisms of the synapse that change the receptivity to the chemical. (And feedback loop signals, caused by cells establishing connections with cells that fire with similar frequencies at the same time, will further speed up the response to an arrangement of firings by adding inputs to the cell that match the nature of the firings of the output through the axon.)
If a particular cell (or group of cells) has become too active over time, that cell "learns" to be more reactive to the chemical transmitter and therefore will react faster with exposure to smaller and smaller amounts of the transmitter (whether it is excitatory or inhibitory).
So as smaller amounts of the neurotransmitter are eventually needed for a reaction, it is reasonable to assume that less neurotransmitter will be used in that particular site.
So too much serotonin activity in those cells over time will create less measurable serotonin in those parts of the brain because the cells are now more reactive to the chemical.
In this sense, too much serotonin results in less measurable serotonin in the fluid of the brain.
A large part of brain research involves measuring the levels of various chemicals (in the brains of cadavers, lab animals or in extracted fluids of living patients). When these researchers measure a particular chemical level to be higher than average, they conclude that there is an overabundance of that chemical in the system. When the researchers measure a particular chemical level to be lower than average, they conclude that there is a deficit of that chemical in the system. (They then try to develop therapies that replace the chemical deficit through medication.)
These conclusions are not fully thought out and they are wrong conclusions.
These conclusions skew the understanding of how the brain actually operates and these conclusions make it impossible to develop the needed theoretical advances that will bring about wonderful advances in medical treatment.
Almost all current medical understanding uses this bad logic as a basic building block. When this is eventually understood, then most current theories will be understood to be suspect and will then need to be reconsidered.
(This is like a massive and complicated brick structure that is built to the sky before it is discovered that every brick of the structure is faulty and could crumble. And it is much easier, and human nature, to keep working with the faulty structure rather than to take it all apart to start rebuilding it right.)
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Copyright © 1997-2008
steven michael harris
Lexington, virginia, usa