This is just a sketch pad for this topic, planning on filling it out over the next few weeks.
This is a look at some “ADHD” types, some “OCD” types, some “Schizophrenia” types, and also certain types of dementia.
Jist is that each of the major subsystems has a carrier wave which is combined together in the hippocampus. Many “ADHD” traits are the result of improperly synchronized signals in the hippocampal transform, primarily a “slow” (relative to the dorsal stream) ventral stream. What we feel as “forgetfulness” is a binding error which causes the local pool (entorhinal cortex) to dump the construct and reset.
Conversely, many “OCD” symptoms are the opposite, an overweight or “fast” ventral stream, which keeps trying to bind behavior to dorsal stream data which has not been integrated yet.
Some positive symptoms of schizophrenia are the result of timing errors which cause binding to the wrong object, creating prediction errors.
Dementia in general are a reflection of continued hippocampal synchronization issues.
Edit:
Treatment strategies or “ADHD” and “OCD” types should all be focused on synchronization of the ventral and dorsal stream in the hippocampus. For ADHD, we can see the artifacts of the slow ventral stream by looking at temporal lobe function. When effective, medications like amphetamines indirectly agonize the slow D2 (ventral) circuit, increasing performance and enabling less synchronization faults and EC dumps (“Executive Function”).
“OCD” types will have a weaker D4 pathway, so synchronization should be achievable via that route. We can’t sustain D4 agonism however because it effects too many downstream sensory systems. Still working on this one.
For non pharmacuetical/clinical treatment, “ADHD” types should be focused on the temporal organization issues. The primary driver of distress for “ADHD” types is that ordering things which require contextual binds fail, resulting in “too many things at once”. Understanding how to institute a behavioral ordering system will improve these symptoms.
Edit 2: Sorry, for behavioral OCD programming, the primary issue here is lack of adequate dorsal stream bind to “check” whether the behavior executed successfully. Meditation should be effective here, or methodologies which encourage pausing between iterations of behavior/thought and literally doing anything else, preferrably checking the data. For example, an obsessive thought should be acknowledged on the first pass, then immediately sensorily interrupted by something else. I’m thinking some sort of tone generator would work here, when the repetition pops into “consciousness” training the individual to activate a contravening stimulus to train their brain to give more time for the synchronization to occur should help.
Edit 3: With regard to OCD, I’m thinking there’s a pretty good chance we might be able to detect when these loops start occurring via a neurofeedback headset. A headset with an arduino running spectrum analysis attached to a tone generator might be a really effective all in one option for the most problematic symptoms. I wonder if I can squeeze in testing of this concept and not lose my damn mind in the process.
With regard to ADHD, we might be able to use a pretty similar setup, having the tone generator create a set of scale tones with which the user can be trained to bind tasks to in order to create a sense of order. As some of the ADHD symptomology implies dorsal dominance, being able to automatically bind to a scale, then be prompted by a tone indicating the specific step when the headset detects a local pool dump should be able to pull them back on task in an almost invisible way.
Edit 4: Thinking about this a bit more, I’m wondering if there isn’t a huge opportunity for integrating an EEG based guidance system with a TMS coil. This is a huge step up in complexity, but the ability to actually guide the specific circuit targets based on the EEG interpretation seems like it has a lot of potential. I’ve seen a few layouts in papers and I’m wondering how difficult it would be to attach a coil to a floating helmet design.
If there were a relatively inexpensive TMS setup, it would open a significant amount of circuit level research to a lot more people, and possibly provide a full, non-invasive, non-chronic treatment solution for most circuit level symptomology. I need to think about this a bit more and generate a bill of goods when I get some time.
I’m particularly interested in using a pair of TMS coils, one depo and one polarizing, which based on a lot of tDCS and tACS studies seems a much more effective way of activating circuit level targets. I think of it like creating a downhill slope for the target, which when reinforced by behavioral cues should have pretty significant effect.
Because these circuit level interactions are finally starting to become much more clear, there’s a realistic shot at really pushing the pile forward by quite a bit with regard to a whole range of processes.
I’m a bit concerned about the long term implications however, brains tend to have a pretty natural homeostatic balance, and chronic use of such a thing would be pretty likely harmful. “Overclocking” a brain should have the same effect as running any electronic component over spec, it raises the risk of catastrophic failure directly correlated to time. This puts a bit of a damper on things as I’d strongly prefer to release something like this as an open source project, but am acutely aware that it would be a few weeks before someone killed themselves pushing it too far.
With the hypothalamus and apparently the red nucleus being so critical to our fundamental behavior, something like this may be able to literally change the very nature of a person. While this would be great for something like boosting cognitive performance in alzheimer’s patients, a sensitive enough coil would like be able to modify things like sexual orientation, food preferences, and even basic like/don’t like decisions if targeted correctly. Ugh, this is kind of scary actually, I need to think about this more.
Edit 5: Hah, sometimes I get really freaked out about confirmation bias. This study essentially underlines the basis for the tone based ADHD EEG feedback device I mentioned. Stimulating music supports attention in listeners with attentional difficulties. The basis of this is the split processing between the dorsal and ventral streams, because they interdependently process information, giving them a steady, rhythmic bind to bind sensory data can alleviate some of the temporal association issues which result from dorsal or ventral dominance.
This study gives a bit more guidance on how to specifically shape those tone binders, including duration, frequency and amount of distance between tones. I’m thinking about the idea of compact “mini-tunes” which sweep appropriate frequency groups.