Untitled Document

The Unified Theory of the Nervous System
and Behavior

Cognitive Philosophy /Brain Theory by Steven Michael Harris

Sleep = Withdrawal = Placebo Effect

It is impossible for any cure to be found with the current methods of seeking out biological treatments. A cure for any neurological problem could never be possible with a maintenance medication. No cure could be found by trying one or two doses of a medication a day and looking for improvement in rats or people. No cure is possible when changing the levels of any chemical in the brain so far out of the normal range that would be found in a healthy brain as is the case with most pharmacological treatments used today.

All neurological disorders are either caused by a communication of stress at such a level that the process that causes withdrawal is overwhelmed or are caused by a breakdown in the process behind withdrawal itself. (The differences in the various disorders is a result of the geography in the brain where stress may be concentrated. All thinking problems are created as an aberration of one process related to communication in the brain.) (Because of a re-identification of stress, my use of the word "stress" is somewhat different than that of the scientific community.)

If greater levels of a chemical in a nerve site cause the site to become more reactive to that chemical over time, then a measurement of a trend in the brain to have less of a certain chemical might really be an indicator of a problem caused by too much of that chemical in the past leading to greater reactivity to that chemical.

When you understand the language the brain uses to communicate with itself, it becomes clear how the brain does its work, controls most things and makes its decisions site by site and not by raising the levels of chemicals throughout the entire brain. The brain's ability to inhibit or excite the firings in an entire area of the brain through hormonal controls has to do with mechanisms behind focus.

(The graphic artist, for instance, develops an ability to focus on the lines of the subject by learning to send inhibitory chemicals throughout the brain without increasing levels of the chemicals that inhibit the centers for visual perception and without sending direct inhibitory signals to that same region. The artist is not aware of doing this but just finds the "zone" where focus is increased. This state is difficult to explain because it comes with inhibition of the language centers of the brain.)

The medical community is making some big mistakes in theory (and therefore they "understand" very little about why things work or don't work) because of using the response to various maintenance medications as the foundation for much of their basic science.

Response to many medications is really a happy accident that comes with increasing an inhibitory chemical to the right range where it affects the stressed area of the brain that has become too responsive to that same chemical. The antidote is the poison. The parts of the brain experiencing stress (and communicating that stress throughout the rest of the system) are firing a greater number of times per unit of time. The decision is not clear (both on and off) in a site that is not able to respond to excitatory chemicals at any volume without "flickering" (stuttering, tremor...). Add a little inhibitory chemical and the part causing the problem goes into a coma. Without firing it does not communicate stress throughout the system and the system appears to be working better. But receptor sites that were not having a problem before might begin to have a problem with an increase in inhibitory chemicals. These sites were not as inhibited so not as sensitive to the chemicals as were the problem sites. It takes a certain volume of chemical or a certain amount of time for these to become problem sites like the sites that were put into a "coma." This is the reason for therapeutic range with medications that tend to inhibit the nervous system. (Most anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, sedatives, barbiturates...) There is a wide range of different sensitivities to chemical brain messengers caused by a variety of processes that have been witnessed and are still to be understood. These various sensitivities could be created by a nerve cell synapse changing the number of receptors to various chemicals in proportion to each other, by the cell retaining some of the chemicals for different lengths of time after absorption (half-lives), by growth and atrophy (a dendrite grows and delivers a greater amount of chemical to a smaller and now more sensitive receptor site dealing with a greater concentration of certain chemicals), by a greater number of nerve fibers sending messages to one place, and by processes within the nucleus of the nerve cell that can only be imagined at this time.

The excitatory brain messengers have a more complicated effect on the system and they operate with a very different algorithm or pattern. They are not just the opposite of the inhibitory chemicals. Medications that deliver mostly excitatory chemicals to the brain (some medications are both by increasing some excitatory chemicals along with some inhibitory chemicals) include amphetamines, methylphenidate, L-Dopa...

