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“Do you suppose all psychological situations have a bodily element within the mind?” somebody as soon as requested me.
“Completely!” I answered. Then I certified that I didn’t consider the thoughts and mind are the identical nor that the thoughts will get sick. I facet with Descartes on dualism.
The subtitle of my memoir Concussion Is Mind Harm, is “Treating the Neurons and Me.” That, to me, expresses the guts of treating mind damage: Deal with the bodily mind cells and their rivers of neural networks with neurostimulation and neuromodulation and use conventional strategies comparable to dialectical conduct remedy to deal with the psychological states that exist alongside them.
We don’t know whether or not the thoughts arises out of mind exercise or exists in a kind we can not detect, which kind “speaks” via the mind. We don’t know if psychological states come up purely from bodily mind exercise or are a mix of mind exercise and the thoughts. However we all know that the mind controls the whole lot in our bodily, mortal physique; and that phenomena like terminal lucidity suggests a thoughts exists individually from the mind in an undiscovered kind.
In the meantime, medical doctors and psychologists are left with the sensible actuality of treating mind damage.
To do this, we should deal with each the neurons and the psychological states that consequence from no matter triggered the damage and the social, environmental, monetary, psychological, and religious sequelae. The usual therapy mannequin encompasses rehab, neurochemicals, too-brief behavioral therapies, and superficial concepts of neuroplasticity — however not direct neuronal therapies. In different phrases, the main target is on psychological states as a substitute of their causative broken bodily elements (neurons and neural networks).
In the previous couple of weeks, I’ve been studying up on one facet of the neuron for the fiction trilogy that I’m in the midst of writing, which is on life after demise, and life after life after demise, as N.T. Wright kinds the Resurrection. E-book one, The Soul’s Awakening, is out now. For the second ebook, I wanted to know extra concerning the neuron. How do neurons reply to direct stimulation? Usually, stimulation comes via the 5 sensory inputs: eyes, ears, pores and skin and hair, tongue, and nostril. That’s a easy approach to put it. However we aren’t born with electrodes implanted on our brains that stimulate a neuron’s axons, dendrites, or their neural networks.
Analysis on deep mind stimulation and prosthetics implanted in retinal ganglion cells to present sight to the blind enlightened me. This analysis focuses on {the electrical} properties of cells which have axon potentials, whether or not the mind’s neurons or the attention’s retinal ganglion cells.
I learnt that prime frequencies within the order of 200 Hz excite neurons and propagate high-frequency exercise and for farther than stimulation at 10 Hz (alpha-wave frequency). I additionally learnt that stimulating retinal ganglion cells at totally different frequencies can create coloration notion. Cones ship coloration info down the optic nerve via the retinal ganglion cells, nevertheless it appears straight stimulating the cells can create the identical notion.
Neurotransmitters are extensively identified, even by individuals who don’t find out about or perceive how they’re secreted and detected within the mind. This widespread information provides the misunderstanding that the first approach to deal with the mind is thru medicine—together with for an clearly electrically-based dysfunction like epilepsy or disordered sleep, which require EEG-based analysis. There appears to be a agency dividing line between apparent electrical issues with the mind and all different “psychological” problems. Even so, drugs are the primary order of treating seizures and sleep, not the kind of therapies which have an effect on the brainwaves the diagnostic exams for epilepsy and sleep file.
Why file brainwave exercise then use neurotransmitters as a substitute of neurostimulation therapies that straight change malfunctioning brainwave exercise in direction of well being?
Neurotransmitters are merely a chemical method for one neuron to speak to the following neuron(s) whether or not to generate an axon potential or not. Axon potentials and the brainwaves they create result in mind perform. You possibly can flood the mind with neurochemicals, but when the neurons can’t generate electrical impulses, not a lot goes to occur.
So why do clinicians ignore brainwaves and electrical exercise?
The query I used to be requested, I believe, gives a component reply.
As a society, we typically consider that psychiatric situations are psychological states, not bodily. Even many researchers and clinicians maintain this misguided view, subconsciously or consciously, together with for mind damage.
As well as, my impression is that health-care professionals mistakenly view studying electrophysiology as slogging psychological work with little payoff. But to study neurotransmitters and tips on how to prescribe mind drugs safely additionally requires quite a lot of finding out and annual programs to maintain updated, each with medicine adjustments and the rising understanding of the psychological states they have an effect on. Maybe the emphasis is on neurotransmitters and chemical therapies and surgical procedure as a result of that’s what society is biased in direction of?
A rising various is neurostimulation used synergestically with talk-type therapies. The latter are efficient however work on the psychological states slightly than straight treating the neurons. Because of this, although important, they take time whereas not therapeutic the injured neurons. When used with neurostimulation, they work faster.
The clinic that handled my neurons started providing counseling in a brand new method. They offered common three-minute bursts of mind biofeedback throughout an hour of discuss remedy to be able to facilitate the shopper’s means to precise themselves and reply to therapy. Considered one of my psychologists used audiovisual entrainment in the identical method on me.
Treating the neurons and me — my psychological states — in a synergistic method proved to hurry up and improve therapeutic. It does for different individuals with mind damage as properly, therapeutic their injured neurons and offering wanted counseling, assist, and steerage.
Copyright ©2025 Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy
