Is Schizo neuro-degenerative?

Thank God the withdrawal is over!

bright_star wrote:Thank God the withdrawal is over!

Yikes! That was fast

Hope you feel better Bright Star. Best wishes and take care.

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As for what you said Copy Cat, I think you're making a leap of reason from "there is no measure of schizophrenia" to "schizophrenia does not exist". There are many things like electrons, quarks, mesons, or black holes that are not directly observable, as well as, medical constructs like chronic fatigue syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome, concussion(s) or pain disorders that we still don't know enough about. Nonetheless, we can infer the existence of these on the basis of observations we make.

Also, with respect to the conceptual distinction between physical disorder and mental disorder, this doesn't really tell us anything about the disorders in question. Our conceptual framework for talking about different disorder may be wrong, in the sense that it doesn't apply to the phenomena or misdescribes them. In the case of schizophrenia, which is caused by patterns of activity in the neuronal and biochemical pathways of the brain, we have good reason to believe that it doesn't actually belong in a mental/non-physical category.

Right?



-Cat, MD

Infinite_Jester wrote: In the case of schizophrenia, which is caused by patterns of activity in the neuronal and biochemical pathways of the brain, we have good reason to believe that it doesn't actually belong in a mental/non-physical category.

Right?

I don't know for sure.

To use the computer brain analogy, I think most mental disorders are more like a software than hardware problem. Like PTSD is programed in with trama and habits form like trichomania. I guess software is physical sort of if its stored in a pathway.

Check out this page I just found on the computer brain analogy https://sites.google.com/site/driscolls ... ophy/brain

bright_star wrote:Thank God the withdrawal is over!

I'm glad it is over ^^ Three plus months later and i'm still dealing with the side effects from rispderal and wellbutrin >_> I have a bad feeling these side-effects will be like the one from zoloft twelve years ago: permanent.

So good for you that yours have past <333 Nothing says I can't be happy for your outcome ^^

Copy_Cat wrote:To use the computer brain analogy,

Which is dangerous, as there are several reason that analogy fails in many aspects.
First, and probably most important, is that the brain is able to rewire and thus optimize itself on certain operations according to usage. It's a fundamental difference to computers which are hard-wired, even if I consider newer computers like FPGAs that are somewhat reconfigurable (although not at runtime).
Second, the software analogy fails when you try to compare a simple program that can be easily given as a set of commands to a processing unit with what is needed for a brain to learn simple manual operations or cognitive abilities like simple math or learning bits of a language.
While you can easily write a compiler to make an x86 understand an arbitrary language, it takes quite the effort to make a brain learn an arbitrary language just because information processing and information storage in the brain seems to function totally different and especially less "directed", less "at command" and more in terms of a (ridiculously complex) cybernetic feedback system that begins to work at your birth and never stops (or restarts) until you die. If it does stop (or parts of it stop) due to temporary lack of oxygen, you lose function. If you damage certain parts, you lose function and nothing can bring these functions back apart from re-learning them the hard way.
Think of patients with strokes that lost their ability to speak and have a hard time relearning it.
If brains were functioning like computers, it would be obsolete to learn; you could just command it.

That's also why it seems hard (or impossible) to "reprogram" deeply ingrained behavior of an adult personality, as you are faced with a lot of resistance, especially if it's early learned behavior.
Not saying it's entirely impossible to unlearn (not sure though), but it's a slow process that is absolutely incomparable to the way computers work. You can't just turn off your brain, restarting with a clean state in your RAM, loading some BIOS/EFI out of a non-volatile memory (there is none in your brain) and executing whatever you want.

That's why I think it's dangerous to think in such simple analogies especially when attempting to describe illnesses without even knowing how the supposed healthy brain is working.
There are other aspects that need to be addressed, but that should be enough to give you an idea that it's not that simple like your picture tries to suggest there.

Is the software in the brain is computer analogy supposed to be our states of consciousness or the function of our brains?

Infinite_Jester wrote:Is the software in the brain is computer analogy supposed to be our states of consciousness or the function of our brains?

It's just the thing.
Software can be seen as a chain of configurations (state + memory, very simplified) a computer system can be in that is just limited by hardware and time.
The brain functions and everything associated (including the consciousness) can be seen as well as configurations of 80*10^9+ neurons wired in whatever way. The limitation is the amount of neurons (at least that's the great difference between humans and other mammals, so I guess there is a strong relation).
The point is that I see no reason to differentiate between "states of consciousness" and "functions of our brains" in other terms than that consciousness is a subset of "functions of our brain".
What is consciousness anyway. It's the consequence of perceiving yourself, of having sensory that enables to measure your actions and the consequences of your actions (some would call that "thinking"). I really don't see how this is somehow special as probably every living not-so-primitive mammal (primates at least) are in a certain "state of consciousness". Even a machine is in a state of consciousness as soon as it realizes it's a machine that is able to look at itself and is in a state in which it is able to look at itself. It probably won't be able to tell as you both lack a common communication protocol, but what does it matter.
It's not what makes humans special in contrast to other mammals. I even would say that "consciousness" is quite a primitive (meaning evolutionary early) brain function as I don't see what's so complicated about that.