First, I have to explain that, in the language that the brain uses to communicate with itself, it is a mistake to consider a nervous site to be excited or stimulated if the on and off firings have a faster cycling (number of firings per unit of time). A site that is firing rapidly is actually inhibited:

When a nervous site is not firing it is making no decisions. It is asleep (in micro terms), in a coma, dead... it is not thinking when it is off. When it is firing it is awake, alive, thinking (in micro terms dealing with very small units of time of relative change in behavior). There are very big differences in the sensation of firing and not firing and no consciousness during the time of not firing. A small period of time relative to the amount of time firing is a period of transition where the cell is still having sensation but that sensation is rapidly changing to a period of non-sensation. The end of the firing is the dying or death (an extremely small period of time) that corresponds with the burst of inhibitory chemical down the line that stops another cell from firing (or rather votes on whether that cell will fire a certain way or not). In order to have any sensation or thought the nervous sites need to be excited. The longer the unbroken time of excitation and firing, the greater the "yes" decision or stimulation or excitation down the line. The larger the number of stops in a period of time the greater the "no" decision or inhibition or agitation or discomfort or stress down the line of communication.

(Nervous cells are voting mechanisms. The message sent down the line by one nerve fiber can be overruled by the vote of the messages sent by other nerve fibers.)

It is important to see how easy it might be to make the wrong conclusions by trying to understand the nervous system without having the right theory to begin with. Current techniques in scientific method will not get you to the answer because there is a flaw in scientific method.

Here is the important difference in the behaviors of the different classes of brain messengers:

Inhibitory messengers always create greater inhibition at any increase in volume. These chemicals either sedate the nerves that are affected or they create a greater number of switches from on to off during a unit of time when the nerve is firing (the agitation that is a form of inhibition previously confused with being a state of greater excitation).

Any increase in inhibitory chemicals serves to create greater inhibition. Too much inhibitory medication will lead to sleep or coma or death. Too much inhibitory chemical will not cause the cell to fire longer or become more stimulated in any way in which the brain communicates.

Excitatory chemicals are very different. They operate with a "circuit-breaker" or "overflow switch." Too much excitatory brain messenger results in a shutting off of the site probably due to more than one process. (One of these processes is caused by the ion channel sweeping inhibitory chemicals into the cell along with excitatory chemicals until the cell stops firing.) Some cellular events are extremely sensitive to any change in the amount of chemical in the environment, so medications always create an unnaturally high volume of chemical messengers for a range of sensitive cellular events. (Medications raise the volumes of these chemicals and remove the ability of the brain to regulate its own hormonal levels of these chemicals up and down as needed.)

"No" messengers = "No" Too much "No" messenger still = "No"

"Yes" messengers = "Yes" But too much "Yes" messenger = "No"

Because of this characteristic and the fact that inhibitory chemicals tend to have longer half-lives in the system, the system will tend to move towards greater inhibition throughout life. People and animals become slower as they age.

This system makes a lot of sense in evolutionary terms. An organism needs to always be wary of stimulus in order to survive. Shyness is protective. The stop lasts longer than the start and has the strongest vote. Possible dangers must be processed before acting. Impulsive action towards stimulus leads to greater danger.

Understanding these differences leads to greater understanding of all life. These differences in response to these chemicals is inherent in all behavior and perception and language and culture and emotion...

A change in sensitivity in a cellular event from a No decision to a Yes decision under the same circumstances (same input signals) requires a change that goes against the mathematical tendency to move towards greater sensitivity towards inhibition because of the slight mathematical favoring of inhibition over excitation. This change can occur more easily after a period of rest. A period of rest is a period of time when the cell is not very active, so that changes can occur that make the cell more receptive to firing again under the same circumstances. This is the purpose of sleep. This is the change (towards a Yes decision from a No decision) that occurs in many cells during withdrawal, or in one cell during that cell's withdrawal from stress. Stress is the mathematical change towards greater inhibition in the average of cellular events in the entire system or a portion of the system. In terms of qualia, one end of that scale is the pleasure end and the other end of that scale is the pain end (the stress end).

Pleasure, confidence, hope: lead you away from stress. Stress causes illness and disorder. The removal of stress leads to placebo effect.

Stress is the movement towards inhibition. Sleep leads to a movement away from inhibition. Withdrawal is the movement away from inhibition. So sleep is a withdrawal event (withdrawal from stress). (For this reason a drug withdrawal will involve more sleep or be more effective with more sleep: you "sleep it off" when you are drugged or drunk. It is better to get through that change in the neurological environment if you do it while sleeping so the painful changes in the neural communications occur without consciousness.)

These mechanisms occur in many forms experienced by an organism with the multitude of nerve cells responding to different kinds of input creating the illusion of many different symptoms and experiences.

[Click to Go Back to Unified Theory More Essays Page]

[Click to Go Back to Unified Theory Directory Page]