"Steven Michael Harris" <stevenharris1 at verizon.net> wrote in message news:BE02EAB2.E31%stevenharris1 at verizon.net...
> New theoretical help for the work discussed on this newsgroup
>> This new theory starts with the concept of the nervous system being a system
> of math that repeats a basic unit of the seeking of a frequency (qualia of
> the unit being pleasure/pain) which becomes pattern-seeking at all levels
> and grows the various different kinds of bodies and nervous systems with
> small amounts of tinkering coming from genetics (with this math doing almost
> all of the work). This theory applies to philosophy and medicine and
> psychology and biological theories...
>> The implications and new understandings coming from this theory are
> enormous. (Many new explanations come from this website.)
>> www.stevenharris.com/theory
>Sample (with added comments) is from http://stevenharris.com/theory/109.html
SH:
How My Theory Relates to Some Recent Science and
Medicine Announcements
My contention that pharmaceutical benefits can be achieved by an
illusion of making the nervous system better while actually making it
worse by adding stress to already stressed parts of the brain is
supported by some recent announcements.
PF:
Here I thought: ADHD controlled by ritalin is a case in point.
SH:
A recent study announced that no conclusive (statistical) link could
be proved between the increases in the incidence of autism in the
population with the use of certain infant vaccines. This is one of those
studies that show how statistics can be manipulated through narrow
focus or through the avoidance of other related factors. This study
does nothing to prove that vaccines are completely safe if many other
medications in use are also unsafe, if no examination was done to find
a control group that is completely avoidant of modern medications of
any kind (and also avoidant of various chemicals in foods that can cause the same kinds of changes as medications). Has anyone
studied how the increase in autism in the population is occurring at a
time in our history when there are many more medications in
common usage in our population at a greater rate of usage?
PF:
You seem to have put your finger on a critical weakness of this research.
(If it deserves to be called research - given that it is sponsored by
pharmaceutical companies.)
SH:
Perhaps disorders such as autism (and along with autism probably every other
developmental and other disorder) are on the increase because the current trends of increased medication usage are increasing the amount
of stress being added to the nervous systems of our
population. (And don't hold your breath for the pharmaceutical
industry to do this study!) If that is true, then a study that focuses
only on incidence of autism relating to vaccines with mercury will not
show any statistically important relationship when the general usage
of all medications and wrongheaded theory concerning the nature of
those medications is really the cause.
PF:
Perhaps these new environmental chemicals alone OR POSSIBLY in combination with specific stressors??
SH:
Another study that supports my previous paragraph is a recent one
that examined the incidence of various mental illnesses in different
countries and showed that the USA has the highest percentage of the
population with mental illness in the world
PF:
You also have the highest murder rate in a country not in a civil war.
Don't you?! ;-|
SH:
and showed that
developed (rich) countries had a bigger percentage of their
populations with mental illness than do the poorest third world
countries.
PF:
Here is a relevant anecdote I try to get much mileage out off:
The population in London during
its bombardment by Nazi-Germany had a dramatically lower
incidents of mental illness than in an equal time-periond prior to the war.
Relates to that really poor people are forced to focus much more of
their resources of mental energy on paying attention to making sure
that their basic visceral need - and persistent challenge from impending
(environmentally brought) starvation - to eat is met, than do affluent people.
This in light of that the brain is an (what I call) "Actention Selection System";
Within an 'ASS', "actention modules" that are functionally/adaptively
incompatible as if compete whilst cheered-on {something reinforced by pleasure) and booed {something reinforced by pain) by the individual's present and past environmental influences (received/processed and stored by sensory-motivational neurons), and, by phylogeny 'programmed'
ontogenetically expressed and endogenously generated innate leanings and
instinctual drives, and, as recently recognized, biases of a brains
caused by "genomic imprinting" - i.e., that gametes can pass
on a (plausibly histone coded) "memory" of e.g. what one's grandparents
ate], by means of mutual inhibition ("lateral inhibition").
