This is my first really theoretical post and may need some refining and adjusting when more evidence comes in, so be warned the specifics of this are lower confidence than normal.
This post covers a wide range of “disorders of consciousness” including “autism/schizophrenia” and most “personality disorders”.
Necessary assumptions:
The adaptive portion of nervous systems are made up of interdependent functional modules, and for each “function” in a nervous system, there are at least two discrete modules.
We do not have a good understanding yet of exactly what these functions are yet, but the location and connectivity of “nuclei” in the nervous system provide a rough guide.
Each functional module has an “input” and an “output” mode (except the DCN, which work as a state processor).
On a macro level, there’s a meta “input network” and meta “output network”.
Behavior is generated based on the sum total of all input networks.
Behavior is expressed through the sum total of the output networks.
Behavior is modified “in real time” by the “output” sides of functional modules “adjusting” the “input” side of functional modules.
The order in which functional modules are metabolically “calculated” modifies the strength of signal (imagine a row of people speaking, we should be able to hear the person closest to us most clearly).
Each module has a distinct activation strength, and combined with order determines how “influential” a functional module is on output behavior (same conceit as above, but imagine those voices also have varying volume.
Consciousness/awareness is the mechanic our nervous systems use which allow the “output” side to modify the activation strength of the “input” side in real time to modify behavior.
Guess that’s a lot, and why I don’t usually do summaries considering I’m probably missing a few key points, lol.
What happens in a brain when an “input” functional module has mismatched strength with the “output” module? Or functional modules are wired into the “wrong” module?
Right, thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Nervous systems do have functions which attempt to manage this, it’s likely this is the primary function of CPG circuitry in each functional module, to normalize and “check” to ensure consistency between the metabolic inputs and outputs (“why do astrocytes cover neuronal synapses?”).
One example of this “mismatch” would be synesthesia, where sensory processing modules are higher in the stack than the output side expects them to be, meaning those signals don’t get “drowned out in the noise” like “most people”.
Another would be “schizophrenia”, which would likely be a really hot “output” module skipping some some “down select” modules and feeding information directly into the input side. (Two points here, 1) “Positive symptoms” only, “Negative symptoms” are just social abuse, 2) We can see this on imaging usually in the ventral CA1 region of the hippocampus).
On the other hand many traits of “autism” represent the opposite, an overweight “input” stream which is too hot to overwrite (so we need to find a circuit which isn’t as hot on the input side and re-route stuff through that).
“narcissistic personality disorder” or “asperger’s syndrome” probably represent “stuck” or “hot” state checking modules.
The brainstem has “emergency override” mechanics for this process, and can either granularly blow the stack or in a full blown panic attack blow it all at once. Granular activation occurs in “PTSD”.
When a functional “mis-match”, “no-match”, or “imbalance” occur between modules, it generates an error state, and this error state is perceived as “distressing” (This can trigger a brainstem initiated blow out, which is attempting to correct the balance).
Edit: I think a really important thing to note here is that nervous systems are really adaptive, and the “better” an organism is at adapting, the more flexible of a stack it can support. Some individuals are born with genes that have banging actin dynamics, this allows modulation of a much greater variation of signals, so the exact same wiring does not necessarily result in the exact same effect.
Further, the modules themselves are almost certainly way way way more generalized than our current understandings of them. It’s very likely that almost any module can be trained to accept different types of input (or push different output), even if it isn’t “native” to the function of the module. This actually would result in some really cool ways of thinking!
As kind of an aside, I just surprised myself thinking about this consciousness mechanic and what’s going on while reading. On the initial input side, none of this actually means anything, there’s no context, it’s just a bunch of sorta arbitrary pixels of various intensities arranged in patterns.
That’s all my initial input stream sees. However, through the magic of this process my nervous system has applied all kinds of magic and is overwriting what I see in literally real time to transform this arbitrariness into “words” which I see perfectly and distinctly on the screen. (Is this the dyslexia/hyperlexia mechanic?)
Further, it’s getting passed through at least a few times, for shape, then to structure, then to context. WOW.
Oh gosh, cultures literally train it’s members to write a specific version of “reality” for it’s own purposes. Each culture lives in a literally distinct world that’s likely expensive to reconcile with other cultures. The larger the “differences” which need to be reconciled, the more expensive to write. Is there a formula for outgrouping strength here somewhere? How much control do we have over the write/reconcile toggle?