So, apart from that, the main problem is still how software works in a computer. It's a chain of commands that is direct input to a processing unit which then executes the commands in a exact and strict manner. A brain doesn't work this way.
Neither do you have a possibility to just plug into my brain and give my processing unit (that afaik doesn't even exist) direct commands which I then execute perfectly, nor is there a fixed set of commands somewhere in my brain you can choose from to write your software for me.
If you really wanna compare the brain to a computer, you shouldn't look at the usual memory + CPU structures with software, but on massive parallel and highly embedded real-time systems which are mostly hard-wired (for providing computing speed) and not supposed to be programmable.

Still that leaves you with the problem that the brain can change itself.
You want to calculate faster? Practice it, connect some more neurons (or whatever) and you do it.
If you want to make a computer calculate a software operation faster you can either hard-wire it into hardware (skipping read/write-operations and other slow communication stuff) or, if already done, make your gates faster. Both can't be done by the computer itself, but your brain can (to a certain degree).
So THE main feature the brain has, being able to adapt itself as needed (through a steady and slow process), is exactly the thing computers lack and that's where the analogy really misses the point.

Oh man, how did we end up talking about consciousness

But I think you're wrong. It's actually very difficult to explain how the activity of some neurons as opposed to others that are structurally identical are able to produce a subjective state of awareness that is unified over time and capable of being about something not present or even non-existent (intentionality). Also, saying consciousness is a function of our brain is really uninformative because it doesn't tell me how the brain instantiates our states of consciousness.



-Cat, Philosopher of Mind

Asto wrote:That's why I think it's dangerous to think in such simple analogies especially when attempting to describe illnesses without even knowing how the supposed healthy brain is working.
There are other aspects that need to be addressed, but that should be enough to give you an idea that it's not that simple like your picture tries to suggest there.

Trigger Warning

Agreed, this sort of analogy is quite dangerous, and far too often is how neural typicals "express" understanding of something they all too often are biased against the existence of in the first place. Or at least that is what my life experience after decades at this game has shown me.

I have a story, sci-fi, I'm working on, inspired by another sci-fi story, where nano technology is used to directly upload data into the victims minds and alter gestalts. IE, transform a person into an animal and the nanites alter their self-image so the victim can walk on four legs, use their tail for stability, etc. Things no human knows how to do. I write on this fully knowing this is IMPOSSIBLE at our current level of brain knowledge.

Altering a deeply head belief or gestalt is like burrowing down through miles of armor. Ablated armor at that. One layer is protected with psychosis, another happy memories, another blackness of forgetfulness, etc. Thirty years of this BS in my own life is how I know some of this, via learned the hard way.

I've been told "just think happy thoughts" or my favorite "get over it" and thrown out of sooooo many offices by "professionals". This is because far too many professionals only want to hold your hand, make you feel better with "awww, its okay", but not deal with REAL problems.

So, they use this computer example. And btw... for those with depression, it has inspired a number of my friends through the years to kill themselves, because they come to think it is all their fault, if they just could get over it they'd be better, but since they can't... they should just die and stop hurting everyone around them. Guess how well that goes?

Apologies for the rant, just that after twenty-three years of failures by the "professional community"... i'm sensitive about these... generalizations & misconceptions.

remusmdh wrote:Apologies for the rant, just that after twenty-three years of failures by the "professional community"... i'm sensitive about these... generalizations & misconceptions.

That's a long time to be trying what the "professional community" advocates, which mostly includes coping and medications. Basically, it sounds to me that you have had a lot of difficutly with using "professional community" approaches. Have you developed your own?

I'm curious if you think that the reason for your difficulties is physiological and/or psychological. I think the main intent of the computer analogy by Copy_Cat was to describe the differences between those two causes. I read the comments afterwards, and I realize that people didn't quite catch that concept. Rather, they just talked about why computers are not like brains. No kidding right? But both compute things and both have electrical pathways. Both have stored memory. So it's not that crazy to use the analogy provided we have the obvious knowlege that brains and publically available computers don't function exactly the same way. As for non-public computers, you'd all be shocked what is being done right now.