SH:
Some took this study to be proof of some moral or
political doctrine. No. The place to look in explaining this study is the
rate of medication use in these various countries. The United States is
not medicating more than the other countries because it has more
mental illness, it has more mental illness than the other countries
because it is medicating more.
PF:
IMO that was, in part, a conclusion arrived by "putting the cart before the horse".
SH:
This is a much better explanation than
any other when the desperate conditions of poverty in some
countries should cause more mental illness there due to the stresses
of situation and starvation and exposure to disease.
PF:
Not necessarily. I have already hinted at one general reason
as to why what you conclude may well not be correct.
(Another supplementary reason will be encountered later in this post.)
SH:
The maker of Paxil has been sued for not revealing studies about the
bad effects their drug has had on teens while they promoted the use
of the drug on that population. There is much more evidence of how
the antidepressants can stress the patients and even make them
worse in behavior and worse in mood than is being admitted to here
and in other studies. <snip>
PF:
Depression is a pain-associated threshold of present and/or past [stored and accumulated by changes to synapses referred to a Long Term Potention (LTP)] environmental stimulation "repression" or what I think of as "specific/synaptic hibernation";
[This is to be compared to "general hibernation"; Or, IOW, what "hibernation" is conventionally referring to - and, for that matter, aestivation.
The common (unifying) physiological denominator of specifichibernation
and general hibernation is "a muting (dampening) of metabolism"
AND that both tend to cancel behaviour and "consciousness" (as I
define/understand it).
However, in the case of specific/synaptic hibernation
[implying Long Term Depression (LTD) of the synaptic signal transmission]
the behavior and consciousness canceling effect can be *very selective
(or specific)*. ]
When a medication counteracts the "pain gating" (essentially involving
glutaminergic overactivity) what you say can of course ensue.
Our defenses against primal pain (or as I call it CURSES) is a
subtly working beast -- or, as Janov characterizes it: "a blessing and a
curse" [or was it the other way around?].
SH:
Another recent study showed that dogs and other animals can learn
language like children when some prodigy dogs were examined who
could learn a word with one exposure to it relating to a unique object
and recall the association weeks later. This goes against the concept
of the evolution of a "language module" as promoted by Pinker and
all. Animals with no language should have no language module and
should not be able to understand language if this theory is right. But
the amount of brain and the amount of stress in the brain caused by
genetics and other reasons as an explanation for differences of ability
and behavior that are part of my theory would explain this study in a
better way. My theory that the same mathematical factors are at
work in all brains and that the brain just makes sense of the body it is
in is a better explanation for why this study could get these results.
Don't forget what more or less latent lingual capacities that
chimps and parrots also seem to have.
I don't know about your mathematical model (yet) but
I intuitively tend to agree with you in as much as that
the evolution of human languages involved far less of a
radical brain functural novelty than some people might believe
it did.
SH:
<the rest of the paragraphs snipped>
PF:
I snipped the paragraph that mentioned ritalin, because you did not
specifically discuss something that raised my eyebrows or that
cought my interest.
I would have become intersted had you mentioned that ritalin works by
stimulating a firing (or increasing the firing) of neurons
(modular circuits) that then possibly, in turn,
directly and/or indirectly (via the principle of "lateral inhibition" amongst incompatible actention modules/submodules) blocks or gates the symptoms
of accumulated CURSES and/or some subtle conditioned-in
chronic brain-deficiency - possibly also made more or less likely dependent on genetic, epigentic/histone-coded, socially, and culturally transmitted characteristics.
The most insidious and widely and profoundly ignored of all causes of human disease and craziness (but also constructive productivity and creativity) is mediated by activity in potentially distress generating [potentially generating of a potentially overwhelmingly and maladaptively distressful - even lethally self-defeating -'neurophysiological attempt' to "pay, or focus, distressful _actention_"] glutaminergic neurons that contribute to CURSES type memory-states by being having beccome 'LTP-ed'.
Best wishes,
Peter
